Microcontent article
What is Microcontent and why is it important to your business? Today’s readers are busy and overwhelmed with information. To be effective, you must provide quick, to-the-point content that grabs attention and motivates the audience to read more.

Information-rich microcontent can be extremely persuasive in the digital space, where viewers scan and move quickly – it can make or break whether users read your content and engage.

A look at its evolution can help you create microcontent that captures your audience’s attention.

Microcontent- by definition – has evolved from when it was first introduced in 1988 by usability advisor Jakob Nielsen. “Well-written, short text fragments presented out of supporting context can provide valuable information and nudge web users toward the desired action,” he said.

Basic examples include

  • Page titles – 40-60 characters that make up the page title. 
  • Page headings (headlines) – Headlines should be able to stand out on their own.
  • Email subject lines – Should be phrased as a user benefit.
  • Bullet checklist
  • Quotes
  • Research results/facts
  • 5-10 second videos

In 2002; blogger Anil Dash evolved the original definition to define microcontent as being used as a more general term indicating content that conveys one primary idea or concept.

Examples expanded

  • Re-using/re-mixing micro chunks of content
  • Email shortened
  • Web browsers brief content
  • Blogs 

Microcontent as a practice provides leverage, reduces creation time, and improves content quality.

Tips to building your content

  • Build a library of common phrases important to your audience and businesses.
  • Create a list of sources with longer-form finished assets.
  • Have research results or program/business statistics and facts that can be used in multiple content pieces.
  • Use your customer service responses and turn them into this type of content to help all customers.
  • Organizations are harvesting content snippets from existing PDFs and turning them into microcontent that can be linked to the longer format.

Microcontent isn’t just for your marketing or sales departments anymore. Effective strategies can enormously impact all areas of your organization and business. 

If your organization is ready to clarify your brand, grow your revenue, and make a greater impact drop us an email at [email protected].

*Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/