One moment, brands are being told that customers have the attention span of goldfish and if you want to capture their interest, your entire story must be told in ten seconds or less. Yet the next advisor will tell you about the tremendous hunger for rich, long-form content, leaving you with the impression that it’s absolutely imperative to turn out 1,500 word articles every single day. It’s confusing, and we’re here to clear things up. Everybody’s right, it turns out, and everybody’s wrong.

Last week, we talked about how the most effective content marketing is tailored directly to the individual customer. It’s time to delve into what that means. Some of your customer base will prefer short form content; they love Vines and bullet-point style summaries. Some of your customer base will prefer longer content – these are the types who love delving down into the details and want to engage as deeply as possible with your brand. Some of your customer base will consume all of this content; others will pick and choose capriciously, based upon their mood at the moment.

[Tweet “The more content options you create, the more customers will feel like 1 was made just for them.”]

This means you’re free to create your content in as many lengths and formats as you see fit. Keep your core messaging and brand look consist across all of your creative work for best results. Want to make the best use of limited time and resources to produce the content your customers value most? Delve down into your metrics, and really study what you see there. If your long form pieces get lots of clicks but people are only engaging for a fraction of what it would take to interact with the piece, you may be better served by going shorter.

Let customers know about all the great content you’re creating. Including links to longer pieces in short form articles can increase your traffic as well as the amount of time people are spending with your brand. Collect links to shorter pieces in longer round up pieces, maximizing their reach. The more content options you give your customers, the more they’ll feel that at least one was made just for them, and that’s the sweet spot in reaching today’s customer.