Jaws? Techno? SEO? An anecdote from an Incredo executive

I don’t often like to give out unsolicited advice or sound like I’m some smart dude, as I’m rather humble, but I would like to make a remark on why sometimes the length of an SEO article needs to not only be seemingly lengthy for the customer, but informative for their audience as well.

Preface:

I had been negotiating (read: arguing) with a potential (and now actual) client over them wanting our content production to be 300 word count, when I was suggesting that for their audience that 1K+ would be more valuable, as their company’s offerings were rather complex and diverse.

The parable follows:

Outside of my roles at Incredo and Backtocart, I make music semi-professionally here in Yerevan. I met a guy that once asked for the link to my online music after I did a concert, as after he had asked I said “sure” and told him it’s all for free download.

A bit of context:

I’m not a DJ — I’m a producer. I don’t mix, arrange and play songs made by other people (which I should inform you, that I do respect DJing as an art. It’s just something I’ve never been interested in, and would rather produce my own songs. I want to tell a story from the heart — not spend time analyzing what songs will make booties shake well for a certain venue/event.)

The music I make is very personal, and I like to think of myself (even though I struggle with self esteem issues, but that’s another story…) as a storyteller with my music. I don’t want to make “beats,” but I want to let others into who I am, where I’m at emotionally, and help them vicariously experience what in my homeland inspired me to create such a track.

Also, I don’t like referring to my tracks as “songs” but rather as”tracks.” It’s a semantic musician nerd thing but hey, I felt I should clarify that.

So, the guy opens up my Bandcamp page on his iPhone, and asks me the following, which I need to paraphrase as this was over a year ago, so I cannot recall verbatim our exchange:

He: “Why are some of your songs so long? Like, 40 minutes, really? For a techno song?”

I: “Yeah, the last hour that you heard was only one single. That wasn’t song after song or whatever.”

He paused, and then asked “Why don’t you just make a bunch of shorter songs? Wouldn’t you have more songs for people to download and get more fans?”

“I don’t really promote my music online. I just post whenever a I make a new track. I’m not doing this for money — I have 2 full-time jobs already.”

“But dude, like why is (he pointed to one of my tracks on his phone which is over an hour long) this so long? Won’t it take a while to download and take up a bunch of space on someone’s phone?”

“Umm, have you ever seen the movie Jaws before?”

“Yeah, a while ago.”

“Did you enjoy watching the movie? Was it rad?”

“Yeah — great movie.”

“So, would you prefer, given these two options, for me to tell you that it’s a old movie about some big-ass shark that eats a lot of people, or would you rather spend the two hours watching the actual movie and walking away with that experience?”

He laughed and said “OK, man. I’ll check this stuff out.”

End of parable.

Without telling a story, getting into the nitty gritty, what are you leaving your target audience with? Do you want to tell them that (for example) SMM and graphic design of landing pages is important because you get more followers, or do you want to explain to them the value behind every effort, every step of monitoring, analysis and reporting, every step of design, and why you should be the company they choose?

I feel embarrassed comparing my music to Spielberg films, but I hope I got the point across.

Are you going to simply tell tell your leads and clients that you rule and they’ll have success, or do you want to inform them and tell them the whole story? Thus ends my own story of why SEO blog posts need to not only be lengthy, but equally as informative for your audience.

Feel free to add your own thoughts, agree, disagree, or debate — it’s healthy, believe me.