Snackable content – bite-sized web content

Snackable content is a col­lec­tive term for web content that can be consumed quickly, without much effort. This includes videos, pictures, memes, short posts, tweets, and audio files, among other forms. Most of this kind of content is found on social networks such as Instagram and Facebook.

Snackable content is the solution to internet users’ dwindling attention spans regarding online content. It belongs to the essential concepts of today’s content marketing and is perfectly suited for the de­vel­op­ment of an ad­ver­tis­ing campaign by means of sto­ry­telling. The following article will look at what snackable content is, why it is so suc­cess­ful, and finally a few examples of snackable content.

Snackable content focuses on the direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion of certain ideas and content, e.g. on an emotional or en­ter­tain­ing level. It is becoming in­creas­ing­ly difficult to attract a web user’s attention for a longer time. Snackable content is all the more effective because it can be un­der­stood im­me­di­ate­ly, and doesn’t take up any time. Fur­ther­more, well-done snackable content is less intrusive than tra­di­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing. This means web users are more likely to trust a brand, in­creas­ing the chance that the content will go viral.

Snackable content is par­tic­u­lar­ly suited to mobile browsing. There are many apps and mobile-friendly websites where content can be viewed quickly on the go. Snackable content must be able to be scrolled through and im­me­di­ate­ly un­der­stood.

Since snackable content is so easily in­te­grat­ed into social media, the scope of its possible audience is also much wider. Ideally, in­ter­est­ing videos and funny pictures would be directly shared via messaging services such as WhatsApp and Snapchat. The often small file size of snackable content makes this par­tic­u­lar­ly easy.

You can also share the snackable content your customers create – such as positive product reviews on social media, for example. This fa­mil­iar­izes potential customers with your product, and improves your company’s image as a trust­wor­thy business. After all, ad­ver­tis­ing by a satisfied customer usually looks more authentic than your own.

Snackable content comes in various forms. What they all have in common is their ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, their direct way of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and small size. However, each form also has certain ad­van­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. The snackable content form often depends on the re­spec­tive platform. Some websites spe­cial­ize in funny images, others in in­for­ma­tive images, while others focus on concise texts – here are a few examples of snackable content.

Snackable content creators often combine the forms, as shown here, with text and image being combined:

Posts and tweets have es­tab­lished them­selves as the dominant form of “snackable” text. These are usually very short texts, and can be read in seconds. Users often interact with texts just as quickly by liking, sharing and com­ment­ing on them. The popular short messages have a great influence today, partly because most celebri­ties use the medium as a com­mu­ni­ca­tion channel. It is not without reason that a tweet by Donald Trump sig­nif­i­cant­ly height­ened the tensions of the diplo­mat­ic crisis between the U.S. and North Korea in 2018.

In another way, in­flu­encers can stand out on social networks by sharing popular content – in most cases this means snackable content. Posts and tweets are so el­e­men­tary in the digital age, precisely because they are quick to consume and easy to un­der­stand. Al­go­rithms and pop­u­lar­i­ty are factors which filter which “snacks” users see.

Videos are great as snackable content because they are so easily ac­ces­si­ble. Usually a “preview image” appears on the platform – you can start the video by pressing the “play” button. The content is mostly short films (up to 1 minute), and often also contains subtitles so that they can also be un­der­stood without sound. In snackable content form, videos can be easily in­te­grat­ed into posts and tweets, and can be played while you scroll through feeds without having to leave the re­spec­tive app or website.

These videos are mostly shared via Instagram, Snapchat, and other messaging services, and appear regularly in social media feeds. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­te­grat­ing YouTube videos increases ease of creation for content creators. Because of these ad­van­tages video marketing has become an important component for good ad­ver­tis­ing campaigns.

One of the best-known forms of snackable video forms are “Vines.” These video clips, fixed at 6 seconds and usually recorded on phones, were hugely popular until the Vine portal was closed in January 2017. On YouTube, however, Vine culture continues, with many of these short clips or com­pi­la­tions still being viewed millions of times over.

Ad­ver­tis­ing videos on YouTube are sometimes minutes long, but many users skip them after a few seconds. An easy solution for ad­ver­tis­ers is that videos should not be longer than a few seconds. Snackable content in video form has also es­tab­lished itself in online marketing and aims to quickly capture the attention of web users.

One of the best-known forms for snackable content images in internet culture is the meme. The original idea behind memes was that they could be repli­cat­ed endlessly and con­stant­ly put into a new context. For example, a picture of a sad-looking bear cub went viral as a "con­fes­sion bear." Here, meme creators give each picture a caption text that matches the facial ex­pres­sion of the animal which usually contains a kind of con­fes­sion. Memes are shared on many social networks such as Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but don’t last long, seeing as new ones are con­stant­ly being created.

• Livestreams: The success of Twitch could be explained by its easy ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty. Many social networks allow livestreams to be in­te­grat­ed and make them snackable. However, their trans­mis­sion time is usually quite long, and takes up a fair amount of data, meaning that they are less suitable for mobile streaming, and so not the optimal form of snackable content.
• Article: Many articles on the internet are de­lib­er­ate­ly short so that they can be read as quickly as possible. Portals such as Buzzfeed have spe­cial­ized in this type of text. Simply struc­tured article types such as “top 10” lists are es­pe­cial­ly popular as snackable content.
• Podcasts: These audio files function like radio-on-demand and are usually spe­cial­ized in one topic. They are easy to absorb (es­pe­cial­ly on the go), which makes them quite “snackable,” but podcast episodes are often more than ten minutes long and sometimes take up con­sid­er­ably more time to listen to.