It’s Not All About Video – Content That People Want to Consume

Last week I saw a survey on LinkedIn asking what type of content people prefer to consume on social media and the results surprised me. Considering we are often hearing that social media platforms will push video content, it’s not actually the type of content that a lot of people want to consume.

Now, I’m not saying don’t use video – because social media platforms push it, it is great for getting you noticed but when it comes to nurturing those relationships further, it may not be the type of content to rely on.

What The Content Survey Said

This is a screen shot of the survey that Tanya Sturges – The Self Sabotage Coach, put on LinkedIn. She decided to see what her followers thought after seeing the survey elsewhere.

People like written content! Which I personally am very happy about. Firstly, because that is how I prefer to consume content, as you can see by the tick showing how I voted but secondly, because I like writing. I do also like doing live videos but you don’t have to brush your hair when you sit at a keyboard and type but you do have to adhere to a certain level of social acceptability when it comes to appearance if you’re on video!

So, for anyone who feels pressured to record videos or create a sequence of images to create a nice carousel, perhaps you don’t need to. Perhaps a well written post linking off to an interesting and useful blog post is the perfect way to be putting yourself out there on social media.

Use a Mixture on Content Types

If you do like creating video or image content and you tend not to write much with it then perhaps a written post alongside it will capture more people. I often read the post alongside a video on Instagram but I don’t actually turn on the sound of the video to hear what’s going on. This is often because my social media time is when the children are watching TV or when they’re trying to get to sleep and I can’t be making any noise.

So, it’s worth knowing your ideal client well and considering what might be impacting on the way they consume content and if your ideal client is the parent of young children then they may be like me.

Apply the Same Thinking to Your Website Content

If you have a vlog on your website, it’s worth writing a post alongside it too. Not only will this appeal to more people but it’s also great for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) if your content is written so it can searched by Google and others.

This also shows that blogging is not dead. I know we’ve said this more than once but we still see people asking in Facebook groups whether it’s worth having a blog and my feeling is that it definitely is. If people like reading content on social media they are probably the type of people that will read a blog post, especially if you put the start of your post in your social media post and then link to it for them to read the rest. You will have drawn them in and captured their attention.

You Could Do Your Own Content Survey

If you aren’t sure about the results of this survey and feel this isn’t reflective of your audience, perhaps create your own survey or poll and see what comes back. I’d love to see your results if you do this, so share them in the comments.

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Photo by Malte Helmhold on Unsplash