You didn’t build your business in 30 seconds, so why should you limit yourself to 30 seconds when showing off your business’s expertise? Long-form content should be a key piece of the marketing plan for businesses looking to grow their brand identity.
Long-form content is valuable, engaging material, typically 1,000 to 2,000 words long, like articles or blog posts, whitepapers, e-books, how-to guides, case studies or reports that allow you to dig into a topic. You can position your business as an indispensable subject matter expert by producing high-quality long-form content that truly solves problems or answers urgent questions for your ideal customer.
How can long-form content enhance your marketing plan?
By definition, long-form content pieces have higher word counts, allowing you to include more search-worthy keywords naturally. Posting these articles to your website will enhance SEO while giving you share-worthy content for your email and social media channels.
According to HubSpot’s 2025 State of Marketing report, attention may seem limited, but when consumers are engaged, they’re consuming content they find valuable and entertaining. For B2B brands, the top marketing channel for return on investment (ROI) in 2024 was their website, blog, and SEO. For B2C brands, two channels with the best ROI were email marketing and content marketing.
Long-form content is also a great foundation upon which to build an omnichannel marketing plan, which can create huge time and cost savings.
In a survey by Billion Dollar Boy, a global creator agency, “68% of marketers have ramped up their production of long-form content over the past year. Looking ahead, a notable 70% plan to further increase their output in the coming year. The trend is particularly pronounced in the United States, where 79% of marketers have enhanced their production.”
You can then segment weighty articles or e-books into shorter articles for use on blogs, social media and email marketing to continue to generate engagement and interest.
A critical component of long-form content is setting up your reputation as a reliable expert in your field and a provider of quality content.
Why New Hampshire businesses should leverage this format
Finding and keeping customers is a challenge for any business, but in more rural states, it becomes even more critical.
New Hampshire, and even New England more widely, is home to many rural communities. Much of New Hampshire, Vermont and southern Maine falls into the range of 10 to 150 people per square mile, with coastal areas averaging about 250 to 500 people per square mile. The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services considers 47% of the population and 84% of the landmass in New Hampshire as rural.
Businesses that keep these demographics in mind will recognize the importance of inspiring loyalty among locals and attracting customers from farther away.
Long-form content excels at building engagement and should play a key role in New Hampshire businesses’ marketing plans.
Since New Hampshire is a small, tight-knit state, businesses often rely on personal relationships and authenticity. Long-form content is an opportunity for your business to invest in authentic, useful storytelling-based marketing. This builds trust with potential customers.
Types of long-form content
- Blog post/article: A blog post or article is a written piece of text that’s published online or in a print publication. It can come in a range of formats, but in this context, it is typically 1,000 to 2,000 words. It can also include images, video and other interactive graphic elements. Posts allow you to write your insights, thoughts and stories on a range of topics. Your goal should be to cover topics interesting and educational in nature.
- Whitepapers: Originally shorthand for an official government report, whitepaper is now a term used for a variety of authoritative documents. Companies can create a report on a product or topic to showcase their expertise. It presents a detailed and persuasive analysis of a specific solution and provides research to back up the claims.
- E-books: This is a virtual version of a book. As it is not printed, length can range from a dozen or so pages to thousands. It allows you the space to include plenty of research, organize chapters on subtopics and showcase your in-depth knowledge.
- Guides and Magazines: While digital media is distributed widely and inexpensively, printed media like brochures, magazines and guides give an additional level of physical weightiness to your long-form content despite its more specfic reach. Readers also recognize the effort that goes into magazine production, resulting in content deemed trustworthy and high-quality.
- Case studies: Case studies are a record of the behind-the-scenes development of a solution you’ve provided to a client. You explain the customer’s problem and the process you took to address it, including the outcomes afterward. You should use case studies that highlight processes that are repeatable for new clients.
Best practices for creating great content
You can dump a thousand words on a page, or ask AI to do it for you, but that sort of long-form content is not going to have the relationship-building impact you need. The best value from long-form content comes when people actually WANT to read it.
Long-form content must be useful: Be sure you are writing about something that is a resource to your customer and helps them solve a problem they’re having.
Long-form content must be interesting: We interrupt your social media scrolling for an important broadcast. Surveys indicate people are willing to spend time digging into a hefty piece of long-form content. However, in attracting eyeballs to your piece, you are still competing with a highly-visual, short-form social media content. So make it visual! There are a lot of posts, emails and ads clamoring for attention. Adding relevant graphics and media to an e-book, for example, can break up the monotony of a long text. Subheadings and pull-out text can also aid in clarity and organization.
Long-form content must be high-quality: You might hook a reader with an interesting lead on something that may be useful. But, your customer will abandon reading if the piece has errors, incomprehensible jargon or a confusing arc. Do your research and make sure your output is up to standard. This content should help you build a relationship and cast you in a complimentary light.
If you’re struggling to create long-form content for your business, the experts at Yankee Custom Marketing can help. We spend all our time crafting the stories people love to read.