What is Snackable Content?

Snackable content refers to texts, videos, images or other content that is particularly easy to consume. Due to its simple design, this type of content is usually used for entertainment purposes. Snackable is based on the English term snack, i.e. a small snack for in between.

The term Snackable comes from the English word snack, which describes a small snack. Snackable content describes content that can be consumed quickly and without much effort. This includes texts, videos or images that a user can consume as a snack. As a rule, the content is neither particularly extensive nor does it require a great deal of effort to receive. Animated gifs, short animated sequences of images that make a statement comprehensible at a glance, are an example of snackable content.

Goals of Snackable Content

Snackable Content primarily serves the purpose of entertainment. On the one hand, the content pieces can often be created with little effort and can be created and distributed by non-professionals thanks to special apps like Snapchat. On the other hand, marketers in particular use the characteristics that snackable content pieces bring with them to send targeted messages and tap viral potential in the process.

Because of its specific characteristics and viral potential, snackable content can generate attention and thus increase a company’s brand awareness. However, because the content is created for quick consumption in between and is very simple in design, it is rarely suitable for conveying in-depth information and thus highlighting the expertise of the publisher.

Nevertheless, marketing departments use this type of content all the time. With the small, quickly graspable content, they react to the ever decreasing chances of getting through to the target group. This is caused by the constantly increasing mass of content. Users have to select more and more due to the flood of images, texts or videos on the web. The average amount of attention a text or image receives is constantly decreasing. Snackable Content is an attempt to counter this problem and to reach the target group more easily and directly.

Who is Snackable Content aimed at?

The target audience for small, easy-to-consume content pieces is, in principle, broad: across every age bracket and on every topic, Snackable Content is offered and read, listened to or viewed.

However, since snackable content is usually very short pieces of content, social media channels lend themselves as a distribution channel. Especially on smartphones, content is often consumed via social media apps in between. The social media-specific sharing options make it very easy for content to spread virally there – especially if it is entertaining content.

Examples of snackable content

Snackable content can be produced on all topics and in many different content formats. Some of the most commonly used formats include:

• Videos: Social networks such as Instagram or Snapchat are (now) designed to allow users to communicate using short videos and thus produce Snackable Content. The videos that can be created by such apps must not exceed a certain length and are also deleted again after a short time in order to increase exclusivity. In the meantime, entire fan communities have formed in the networks around individual publishers who create and distribute their content as amateurs. But more and more corporate marketing departments are also using Snapchat or Instagram in the professional sector and experimenting with snackable content. In particular, the storytelling functions of the apps, in which a story is put together from several posts, offer interesting opportunities to produce concise and easily consumable content and to use it for marketing.
• Infographics: Short, easy-to-consume infographics can be categorized under the Snackable content type. Here, the graphics explain a simple context in an entertaining way. The Graphitti blog offers a successful example here of how infographics can be used as Snackable content.
• Text: Tweets are probably the best known example and one of the most used types of snackable content in text form. The short messages on Twitter generally convey information as often as entertainment. Nevertheless, creative tweets can often be understood as a small piece of content in their own right – in other words, as snackable content that can be easily consumed and redistributed.
• Image: Memes or animated GIFs are two ways to use images or graphics as snackable content. Image content is an essential part of many social networks: images often reach thousands of users and are frequently liked and shared. Some memes, like Grumpy Cat, even manage to make their way into pop culture beyond social networks.

Snackable content serves as much to communicate (among laypeople) as it does as a measure to counteract potential content overload. Short content units, even if they are cheap and quickly produced, can reach a large audience because of their viral properties. Their conciseness and entertainment value are the decisive factors for this. Snackable content is well suited to generate reach. However, due to the lack of depth of information, this content type should only be a part of the content mix, alongside more detailed content.