Tighter copy packs more of a punch than lengthy copy. It appeals to the short attention span of a reader or browser. It’s good practice.
On the other hand, lengthier copy sends a signal. It’s perceived as you being invested in telling a story. Lengthier copy is more convincing at face value –that is, even without reading it.
If you’re unsure which length makes your audience more responsive, don’t go with your gut. Test it.
Then you don’t have to argue about cutting copy or adding more story; the data will direct you.
Stay Positive & Last Thing You Want To Do Is Assume
Rejection doesn’t tap you on your shoulder nicely.
It doesn’t send you a notice that you’re overdue.
Our brains aren’t wired to immediately accept or embrace rejection like it were an important friend we haven’t seen in awhile.
Rejection smacks. It wacks. It throws us off balance.
But there’s on advantage we have over it: we know it’s a sign that we leaped, we stretched, we tried something.
When we focus on that knowledge, we can find inspiration and energy to pivot again, to leap again, to dance with the rejection and find our footing again.
Your content consumption formulas and benchmarks are likely outdated.
Every day people are getting smarter.
Yes, broadly smarter, across a lot of different topics, but also deeply smarter around the ones they care most about (and, being blunt, even about some ones they don’t…).
Which means that an assumption can be made that people spend more time on pages, reading and connecting than five years ago, five months ago and five days ago.
If the average time spent on your blog page is 5 minutes (which is good), but it was also 5 minutes a year ago (which was good), that says something different about your content than you might otherwise be quick to conclude.
There’s a reason they call it a browser and that’s how they found you.
It does well to realize they’re primarily in the in the browsing mode, the consuming mode – and they want (no, they need) more than they did before.
Now is not the time to reduce your content plans (quantity or duration) – quite the opposite.
Stay Positive & They Also Call Them Consumers For A Reason
Need a plumber? There’s someone you know that knows the perfect person for it.
Want an idea to spread? There’s someone you know that knows the perfect person to share the idea with.
Another way to look at it…
You throw a party and tell people to bring friends. Turns out the two different friends of yours bring one of their friends, both of which happened to go to the same high school together.
You go to organize an event for a nonprofit and turns out your kid’s teacher’s wife is a board member.
We’re all a single connection away. If that’s not convincing enough to plan an event, ship your work or ask for help, I’m not sure what would be.
Nothing is perfect, and even when you get it close to perfect–when you feel like there are no more gaps to fill in the project–the success of that project slows down.
Why?
Because every project or idea is an innovation and every innovation follows the diffusion of innovation curve.
By the time you have your work perfect enough for even the laggards to get on board, the early adopters and early majority and, often times, even the late majority are onto something new.
At the end of the race, whether you’re first by 1 meter or 100, it doesn’t matter if your goal is winning.
At the end of a holiday campaign, whether you captured more market share than competitors by 3% or 13%, it doesn’t matter if your goal is to capture more.
Not that one of the results feel more satisfying than the other (I’d rather blow a competitor away on a breakaway than have him right by my side, regardless of scoring a goal either way), but in terms of competition, when the goal is clear about what a win is, the rates beyond the win are irrelevant.
Either you beat the competition or you don’t.
If you want to get out ahead, be the reigning champ and stand out, you can do so to varying degrees.
But it first starts with lasting a little longer than others to get the win. That’s all it takes to win. (It takes more to win BIG. A subject for another blog post.)
You can calculate the amount of media spend you use against a competitor. You can measure how much time your team invests in a product launch versus a competitor. You can measure the body fat percentage of your group of athletes versus your competitors. You can do a lot of measurement.
But what happens when you measure your level of perseverance over your competitors?
Is it more?
Because all things considered (and your competitors are contemplating all the same challenges and innovations you are – at least the worthy competitors are), at the end of the day, the person who crosses the finish line will be the one who persevered.
Not infinitely longer than the other, but maybe seconds, maybe cents, maybe half of a percent longer.
Stay Positive & Hang In There. Just A Little Bit Longer.
