NEW YORK HAS NEVER BEEN CLOSER

Twitter came out in 2006 and opened the door to a world of brief content by limiting posts to just 140 characters. Vine joined the game in 2012 with videos limited to just six seconds long. Facebook posts with 85 characters or less show up in larger font. Instagram videos are limited to fifteen seconds, while Facebook Stories are limited to twenty.

Are you looking for in-depth content? Ted Talks were originally designed to be 18 minutes long, but in recent years, the people over at Ted realized that 18 minutes can feel like an eternity, so they shortened the duration of some of the Ted Talk to just five minutes.

Even learning has changed, and terms such as ‘micro-learning’ - bite-sized education over an extended period - have become more acceptable.

Generation Y came up with the culture of ‘TL;DR’ – ‘Too long, didn’t read’ – and made it clear that unless we offer brief and precise content, they simply won’t be there at the other end.

Let’s have a look at the world of digital books. Once Audible successfully popularized audiobooks at the expense of printed ones, services such as Blinkist and Instaread have popped up offering audiobook summaries, where the main idea of a book is conveyed in under fifteen minutes, to varying degrees of success.

The content we at Summurai have chosen is aimed to be just three minutes long. We chose three minutes because this duration offers a fine balance between getting in-depth with the material while focusing on conveying a message, without any superficial fluff getting in the way. Is your message too long? It might be a good idea to split it into two Summies. Like we said, think sushi.

But creating brief content that maintains quality is far from easy. Mark Twain once wrote, “I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.”

Creating brief and focused content is much harder than writing long, arduous texts. But this is precisely what we at Summurai specialize in, and we’ll be happy to create this content for you and allow your brand to be identified with easily digested content that offers great added value.

We’ve already mentioned that audio has a competitive advantage in being easy to consume as a secondary activity. But we haven’t discussed another, much more interesting advantage that audio has. Audio content allows you to break the ice and create a warmer, more emotional, and more personal interaction with your customers. When you start out creating your audio content, you’ll soon be asking yourself what kind of voice you want to represent your organization’s message and brand. When we’re no longer using the cold, impersonal tone of printed text, we must choose the right presenter to best convey your brand.

Who would you like your customers to meet, and what tone of voice should he or she have?

Making content accessible using a friendly human voice is not a gimmick. It simply can’t be done any other way. When you or your customers consume audio content as a secondary activity – say, while driving – most of your cognitive resources must stay focused on the primary activity, and not on deciphering some strange voice. So, if we hear the voice of a robot or very official-sounding narrator, our cognitive system chooses the easy way out and simply filters them away. In order to pass through this listening barrier, the content must be delivered in a down-to-earth manner, in a tone similar to that of a friendly radio host, or the person sitting next to us in our car. Only this type of content will register with us.

When you start your journey creating audio content, it’s important to remember not just to read the text, but also to understand how the text can break the ice and come across as a friendly conversation. Try asking yourself who your customers would rather be talking to, and what kind of hat your representative needs to be wearing while recording their narration. This will help you identify the most suitable voice for your brand.

Let’s summarize.
If you’ve come this far, you have gotten to know Summurai personally. You know who we are and what we can do, and you have experienced our Summies for yourself. Now you are ready to offer this new communication channel to your customers. We’ll be thrilled to help create this new content format for you and make it accessible using the tools of Summurai.