By: Sara Hamam, Digital and Communications Consultant

Sara Hammam, Digital and Communications Consultant

The recent launch of YouTube shorts in the UAE, is a testimonial that attention spans have become short.

et’s not forget about the earlier launch of Instagram reels and tiktok, whose content format ‘launched a thousand ships.’  

Bearing a witness to all that, the question on every marketer’s mind now is should your content strategy be focused on shorts?

Well, I’m here to argue for the latter and provide five good reasons why long form content is here to stay.

I’ll begin with what long form content is; it’s usually article, blog posts, case studies that are more than 1,200 words long or videos that are 10 minutes or longer.

  1. Covid has done a lot of bad things, but it did some good too. In some ways Covid has shifted consumer behavior, whereby consumers now appreciate and value a slower paced and conscious living. If we are also being honest, even before covid hit, consumers were already leaning into the Norwegian idea of ‘hygge’ and the Swedish living philosophy, ‘lagom’, which advocate slow living…and so, slow living needs slow content so there you go!
  2. Research done by WordPress and marketing expert Neil Patel also show that long form content increases user engagement, returning website visits and yields better Search Engine results.
  3. Long-term content also allows for depth, and more depth means thought leadership. 
  4. Podcasts are a form of long-term content and if you are looking at the growth trajectory, podcast growth is only going up globally and in the UAE.
  5. Slow content also appeals to the younger generation as well, contrary to what some people might assume. Gen Z’ers do consume and enjoy long form content especially around their passion points.

I would like to end with a story that reminded me of the short content craze, which in fact happened before all the short content fanfare was around, circa 2014- 2016.

During my time at Samsung back in 2014, I led a campaign called the Samsung Short Film Contest.

 The idea of the campaign was to attract amateur filmmakers and get them to create  five to seven minute films, via their Samsung devices. The short films were then showcased at the Dubai Film Festival.

The campaign was a smash, with 20 finalists (chosen from 400 original submissions) showcasing their short films to a full house at the outdoor JBR cinema.

Fast forward to post campaign feedback, many of the audience that attended the outdoor film screening, couldn’t remember half the films that were shown.

What I am saying is that if you want to create something memorable, it needs to be a little more than two minutes long.

Check out some lofi beats for the perfect background music for a slow and mindful life.