For years, what’s been one of the key social media “best practices” that’s been beaten into our heads? SNACKABLE CONTENT!

It’s all about snackable content, right?

Your videos need to be 10 seconds or fewer.

Your blog posts should be 500-700 words. No more.

Your social posts should be short so people can “snack” on them. OK, that sounds stupid, but I’m trying to make a point here!

Snackable content has been the trend for as long as I can remember. However, new data, and anecdotal “evidence”, is coming to light that may prove otherwise.

And, brands would be wise to take notice.

SEMrush found that content with more than 7,000 words received an average of 302 unique page views, which was six times more than those with 300-600 words (59 unique page views).

What’s more, posts with a word count of 300-600 received the fewest number of shares on average (20), while articles with more than 7,000 words received the most (30).

So, is long-form content back en vogue?

Recent anecdotal evidence suggests “yes”, too. Especially with long-form video.

You probably saw the recent drone video featuring Bryant Lake Bowl in South Minneapolis that raced around the internet (pun intended). What you may not have noticed is the length of said video: 1 minute and 27 seconds.

Sure doesn’t seem like “snackable” video content to me. And, if you look at social media (and the comments in the YouTube video), you’ll see proof many people watched the whole video–not just the first 10 seconds.

What about Mountain Dew’s recent Bob Ross video? They used deepfake video tech to recreate the late Bob Ross and developed a 41-minute recreation of his “Joy of Painting” show. Again, anecdotally, judging by the social cues (likes, comments), you can tell people watched more than just 10-20 seconds of this video.

So again, does this mean long-form content is back?

It depends.

For text content (blog posts), I would argue good, well-researched long-form content never went out of style in the first place.

On the video side, you’re seeing the same thing play out recently. If the content is wildly entertaining (see BLB drone video) or very useful (Johnson & Johnson’s Race to the Vaccine video series comes to mind), I think longer content is not only acceptable, it may be preferred for many customers and fans–especially considering how much time we’re all spending online these days.

Bottom line: I think the key takeaway here is really this–don’t over-rely on “snackable” content just because it’s been the trend the last 5-8 years. There is a spot for long-form content, and increasingly it is becoming an important one.