What is Micro-Content? [+ Examples of the Best Types]

Creating a successful content marketing plan involves using different types of content that best resonates with your audiences at key points in their customer journey. 

When you can create many different pieces, like social posts, video, long-form, short-form, and advertising copy, you can adapt your strategy to meet your goals. 

One form of content that you might not recognize by name is micro-content. 

This type of content gets your message in front of audiences in quick, easy-to-read formats.

In this article we’ll take a look at what micro-content is, different types of micro-content that can be adapted in your strategy, whether or not it’s a good idea for your brand, and how to create the best micro-content for your goal.

What is Micro-content?

The world today, especially online, is moving faster. Audiences want to get information quickly and efficiently without reading through paragraphs of text. 

While long-form content has a place in a content marketing strategy, it can be too dense to capture new audiences or attract conversions from those who aren’t already invested in learning more about your brand.

Micro-content is short, bite-sized content that can be consumed quickly by your audiences, primarily on social media. 

While there is some disagreement over how short micro-content needs to be, the general consensus is that it should be consumed in under 30 seconds, whether that’s reading a post or watching a short video.

Types of Micro-content

Micro-content can include any type of short-form content that can be quickly consumed by audiences. 

You likely consume micro-content every day without ever realizing that’s what you’ve been looking at. 

Here are some of the most common examples of micro-content that can help your brand understand what formats can be added to a content strategy. 

Videos

Video is a great example of short-form micro-content. Instagram Stories, TikToks, and other social video formats convey complex messages in very little time. 

Videos are also more engaging and interesting to audiences than long blogs or downloadable ebooks are. 

Social Media Updates

While some social media platforms allow you to post longer updates, platforms like Twitter that have character counts help you shorten and condense your content into bite-sized messages. 

You can apply the same limitations yourself on other platforms that don’t have built-in caps.

Google Snippets

Search engine results pages, or SERPs, will often have short snippets that try to answer the question being asked in a sentence or two. 

If your content is optimized for Google SEO and snippets, you can appear at the top of SERPs and get in front of more viewers.

Lists

Lists are helpful ways to communicate information in an easily-digestible format. 

Skimming through a bullet or numbered list is much easier than trying to pick information out of dense paragraphs

Headers

Like lists, headers are ways to help divide your content into easy-to-read and understand sections. 

A reader who skims through your headers should be able to tell within a few seconds the entire purpose of a longer piece of content.

Then, if they want to dive deeper, they know exactly which section will best answer their question.

Infographics

Infographics take statistics and facts and arrange them in visually interesting and easy-to-see ways. 

Rather than looking through a long list of stats and metrics, an infographic can quickly showcase the highlights and takeaways.

Images

The old saying that a photo is worth a thousand words has truth in the context of micro-content. 

Images can quickly convey information that would take many words to say the same thing. Think of how much more useful a product image is than a product description when quickly browsing.

GIFs and Memes

GIFs and memes are useful for communicating quickly with the audience while sharing pop culture and current events. 

These are great for filling your social feeds and garnering interest in your brand.

Short Paragraphs

While long blog posts and text-heavy social updates aren’t micro-content, short blurbs, descriptions, and abstracts are. 

When you create very short and descriptive text sections on your website or advertisements, you can get a lot of information across without audiences losing interest.

Email Subject and Preview Lines

While short emails are always in fashion, they still can range in length. Your subjects and preview lines, however, are capped by character limits on computers and phones. 

That makes them great examples of how micro-content needs to be concise yet informative to draw in audiences and convince them to take a conversion step.

Webpage Titles

Just like page and blog headers can tell you what content is available in a particular post, webpage titles can also help audiences quickly learn what type of information is available on a certain page. 

That means your entire website dropdown menu can be a type of micro-content.

Should You Devote Attention to Micro-content?

Now that you know what types of content qualify as micro-content, you might be wondering if micro-content is worth investing in. 

After all, blog posts and ebooks have a bigger impact on your SEO, right? 

Micro-content solves a very specific problem that modern businesses face: customer attention spans. 

Customers are quick to lose interest or choose not to interact or engage with content that looks too complicated or time-consuming from a first glance. 

Especially on platforms like social media, customers tend to want to get quick snippets of useful information rather than parse through dense paragraphs. 

That means that when you create micro-content, you are able to fill the gap between customer attention and useful information. 

You can demonstrate the value of your brand by providing answers and info that is relevant to searchers or social media users without unintentionally driving them away.

Using Micro-content in Your Content Strategies

Micro-content works best when paired with strong CTAs. 

For example, if you post a short Twitter update that relates to an industry development, you will be able to quickly get that important information across to those scrolling down their feed. 

Then, if a reader is interested in learning more or deep diving into the details of your brand, you can provide them with a CTA to a longer article or relevant website page. 

A well-rounded content strategy will include many different formats of content to appeal to a wider range of customers who might be in different stages of their customer journey. 

If you only write micro-content, you can’t provide depth or details on important factors of your brand of business that need expanding. 

Conversely, if you only write long-form content and don’t provide your audiences with micro-content examples, you can easily lose the interest of your prospects and leads.

How to Create Compelling Micro-content

Now that you understand the importance of micro-content, let’s take a quick look at some of the tactics to keep in mind to create compelling micro-content.

1. Create Powerful Images

Images and graphics are key to success in micro-content marketing. 

If your images or graphics aren’t visually appealing, you won’t be able to connect with your audiences and get the responses you are looking for. 

Work closely with your design team to find the best images and graphic choices that will pair with your messaging.

2. Make Your Posts Short

Micro-content works great on social media, where users are already scrolling and looking for short posts to quickly digest. 

Even if a platform doesn’t have strict character limits, like LinkedIn, try keeping posts short regardless. That can help you garner more attention from followers.

3. Write Words that Count

In micro-content, every word that you use counts. 

Extra fluff and unnecessary clauses cause confusion and complicate what should be a clear, concise message. 

Finding writers who excel at short-form and micro-content will ensure that you don’t waste precious words and characters that don’t add to the piece.

4. Know Your Audience

Because micro-content is so short and concise, the tone of writing needs to appeal to your audiences and resonate with their preferred styles. 

For example, if your audience consists of Gen Z or Millennials, using GIFs and memes is a great way to connect. 

However, if your audience is made of Gen X, then you might want to take a more professional tone with your content.

5. Ensure that Content is Evergreen

Evergreen content refers to content that stays relevant even after time has passed. This allows it to last longer and be viable for use for many years. 

When your micro-content is evergreen, you don’t have to keep trying to rephrase the same short message time and time again.

Wrap Up

Your content marketing plan is the cornerstone of your digital marketing strategy. 

When you want to communicate with your customers, you need content and copy to reach them.

Being able to clearly share your messages with audiences in the best format, whether it’s long-form or micro-content, will ensure that you get the most out of your content marketing goals.

If you are interested in learning more about how to tailor content to meet customer expectations, check out our magazine on content experiences! 

You’ll discover how to combine creativity with your content and how to set up a strong brand identity. In addition, you’ll also read about ways to understand your audience and how to create premium content experiences.