It’s no longer enough to have a great product or service. Investors need to know the people behind the business, how they lead and if they’re worth investing in.

That’s why high-quality content plays a critical role in building market and leadership authority that attracts investors, and turns savvy companies into influential companies.

And when it comes to content, it seems long-form is having a resurgence.

This news may be a surprise to you after years of being told that human’s attention spans are now shorter than a goldfish – eight seconds in case you didn’t know – and creating bitesize content that’s easy to digest and share will earn audience attention.

But the stats paint a very different picture…

It looks like there’s been a natural shift in how audiences are consuming digital information after a study by Medium revealed readers pay the most attention to posts that take seven minutes to read. This correlates with data from Moz that posts between 1800 and 3000 words manage to get the most links. Longer content tends to rank higher in Google search results, with the average Google first page results containing 1890 words (Backlinko).

Why is Google rewarding long-form content so much I hear you ask? Google has long been looking for high-quality content to connect its visitors to, and while it’s not completely clear why lengthier content gets pushed to the top, there is a relationship between elongated content and generating significantly more social shares. Long-form content is also best for SEO and there could be an inherent preference in Google for articles with higher wordcounts.

The revival of longer content in an age of short-form content – think in-depth blog posts, whitepapers, guides, ebooks etc – can help you win more fans and help you attract investors as you establish a thought leadership position and develop your story over time. Audiences often look to blogs for a level of depth that can’t be found on Twitter or Facebook.

Entrepreneurs who regularly contribute to the company blog give investors a look behind the scenes and the brand. Investors are looking for entrepreneurs who use the power of their blogs wisely. But what tactics should you be adopting to harness your authority?

⒈ Talk about business building tactics

Showcase your unique approach to building your company, and express your distinctive take on success – investors need to see how you lead in business.

2. Validate your niche experience

Investors need to know why you’re the right person to invest in your industry. Share your stories, your own ideas, distinct knowledge and challenges you’ve experienced.

3. Choose topics you can go to town on

Get the ball rolling by writing about what you know; subjects where you can provide lots of detail and insight. If you choose a niche subject or a topic you’re passionate about, you should hit 1000 words easily. However, don’t force yourself to reach 2000 words if it isn’t coming naturally.

4. Make yourself discoverable and distribute

If you’re investing a lot of time and effort in pulling lengthier together, you’ll want as many eyeballs on it as possible. Maximise your reach by utilising channels like Medium, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and share your content with your peers and investors so they extend your reach to their networks.

5. Share your best news with the world

Whether you’ve run a successful charity initiative, won a big client, made a new hire or received local or national press coverage; make sure you share these stories with the world. Not only will these types of stories amplify you as a big player in the market, they’ll magnify your expertise and the relationships you’ve built with partners, customers and the media.

Long-form content serves as a powerful and influential tool but you don’t always need to create lengthy pieces for the sake of creating them. Making great content (even if it’s just short of 1000-word mark) that’s going to drive traffic to your website should still be your priority – build a strong catalogue of published work which can act as a resource for potential investors who can do their own research about who you are and what you stand for. Robust thought leadership content can prove that the leadership is solid and the company has strong earning potential.

However, in this case we’ve not practiced what we’ve preached – only having written 764 words – so we’d appreciate it if you could leave us some comments below to push us over the 1000-word mark ☺

Post produced in partnership with Paul Cash, CEO at Rooster Punk.