Understanding Different Types Blog Content
Writing blog content is an investment. Whether you create content internally or outsource it, blog creation takes time and money. But it’s money well spent when you consider the variety of ways you can utilize blogging to support your overall marketing strategy. In this blog, we’ll explore the different types of blog content you can create by length and category.
Blog Content by Length
There are two types of blog content; long form and short form blog content. A good rule of thumb is short form content is between 500 and 1200 words, and long form content is 1300+ words
Long Form Blog Content
Your long form content is going to range from 1,200 /1,300 words all the way up to 1,300 – 3,500 words. Long form content is well researched and data driven pieces of industry knowledge, that build thought leadership and long term traffic. These blogs take more time to research, write, and edit, but the topics they cover are evergreen or have a long shelf-life so traffic is continually driven towards them. Additionally, your long form blogs can be broken up into shorter, digestible forms of content, like social media posts or reels.
Long form blogs can include:
Thought leadership
Case studies
Tutorials
Concept explanations
Personal success stories
Short Form Blog
Your short form blogs will range from 500 words to 1,100/ 1,200 words. These pieces are, of course, shorter, easier to produce, and fill in the weeks between your long form blogs that take longer to research and write.
Short form blogs can include:
Infographics
Listicles
Comparisons
Curated Lists
FAQs
Newsjacks
Press releases
Fun posts
Blog Content by Categories
These types of blog content fall into one of three categories: education, industry, or news.
Education
Educational content is great for targeting consumers in the first two stages of the buyer’s journey, awareness and consideration.
The content of the blog is educational on one or more topics. A dispensary may have educational blogs on what to expect when you smoke cannabis for the first time, while a chef may have blogs discussing your experience eating a cannabis meal for the first time.
When building out your blog content calendar, educational content should amount for around half of your blogs.
Industry
Industry blogs can include observations or expert opinions on trends, predictions, technology disruptions, fluctuations.
These blogs tend to be geared towards current clients and potential clients with an industry knowledge. A dispensary may want to cover emerging forms of cannabis consumption that will hit the shelves later this year.
These blogs establish thought leadership, even among customers who may not have purchased yet. There can be overlap between education and industry content, as we’ll see later in the blog.
Industry blogs should make up 1/3 to 5/8 of your blog content calendar. They appear less frequently than educational blogs, but are the second-biggest category.
News
The news category of blogs covers anything related to news in the world or news in your company. This is the smallest of the blog categories, and should be used sporadically and judiciously throughout the year. While internal changes may be exciting to you and your industry peers, it’s not the most exciting thing for consumers. However the caveat for the cannabis industry is if you’re covering the rapidly changing consumption laws.
