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Content Marketing: How Short and Sweet Converts to Sticky Content

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head that won't go away? Wouldn't it be great if you could get your marketing message to do that? It's not really the whole song playing over and over; it's usually just a few lines of the chorus on heavy rotation. It's made me think really short pieces of content can be just as valuable maybe even more powerful than long pieces. Let me give you some examples.

The Chatty Village
I've had a tagline sitting front and centre of my thought process for the past couple months. The blog by Ralston Vaz from u'budget design in the USA claims, "It takes a chatty village to raise a good brand". The blog is definitely worth reading. Ralston does a fantastic job pulling people in with good writing and a sound social networking strategy. I love the idea of identifying a blog as a chatty village. I wish I'd thought of it.

Anatomy of a Logo
The Bethanie Group Inc. is a large aged care provider in Western Australia. They recently sent a tweet out with a link to their website where they've described their logo. In a few short paragraphs, Bethanie effectively explained how they picked their name and logo image and why it supports their brand. I marvel at the wallop of information in the brief description and think of it every time I see their name mentioned.

The resolution
Earlier this month I wrote about a Facebook post from Activewear Online. On New Year's Eve, Jill Taylor laid down a couple lines about what her customers can expect from her company for 2011. It was a brilliant piece of content marketing which motivated me to do the same for my own company.

The two sentence blog post
On 13 January 2011, while Australia was still in the throes of the horrific Queensland floods, Andrew Bolt wrote a two sentence blog post. I'll probably never forget it. I appreciate Bolt had the good sense and skill to know, sometimes, less is an awful lot more.

LinkedIn Connections graphic
A couple days ago I received an email from LinkedIn with a graphical image of 71 of my connections (see above), all who made a change to their profile in 2010. It was an effective way to get me thinking about my professional network and visit the LinkedIn site. Each thumbnail image had a link to the corresponding LinkedIn profile making it super easy to catch up.

What's the take-away?
Sticky content often works better when it's short and packs a punch. Don't get hung up on creating long, formal documents or elaborate explanations about your business. A well-crafted sentence, a short description, a cool graphic or an emotional tug may leave a bigger impression than a longer piece. Consider brevity an essential tool in your content mix. Just be prepared to hear people complain when they "can't get you out of my head".

WHAT CONTENT STICKS IN YOUR MIND?
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