As a blogger, I feel so frustrated when it comes to choose the length of my article — Should I write a long post or a short post today? Each type has its own advantages and disadvantages. For instance, short post is easy to write while long post tends to attract more backlinks and buzzes. In addition, each type has its own requirements that I need to consider very carefully before starting to write one.
Dig deeper into the subject of content length, I also find that this’s a debate ever since people start blogging. Ultimately, you can choose to not care about this issue because you may think it doesn’t matter much as long as you can create good content that generates large number of comments. However, I think content length is the matter subject in content strategy which worth to talk about. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages as well as the requirements of each, you can utilize your knowledge on this subject to create good content that drives more readers to your blog.
Short post
Generally, short post contains 200 to 600 words long. Seriously, you may think who could write such a short post with only 200 words, but hold it right there, look at Seth Godin’s blog where most of his content are extremely short and you will be amazed to see he’s still able to generate quite large number of audiences over there.
Short post has many advantages that you may discover when you write, include:
- Grab reader attention: Online readers have short attention span. A survey which was conducted by Darren Rowse revealed that online readers only have 96 seconds to stay focus on your article and then, depends on how good your article is, they will either stay or leave the site to search for another information that they want. With short post, you can make them to read whole article. You can also keep their eyes interested in reading extra sections such as comments or click on the ads as well.
- Easy to write/research/flexible posting schedule: Short post is easy to write. It doesn’t consume much time to research and edit as well. Short post can be completed in under 2 hours. With short post, you can also adjust your posting schedule flexibly as well. You can try to publish a post every day and keep your readers busy reading and comment on your post. The result is you always have fresh content on your homepage and keep readers bouncing back and forth exploring your blog.
- Write less/Keep readers want more: I think when you write short post on some small topics or dividing a large topic into numerous small chunks of articles, you are making the reader hook into that content and revisit your blog often to see more parts of it. For instance, Stayonsearch has a series of blog posts to guide you how to be successful promoting your blog on social media sites such as Digg, Stumble Upon and Mixx. When I saw that series myself, I kept revisiting this blog to get more information on the topic. So, short post is really good way to attract new readers to revisit your blog more often and increase the number of RSS subscribers.
However, you can’t solely write only short post on your blog because my research shows that short post:
- Doesn’t attract much comment: Short post tends to attract less comments/backlinks from readers because you don’t talk in-depth information that can make readers to discuss about. However, there’re some exceptions for this point. Unless you’re a well-known person and have exceptional writing skill like Seth Godin, don’t dream that one day you will have 200+ retweets on your 200-word long articles
- Hard to express yourself: Short post makes it extremely difficult for you to express about your experience on some areas. If you feel so passionate about some topics, it’s really hard to keep the posts length under 1000 words.
Long post
Long post contains more than 1000+ words. Some of the blogs I know have 2000+ words posts and I could say that they are pretty long. So, you may be curious about why some bloggers prefer to write long post instead of cutting it into small pieces and create a series, right?. Here’re some of the advantages of long post that you want to consider about:
- Pillar content that will attract traffic overtime: Pillar content is a very strong method in blog content strategy. Pillar content is content that stays true overtime. In 3, 4 or even 10 years, the pillar content still remains true and people see it as a foundation guideline on some topics. For instance, some of the famous pillar content on the Internet right now are the WordPress SEO guide of Yoast (this article has PageRank 5 with 4000 links to it), the Bible in WordPress speed optimization of Prelovac (This full guide has PageRank 5 and 2000 links to it). These blog posts are all pillar content that attract huge traffic over time. People will never lose interest in them and they attract backlinks the best in all types of content.
- Cover topics deeply: Because you are writing a piece of content that has more than 1000+, you will need to brainstorm hardly and apply all of the information you know into writing it. Long post is very favorable when you have to cover wide topics such as search engine optimization or building backlinks for blog or website.
However, long posts pose some very dangerous points that you have to consider before deciding to write one, include:
- Spend more time to write it: You’ll have to spend a lot of time around long post in order to fill it with as much in-depth information as possible. This includes researching for the topics, finding resources to back up for claims, finding examples on the Internet, planning for your posts and many more other activities.
- Pose the possibility of losing readers: As I said above, online readers only have 96 seconds of attention span so if you don’t keep them interested in the first third of a long article, you may see they stop reading and switch to another page right away. I also find that long post makes readers less eager to read it. Hence, if you are a new and inexperienced blogger, long post may not be the right content strategy for you.
My opinion on long post and short post
Personally, I like both of them. I like to balance between writing short post and long post because each has its own advantages and disadvantages. In the weekday, I like to write short post about topics that I like. In the weekend, you will find me spending a day or so finding the topic where I could write a long post on. Creating long post takes much time and effort but they are well-worth, but I don’t like writing too many long posts because they will drain out my interest in writing blog. I think writing a long post a week is ideal strategy. What do you think? Do you prefer long post or short post and what’s your plan in content strategy? Please comment below…
By Family health
thanks for this share !
By Fiona Bosticky
Excellent comparison. I personally like reading shorter posts of 200 – 600 words. In today’s busy world, with so many blogs to read, I prefer the writer to be succinct and make the blog as easy and fast to read as possible.
By Mike
That’s right Fiona. Every time I read a long post, I tend to bookmark it to read it later, but then I’m so busy to read it
so short posts surely have advantages like you said.
By Suresh Khanal
Determining long or short post will result which group of readers you wish to sitck with your blog. When making researches and making ideas for my new blog post, I better prefer longer posts as they are rich in information and depth. Short posts are good when fetching some news or spending leasure time. A combination of both as you have rightly pointed out, should be the startegy of a blog, I believe.
By Mike
That’s what I think as well, Suresh! Short posts are … short and sweet. They are easy for readers to read and readers can read them fast. However, we should add some long posts to provide more in-depth information to show our expertise. So, I think the combination of both will be perfect for any blog