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How Long Should Your Blog Post Be?

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By Ali Luke

When I started blogging in 2008, there was a (roughly) agreed-on standard for blog posts: you should post around 500 words every weekday.

Now that I look back on that, it seems pretty silly. Some topics can be adequately covered in 300 words, while others might need 5,000. And some bloggers have a naturally terse writing style, whereas others like to dig deep and give lots of examples.

Around the end of 2013, long-form content became much more popular in the blogging world. (Here’s Darren’s post about ProBlogger’s own experiments with writing longer posts.) Then, as now, it seemed clear that Google had a preference for in-depth content.

But during the past few years, short pieces of content have become increasingly popular as well. Twitter, for instance, is often described as a “microblogging” platform. While plenty of people use it for general conversations or promotional tweets, others do use it in a blog-style way. Take a look at James Breakwell (@XplodingUnicorn)’s brilliant tweets about family life, for instance.

Lots of blogs also carry relatively short posts. Gizmodo is a good example, with very frequent news / time-sensitive posts. For instance, eBay is Knocking 15% Off Everything Just for Today was 168 words.

So should you write short posts, long posts, or something in between?

The answer is, as you might have guessed, it depends. You need to find a post length that suits your content, your readers, and (perhaps most importantly) you as a blogger.

But before we dig into those considerations, let’s take a quick look at length vs frequency.

Blog Post Length vs Frequency

While it’s not a rule, blogs that publish short posts usually publish them more frequently than blogs that publish long posts.

You can see why this makes sense for both the blogger and the reader. You might publish a 400-word post every weekday, or a 2000-word post once a week.

If you want to increase the length of your blog posts, you might also want to decrease how often you publish them. Otherwise you’ll burn out, and your readers will get overwhelmed.

(Sidenote: I’ve never unsubscribed from a blog because they posted less frequently than I wanted. However, I have unsubscribed from blogs that posted too frequently, especially if the quality of posts wasn’t consistent.)

So, with the caveat that changing the length of your content will likely mean changing the frequency too, here are some key considerations when thinking about how long your blog posts should be.

What Suits Your Content?

Some topics pretty much demand in-depth posts. If you’re writing about something that involves lots of different steps, such as “How to start a blog”, it’s probably not going to be short.

But other topics work best with short content. This is particularly the case for blogs that aim to entertain rather than inform. Readers may delight in reading lots of short anecdotes about your kids, but be put off by a rambling story.

Of course, you probably have a bit of flexibility on how exactly you approach your topic. So if you feel you want to write short posts rather than in-depth ones, come up with post ideas that would work for that. Instead of “How to start a blog”, you might write “How to register a domain name” or even “What is a domain name?”

What Suits Your Readers?

The next key consideration is whether your readers would prefer shorter or longer posts. If you already have a reasonable number of readers, you could survey them to find out. You could also take a look at your most popular posts in Google Analytics, or the posts that get the most comments or shares. Does short or long content seem to resonate better with your audience?

You might potentially find that your readers like a mix of posts. Maybe they want fairly short and to-the-point posts most of the time, with a much longer piece of content occasionally thrown in.

What Suits You?

Last, but certainly not least, comes… you. Are you the sort of writer who naturally produces concise, impactful posts like Seth Godin does? Or do you love to dig into a topic and write a post that covers every angle?

If you’ve been trying to write long posts but struggling to stay motivated and productive, it could be a sign you’re better suited to sharing short, succinct pieces of content instead. On the other hand, if you’ve been writing three or more short pieces every week and it feels like you’re on a content treadmill, writing one long piece every week or even every couple of weeks might work better for you.

The great thing about blogging is there are no “rules” on how a blog post should look. You’re free to write 10,000-word epic guides (such as Neil Patel’s Online Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide), or posts with only a few words and mostly pictures or embedded tweets (such as Buzzfeed’s 19 Hilarious Back-To-School Tweets From Parents Who Have Been There), or anything in between.

Quick note: If you’re concerned about the SEO benefits of short vs long content, it’s worth knowing that many experts believe longer content does better on Google. However, if you and your existing readers prefer short posts, don’t force yourself to create long content. It will  only rank well if it’s really good (and gets backlinks).

So what sort of content will you create: short or long? It’s completely up to you. Have a look around and see what others are doing, experiment with different lengths yourself, or come and discuss short vs long in the ProBlogger Community.

Image Credit: Markus Spiske

 

By Ali Luke

Sourced from PROBLOGGER

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The perfect blog post length—and how long it should take to write

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By Frank Strong.

If you’re looking for short, easy answers to some common blogging questions, here you go:

  • How long should a blog post be?

Answer: 1,000 words

  • How long should you take to write a blog post?

Answer: 3 hours and 16 minutes

  • How often should you publish blog posts?

Answer: Weekly

Short answers aren’t always the same as thorough answers, of course. Read on to understand why:

Two comprehensive studies about blogging

Bloggers are publishing longer posts these days-and spending more time writing them. Bloggers are also publishing less frequently and focusing more on distribution.

In other words, bloggers are devoting more time to promoting fewer, but more in-depth, content pieces. This is the top conclusion from Orbit Media Studios‘ 3rd Annual Survey of Bloggers. The survey’s data are consistent with another recent and fairly comprehensive survey by ConvertKit. Additionally, the data in both studies mirror my experience in B2B content marketing.

How long should a blog post be?

According to the Orbit study, the average length of a blog post is about 1,050 words. This is up 19 percent from the same study the previous year. Additionally, the study found that the percentage of blog posts with 2,000+ words has doubled.

Similarly, ConvertKit found that the most popular blog post length is between 500 and 1,000 words. However, when ConvertKit segmented its data between professional and amateur bloggers, it found that professional bloggers are about 70 percent “more likely to write posts of 1,000 words or more.”

Study after study has demonstrated the trend toward long-form content—and length is broadly characteristic of high-quality content. However, just because a post is long doesn’t mean it’s of better quality. Quality content often begins with research and analysis and careful vetting of sources and data.

When clients ask me how long a blog post should be, my answer is: As long as required to effectively communicate an idea.

[RELATED: Ragan creates custom content, from white papers to emails to intranets and more. Find out what our team can do for you.]

My posts (whether or not they are for a client) are usually around 1,000 words. I don’t set out to write 1,000 words, though; I aim to explore an interesting topic and write good content.

How long does it take to write a blog post?

The Orbit survey found that people take about three hours and sixteen minutes to write a blog post. That’s a 26 percent increase over the same survey last year. However, the study also found that “twice as many bloggers are now spending 6+ hours on their average post.”

There appears to be a correlation between the time invested in a blog post and its results. About one third of bloggers who spent six or more hours on a post reported “strong results,” whereas only a quarter of bloggers who spent less than six hours reported “strong results.”

The ConvertKit survey didn’t provide statistics for how much time bloggers take to write a post. My experience tells me it takes somewhere between four to eight hours to write a high-quality post. This includes preparing for and conducting interviews, researching a topic and closely vetting research sources.

However, many factors are involved, such as the topic’s complexity and the writer’s experience. There are also intangibles, such as the seemingly unexplained behavior of a digital community.

For example, I’ve seen posts that took only an hour to write go unexpectedly viral. I’ve also seen carefully constructed copy that the author has painstakingly rewritten over and over receive, at best, a muted response. I’ve also seen old posts spontaneously come back and sail around the web on a second wind.

There are best practices and techniques bloggers can implement to encourage shares, but sometimes you’ll write a post that simply strikes the right nerve.

How often should I publish blog posts?

The Orbit survey found that daily blog post publication is down 50 percent from last year. Interestingly, “weekly is now the most common answer to the question of frequency.” However, the survey also found that 38 percent of bloggers publish posts monthly.

The ConvertKit study also found that the “vast majority of people intend to publish weekly,” but that professional bloggers are far more likely to publish daily or even several times a day.

Blogging is central to content marketing, and consistency matters more than frequency. It’s important to have a cadence to publishing, or else deadlines will slide and the effort will never really get off the ground.

That said, two of most successful corporate blogs I’ve contributed to publish daily or twice a day. One had the staff for it, and the other didn’t. We simply made publishing a priority and put some processes in place to make it work.

Consistency fosters discipline to publish on deadline and, more importantly, cultivates audience expectations. Whether you publish once a month, once a week or once a day, make sure that your schedule is sustainable. It’s much more acceptable to ramp up production than slow it down.

Once you develop a content marketing process—brainstorming, writing, reviewing, approval, publication, promotion, analytics and content repurposing—then you can gradually increase frequency.

Blogging best practices

What works best will vary from organization to organization, because audiences are different. This is why the most successful content marketing initiatives focus on audience needs rather than a brand’s agenda.

Corporate blogging is a marathon, and you will make mistakes along the way. Learn from them, and keep moving forward.

A version of this article originally appeared on Sword and the Script.

(Image via)

By Frank Strong.

Sourced from PRDaily

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