The Importance of Quality over Quantity with Franchise Content Marketing

Long-form content has a place in some franchise content marketing campaigns, but not all. On one hand, The Next Web associates content over 2000 words with:

• Higher online visibility
• More social media shares
• Better link building
• Reliable website authority

Clearly, there are benefits to publishing long-form content, but that doesn’t mean it belongs in every franchise content marketing effort. And it definitely doesn’t mean that long-form content is inherently better than short or medium-sized posts.

In today’s post, our franchise content marketing team weighs in on the short-versus-long-form content debate, and shares some tips on finding the perfect post length for your campaign.

Long-Form Posts for Franchise Content Marketing

One SerpIQ study famously showed a strong positive correlation between post length and search ranking position, but its exact findings are often misconstrued by long-form content crusaders. In fact, the study found that posts of 2300-2450 words ranked at number 1 more often than those around 2000 words.

The Long-Form Content Crusade Begins

This moderate conclusion somehow warped into concrete evidence that Google always pushed longer posts to the top spot, and many franchise content marketing teams jumped on board. Sacrifices were made, either by the client or provider; long-form content costs more to produce, which meant someone had to foot the bill, or else delay publishing schedules.

The long-form franchise content marketing trend was a big mistake! The ranking impacts of increased content workloads and budgets were minimal – certainly not what the SerpIQ study was misconstrued to say.

Lessons Learned: What the Research Really Says About Franchise Content Marketing

Some continue to interpret the SerpIQ findings as evidence that “longer is better, all the time,” but what it really says is that “extra-long posts perform well in searches for comprehensive, informational material.”

That’s good to know if you’re writing to those audiences, but franchise content marketing doesn’t always call for this kind of material. To say otherwise would be like assuming that short stories and novellas won’t sell because some people like reading War and Peace.

Content Quality over Content Quantity

If the failed long-form content crusade tell us anything, it’s that more is not always better; successful franchise content marketing is about quality, not quantity. Data on short attention spans and long-form content abandonment rates is a sobering reminder that one-size-fits-all approaches don’t work. Moreover, as any experienced writer will tell you, brevity is the soul of wit.

Quality franchise content marketing will look different for every client, because every industry attracts readers with unique needs, questions, and expectations, but it will always identify and satisfy demographic expectations.

For some franchises, short-and-sweet content will be the better choice. Depending on the conversion goals or purpose of the campaigns, blogs and articles of 400-800 words in length can be more than enough to build authority, funnel informational traffic towards lead-capturing pages, and drum up social media shares. In these cases, there’s simply no reason to spend extra time and money on long-form content production. That money would be better spent producing more content, or being redirected to your campaign’s pay-per-click account.

Learn more about franchise content marketing

ClickTecs has been deep in the franchise content marketing game for years. In that time, we’ve assembled quite a collection of free, informational blog posts on the subject, and we encourage you to browse around to your heart’s content (sorry!).

And if you want help finding out what “quality franchise content marketing” means for your business, let’s talk!