Over the past 15 years, social media experts have drummed into us the one true fact about the Web – that people have short attention spans and need to be constantly fed a diet of short-form content to keep them engaged. So everybody from global brands to local museums fight for our attention by shouting sound-bites into the ether, in the hope that passers-by will take note. But this perceived trend is being bucked. New publishers like Medium and Matter have shown that people will invest half an hour or more reading well researched, well written and beautifully typeset articles, while the Guardian and the New York Times have demonstrated that you can keep readers engaged, while at the same time starving off the aggregators, by adding a layer of interactivity to your articles. It’s possible to get readers to engage with long-form content. It just takes time, effort and a modicum of skill. Last year, Wellcome Collection embarked on their own experiment in long-form story-telling with digital agency Clearleft. In this session we’ll look at the reasons Wellcome took this approach, the challenges they faced, what they learned, and whether they’d consider doing it again?

1. Presentedby@andybudd
ofClearleft
Go Forth And Tell Stories

2. People don’t read,
they scan
- Jakob Nielsen

3. The scent of information
- Jared Spool

4. We Created A Web
Accessible to All

5. We Created a Web
Which Was Dumbed Down

6. We Forgot that People
Read for Pleasure

7. The Web was
Optimised for FOMO

8. The Web Became a
Dumping Ground for Content

9. Nobody Cares What
The Chairman Thinks

10. Our Web Copy Sucked

11. Content Strategy
To The Rescue

12. Reduce Quantity
Increase Quality

13. Along Came Social Media
to Compound the Problem

14. Social Media
Marketing Experts

15. Our Content Made
Them Rich

16. Some Tried to Grow
Their Reach

18. Some Tried to Protect
Content with Paywalls

19. Longform Backlash

20. Ma er

22. Long Form Storytelling
Wasn’t New

26. It’s About Building Capabilities
Not Buying Technology

27. Plenty of Tech Platforms
Out There

28. Google Cultural Institute

29. The Wellcome Collection

32. Digital Collections

33. The future of museums is in the
stories you hold

34. Presentedby@andybudd
ofClearleft
Go Forth And Tell Stories
Thanks