This is an excellent topic to write about as I have quite a bit of personal experience with this. As many of you know, I am a total nut about blogging. I enjoy it a lot and the content always seems to flow very nicely. But the question remains, how long should my blog posts be? This is something that you should really focus on for your blog and the results actually do vary depending on the personal preferences of your readers.
My rule of thumb until you can get a better feel for your readership is to be fairly standardized with the length of your posts. By default I would recommend that each post be limited to around 500 words or less. You can to consider that many readers live very busy lives and their time they can spend in reading your blog is very limited.
I think a 500 word post is a size that is very easy to read in a quick amount of time. Also I believe that 500 words should be enough space for a blog author to complete the objective, goal or point that they are trying to make across to their readers. Another thing to consider is material. When house builders are building a house, they don’t want to waste material. Builders are not going to use extra nails when only two nails are required. Builders are not going to install extra layers of flooring when its not needed.
The same should go hand in hand in hand with blogging. Consider your words as nails. You never want to waste more nails that what is needed to complete the job. Too many nails in wood is bad. Too many nails can actually damage the wood and cause it to split and become weak. The same goes with blogging and the same goes with the attention span of your readers.
Sure you can, but I believe that if you go under the 500 word threshold that you start to degrade the quality in your content and also lessen your ability to successfully deliver your message to your readers. If you write an article that has 300 words, don’t get me wrong, that is fine, but often I always try to hit my 500 word mark. The most important thing to consider is your readers. You should study the reading habits of your readers. See which posts deliver you the highest number of desired actions. Whether that action is comments, clicks, successful leads or sales, you should always study your blog readers patterns.
Indeed you can. And in all honestly, I am the type of blogger who does around 500 to 1000 word posts. While I always aim for 500, it doesn’t always work out that way. However, in my experience I have come to learn my optimized word count sweet spot. My readers tend to favor 500 to 1000 word articles. They don’t mind 500 or less, but I believe I get the best bang out of a 500 to 1000 word article.
One thing that I would consider doing if I have material that exceeds 1000 words is to break my material down into a multi-post series. If the topic of my blog post can’t be wrapped up in 1000 words or less, then I can really get the best bang by breaking the material into a part one, part two and even a part three series. Bloggers love this and it also gives them a reason to come back for more.
Simple. Ask them. You can easily ask your readers directly by writing a post stating that you’d like to collect their opinions. Ask readers to use the comment form to submit their opinions, or ask them to email you directly. You too have the option of creating a poll. Readers on their own free time can simply vote or answer the questions you have included into this poll. I would provide multiple choice answers rather than allowing readers to submit their own random answers as it will be easier for you to make the determination based off the results. At the bottom of the poll you can have a section where readers can submit their feedback.
Just FYI, this article is near 750 words.
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Date/Time: 6-12-2008 00:19:23 Comment #15466
I always write post size btwn 500 and 600. This is ideal. If you go for more, it is will bore ppl, if less they forget so fast.
Thank you
Ak
The Bloggers’ Times
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 01:32:00 Comment #15471
See… I agree. I really enjoy reading 500 the best. For me, I really like getting around on reading a lot of blogs, especially my friends. I love commenting too, but I won’t do it unless I read the post. So, if I got to spend a lot of time reading, its makes it difficult for me to reward my friends or an author with a comment.
Not only that, I am VERY active with submitting content into their appropriate social networks. I can’t do that either if I don’t have enough time. For me, I love short, sweet and to the point… but too I personally understand how difficult that can be. When I get to blogging on a post sometimes I have to be very conscious of my word count as I can easily go over.
Take this comment for example. LOL!!! about 150 words.
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 01:14:31 Comment #15468
I don’t count my words. sometime i got about 200 sometime even less. but there was also time where i wrote about 500 - 700 words.
i love the way ma.tt writes on his blog. i hope i can do that someday
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 01:21:54 Comment #15469
Matt who? Matt Cutts?
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 01:27:10 Comment #15470
Ma.tt is run by Wordpress-founder-Matt (last name is something like Wullengburg or something?)
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 01:59:18 Comment #15472
Duh… I knew that.
So what are you two saying… Matt Cutts doesn’t do a good job writing?
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 12:45:13 Comment #15486
Cool one, this is always a good thing to consider. I try no to go too long in my posts, but as you said, sometimes it just happens. I try to keep them shorter and to the point, or, I have been known to do some series in my day.
I actually like series, and have some more lined up, I just need to get to writing on them.
I do think that when stuff is too long you lose people. Sometimes I’ll see the length of a post, and treat it like a movie. If you don’t catch me in the early stages, I’m changing the channel!
I have a word count plugin, maybe I should start using it? lol
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 12:59:03 Comment #15488
Depends on what you write, actually..
A review or an opinion should be longer than a newsy post
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 13:02:57 Comment #15489
Hi Louis,
Another consideration would be to provide a snippet of the article on your blog and then provide a full downloadable PDF that people could freely download and distribute. If you know in advanced that your article is going to be rather long, your readers might actually have a better experience in reading it if it was provided to them in a downloadable form. I have done that before a few times and people really seems to appreciate it.
Date/Time: 6-13-2008 12:05:16 Comment #15525
Hey that’s a great idea. Might try that in the future!
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 14:20:59 Comment #15495
I think it depends what your content is. Celebrity and news type blogs should only be just enough to tell the story. Too long and it’ll just become space, people that read those pieces just want something quick. However sites like yours and John’s, Matt’s, Darren’s should be a bit longer just to tell exactly how to do something. Like I said, it depends on the content, anywhere between 200-500 words I think.
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 15:17:17 Comment #15500
Celebrity blogs are usually very quick to the punch and very rich in media files such as pictures and online videos. Running a celebrity blog is probably one of the easiest blogs to run as there is an endless source of information.
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 15:15:15 Comment #15498
I was writing about 2,000+ word articles every other day about a month ago and I had to lower it down to about 800 words because I realized how hard it was for my readers to digest the posts.
-Mike
Date/Time: 6-12-2008 15:18:30 Comment #15501
Yeah 2000+ words is a little too much. Something like that is a waste of material and should be broken down into a four part post series or considered for even more expanding into an eBook of some kind.
Date/Time: 7-13-2008 10:33:06 Comment #16931
Thanks Garry, A lot a great tips. keep up the good work. Sincerely, Roy.