Do people read?

As a marketer whose #1 proven, go-to conversion strategy is long form content, I can confidently say that long form content outperforms all other forms of content including the "viral" mirage. Every single day, someone - a client, a potential client, a blogger, a copywriter, a creative director, a ceo, a sales head, a growth hacker, content ninjas and just about everyone who has an opinion tells me "people don't read, keep you blog posts under 500 words".

Ok, let's say for a moment, people don't read. Even if I wasn't in the business of putting information out there, and even if I didn't have data to back up my counter point to this statement, I'd have some basic questions. If people don't read, why is there a thriving content and digital media industry out there? Is the content industry only made up of OTT platforms or funny web series or hate content and fake news? In a world where people don't read, why are text-based long form content platforms like The Ken or The New Yorker thriving? Why are new platforms like this coming up every month and becoming successful?

A simple google search of "do people read" or "how long should my blog post be" will give you data from both sides of the argument. The data clearly shows people DO read. In a world that is overloaded with information that is repetitive, original in-depth content that provides solutions and perspectives are not just appreciated but people actually hunt for it from SERPs 1 through whatever number of pages people need to scroll to unearth that piece of information they are looking for.

Despite all this information out there, "people don't read" is a default first retaliation to any suggestion of starting a blog or writing long form content. So I wanted to dig a bit deeper. Here's what I found:

The people who actually make (or believe in) this statement are all (surprise!) readers. But as creative folks or content writers or ceos, our goals from reading are different from the audience's (yes this includes me too at times). In our immediate circles also we might not find many people who look for informative content on the internet. However, the people we write content for have reading goals that are different from our own.

Example: a brand promoting financial literacy or good health cannot just give "quick tips" to educate people well enough to make a difference in behaviour. There should be quick tips too, which serve as reminders playing one of the many many roles the totality of your content strategy should play, but there should also be content that digs deep on behalf of the audience, addresses their deepest fears and doubts, provides answers in a logical, reassuring manner. This doesn't happen through a listicle that can be skimmed/scanned.

So to actually get the answer to the question in the title, you can google, see the wide variety of opinion, facts and research out there, and come to your own conclusions. People read, people also don't read, people read short form content, people read mid-length content, people read long-form content, people skim, people read word for word, people get fooled sometimes by clickbait titles and then close the article without reading, people sometimes put off long content for later and then forget about it, but then it pops up on social media again, and they open it, and then sometimes after the fifth attempt they give up simply because they don't have time, but later when they have time and they are looking for that information they hunt for it and come back and read it because it made enough of an impression on them, and so on and on and on, the behaviour varies, the need varies, the thinking is as diverse as the number of fingerprints there are. The attempt by the data industry to bucket all these diverse neurological activity into cohorts and whatever else is disrespectful enough to the audience without us assuming things about them and making generalised statements like people don't read. People do read. Even Millennials and Gen Zs. In fact, being the internet generation, they tend to not take anything for granted without doing a ton of research online. Even before buying a Kajal pencil, which we probably used to just go to a store and pick up from whatever was available, a zoomer will read tens of articles and reviews on websites, social media comments and everything before buying. If one of the articles happens to be a 2500 word megalith about the specific substance used in pigmentation, and its impact on eye health and the environment, they will read that too. In fact, the ideal blog post length to make any impact on SEO is 2500, and the top ranking posts on Google are longer in 2021 than they used to be 10 years ago. I have always believed that length doesn't matter it's the content that matters. If you have something to say, say it in whatever length of content required to say it effectively. Sometimes that length is 300 words. Seth's blog is a beautiful example of short form content that works. But just 'coz Seth Godin does it, doesn't mean all brands should do it, or even try to do it because that might not be the right approach. But even I was knocked off my chair when I found data that says the longer the content, the higher the ranking, or blog posts of 10K+ word count actually rank on Google, on SERP 1. I mean in a world where people don't read it's just unimaginable. Who is reading these 10000 word posts and how do they have time? These questions just mean there is a world out there that we fully don't know. We are all frogs living in our own ponds believing whatever we have the tenacity to believe. If nobody wanted to read long content, twitter should be the only social media out there with no links clicking to articles longer than 500 words.

Which brings me to bigger topics of which content is a part - marketing, business, change.

There is a fundamental difference between what marketing is propounded to be (by those who benefit from creating FUD around marketing ignorance and FOMO), and what marketing actually is. The entire digital marketing industry has done a brilliant job of marketing itself and having people constantly chasing metrics that simply cannot be measured. It has us believing that people are incapable of reading, incapable of taking an action intuitively without a Call To Action, people are just scrolling and wasting time on social media. A piece of content that cannot drive an action without a call to action is not very good content, or selling a not-so-great product, and I write it too.

Today, the need from marketing is to put the brand out there as someone the audience can look to for meeting real needs. Imagine my friend is looking for a job, and I call them up and say, "here are 5 things you need to do to get a job", instead of actually understanding why they are not finding the job, and then guiding them the right way. The difference between brand building and "trust building" is this. I can be someone who is seen as an expert who always has all the answers, or I can be someone who can be relied on to do what is needed to be done. Most businesses start out with the following mandate to the marketing agency / team - "we need to be seen as the thought leaders in the industry". This is like saying we need to create a viral campaign. Nobody can be seen as a thought leader of anything, unless they are actually thought leaders. What are you doing that's taking your industry to the next level? What are you doing that takes the audience's lives to the next level by educating them, giving them a different perspective or the means to solve their problems in a way that nobody else can? That is when you become a problem solver, or an innovator, which you need to do for years consistently before you become a thought leader.

This was another one of my learnings from starting a different kind of marketing firm with my partner Asif, and working with a few brilliant leaders and founders. The best example is Asif himself, who told me once, "you need to stop selling", and that's when the marketing we did for our clients went to the next level. He has always been a visionary, ahead of the curve, showing people things they never even imagined. Or in my case, I knew I shouldn't sell, and it was the reason I left the advertising industry and started something we believed in. But it was hard to break out of habits and overcome fears. What if someone didn't click because we specifically didn't tell them to click here? The learning I want to share here is: it's one thing for a person to have revolutionary ideas and a vision, and quite another for the business to get to that level. Do we have strong beliefs and a vision based on which we will take bold decisions for the business? Do we have the conviction to back up our beliefs and the means to make it work? Can we change our beliefs in the face of evidence pointing to the contrary? And can we do all this consistently for at least a few months if not years? Or are the bold decisions for the Steve Jobses of the world while we need to play safe while also trying to be Apple, which every business tries not so secretly.

If you're doing something truly revolutionary, and you do everything you can to bring the revolution to one person/client/business at a time, you will automatically become whatever you want to be. In my last 2 or 3 stints in advertising, where I held senior positions, I had a hard time convincing my bosses that we just need to do the best work possible; the money is an outcome of it. If we start every new project worrying about money and nitpicking about whether the client is paying us fairly, or every new experiment worrying about the ideal outcome, we will always be stuck in a loop of worrying instead of breaking out to do the best we can. I failed in making even one person believe this is possible.

So when I started my business I decided that what we want to do is the best work possible; money will follow. This post is my long-winded way of saying that we need to stop worrying about specifics like the length of blog posts or emails or post descriptions or web pages, and start worrying about what solutions we are providing, how good we are at it, and what lengths (!) we are willing to go to to remain agile and ever-adaptive. Everything else (and especially content and marketing) is only a function of what goes on in the core.

If you read till the end of this blog post, it's 1500+ words, so maybe people are not reading it. And there is no call to action so as per digital marketing gurus, nobody will take any action after reading this.