Like many industries, content-marketing has its own language – content can be evergreen, it can go viral, remain static, be long-form, micro, curated, algorithmic, and always-on etc. At the risk of expanding the mental infographic this list has probably just created, let’s introduce the content curve, and its attendants, fat-tail and long-tail content.

The idea behind the content curve is simple: short forms of content (tweets, blogs etc) are created more frequently than longer types of content (white papers, ebooks etc).

The above may look like it has escaped from a macroeconomics textbook, but it’s a powerful diagram to keep in mind. Although it is prescriptive rather than descriptive, the differences between the long and fat tails suggest quite different methods of work.

Long-tail content, for example, is formed of the conversation you have with your clients, whether in blog, tweet, Instagram or Facebook form. It demands near constant attention, high reaction times and the ability to listen and engage with your audience. Not so with the fat tail – reports, ebooks and white papers demand time, planning, diligence, maybe some outsourcing and most probably some kind of impact measurement.

The two different types of content also suggest different types of content professional. The researcher you have chosen to write a white paper might not be the strongest candidate to blog – or even tweet – for you. Similarly, different content providers people will be engaged with different types of software in their day-to-day jobs, which is reflected in the different tools demanded by each type of content. Kapost has compiled a list of the tools both long- and fat-tail content vendors would find useful.