Long-form content writing is the long articles that educate prospective customers about industry best practices, product features in detail,
Anything more than 1000 words can be considered long-form content and it usually stretches to word count till it contains necessary points to explain in detail concepts/features/methods
While creating long-form articles we need to understand the customer pain points,
For that, we need to do customer research and find out how the content can help answer the questions of the customers.
The best practice of content writing is to address directly to the point, with no fluff content.
The biggest benefit of long-form content is establishing oneself as the expert in the niche speaking with authority and gaining the trust of the customer.
You can use long-form content to craft multiple LinkedIn posts or tweets
Long-form content is shared by multiple people as a reference
Trust plays a vital role in the purchase decision, as HubSpot follows the philosophy of leaving nothing to the imagination for the customer.
Long-form content helps in explaining every detail of the product and the possibilities of the product to help solve the customer’s pain points.
There are three phases for the customer buyer journey, read more about them in the article Content Marketing Funnel For SaaS
For the sake of explaining I am writing it here in short so you can grasp the concept.
Educational
In this phase, the customer is new to the market and is only acquiring the knowledge of the domain and will be less inclined to make a purchase.
Awareness
In this phase, the customer knows the basic concepts and understands the importance of using software.
Purchase
Here the customer is educated about the various options out there and is compared to software to find out which software fits his requirements.
Procedure for Long-Form Content Writing
Content Research
Long-form Content needs in-depth research, Now depending on the type of content you will be writing, you will need access to the appropriate person.
Let us say you are going to write about a topic that comes under the BoFu category, here you will need access to In-house SMEs.
The ones who have created the product, the ones who work as Customer Service representatives, and know the pain points of the customers.
If you are going to write an article on the topic that comes under the MoFu category you will need access to Industry enthusiasts.
who know all the players in the niche, and who have used all products while in the niche.
While writing the article on the topic that comes under ToFu you will need access to an industry veteran.
who can lecture college graduates or students and explain the concepts, methodology, etc.
Well Structured
Structure plays a crucial role in delivering the message.
Short paragraphs and information clumped in bitsize sentences or structures make the content digestible and easy to remember.
The requirements can be based on pricing, features, and competitor’s lack of particular features.
While writing Long-form Content always remember to do
- Customer Research
- Topic Ideation
- Interviewing the SMEs and Customer Service Executives on the selected topics
- Keyword research
Strategy for writing long-form content
So while approaching long-form content writing it is best to have an approach of bottom to top.
Bottom keywords have the lowest volume but it is highly intentional meaning these people have knowledge of the concepts and software and they are weighing their options.
It’s like a car salesman who pitches the features of his products and compares them to the competitor’s cars and convinces why it is better.
As the BoFu and MoFu keywords will be less competitive and they have high buying intent keywords it will help in acquiring the very needed first buyers and help you in gaining confidence in the content strategy efforts
Personally, I like to write BoFu and Mofu articles. They talk more about the products, and product features and address customer pain points.
They are solid facts and not what I call a regular mambo jumbo bullshit of shallow content.
But every once in a while we come across a product that is a pioneer in its industry or its new concepts in its own right.
In that case, we need the right Tofu content to introduce our products since not enough people have an idea of the terminology to use while searching for the product.
for example, suppose there is software that works as a CDN optimizer, it makes assets load faster by moving the server close to the CDN and by compressing the asset’s file size compared to a normal CDN user.
Now not many users will know what is CDN optimizer and hence they will be searching for How to optimize for CDN( Which is a Tofu Topic).
This is the article we use to introduce our product and say if wanna optimize for CDN you can simply use our product or follow this lengthy manual process of compression, data localization, and everything else needed to do.
Or if have exhausted most of the relevant Bofu and Mofu keywords in the industry and we have enough customers. We have unique industry insight like how Hubspot has for Inbound marketing. They have gained unique industry insight over the years and they created a lot of material regarding Inbound marketing.
While writing long-form content we have to understand our budget and plan accordingly.
A good SaaS writer costs from 800 dollars to 1600 dollars depending on their expertise and experience.
Usually, a good content writer will reduce the efforts, time, and resources needed to develop the content.
Access to SMEs plays a crucial role in enriching the articles with the features and pain points of the customers.
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