One of the big mantra’s of Web 1.0 (circa 1996-2006) was “Content is King” and that hasn’t changed much. Content used to pretty much mean “text.” Today it means good design, video and audio. We argue that if “Content is King” then “Time is Queen.” We’re all busy these days. Knowledge workers spend a lot of time in front of a computer screen, accessing their Blackberry or watching TV. Too much content (text form) on a Web page will result in the participant either printing the page or copying it to a word processing document for immediate or later printing. That’s OK if they do get around to reading it later. When it comes to video our research and experience has shown that videos 90 seconds or less in length are watched 90% more often. So what does this mean for content creation in reaching your target audience?

It means that content remains critical, for it has to be right to get the viewers attention. But how much content factors in to whether or not it is actually read. Study of our analytics on our own site shows our participants tend to copy and paste or print our content. That’s good with us. It’s our intent, and can be a part of your overall strategy. For the most part, it’s not just creating relevant content, but understanding the time limitations of your audience.

An effective strategy for handling this is to ensure you provide text content in an easily printed or downloaded form. White Papers are an excellent way to accomplish this. When it comes to video, keep it under 90 seconds or provide the video content in installments that can be viewed later, but make sure it can be tagged for those using social bookmarking and provide them with the ability to embed the video URL into their own blog or website. Why try to keep a marketing or training video to yourself? The more it’s out there driven by others, the better for your marketing message.

Time is Queen. Time always moves forward and we are ever more painfully aware of that fact. Respecting a participants time and giving them the option to manage it the way they like to will gain you better traction with your audience. The level and amount of content should also reflect the audience. An investor is likely to want to download your latest quarterly results to print them and read them later and conduct additional analysis…how about giving them a White Paper as well to print, to help them better understand your products value proposition?