Rhemalogy

Guest Post by Cameron Mciver 

This is a repost of an article that was written last year. The reason I am doing this is when I first started blogging I thought that in order to get more readers I had to write a larger quantity of content in my post. This is not necessarily the case. Because as you write you will find that most readers love the quality of what is written as opposed to the quantity of it!

How long should a blog post be?

Well, the simple answer to this is as long as it needs to be, but no longer.

The length of a blog post should essentially be determined by the needs of the audience from whom you expect to consume the information.

I.e a post on a technical or scientific blog may well be expected to provide more detail than a blog for example that rates celebrity fashions (which may focus more heavily on images than written content).

Having said this, no matter how technical a subject may be, a blog post is not the place to get bogged down in too much detail. There are other places for this.

The most successful blogs are human. They are real. They convey emotion – and they leave the reader curious and wanting to know more.

That is why when done well, blogs are such a great tool to generate and maintain interest in a brand.

Putting word count aside for a second, what it really comes down to is the strength of your message, which is more important than the length of your content. If you think you can write a 5,000-word post and still deliver a strong message to the reader right up until the end, then go for it.

However, I think your chances of success would be far greater with a 300-word post.

Don’t always overthink them either.

Some of my most successful blog posts have been written in a very short space of time when I was ‘in the moment‘ and simply conveying my current thoughts and feelings regarding a particular subject.

On the other hand, I’ve seen some longer and more in-depth posts of mine where I’ve carefully crafted and nurtured them over a period of time before proudly releasing them into the blogosphere, sadly get all but ignored.

But, we need to face it. Attention spans are getting shorter. Your audience is time-poor and bombarded with messages from every angle, and they don’t have time to read through lots of information.

So, it makes sense that well-targeted quality content that is short, sharp, and easy to digest is going to continue to win out at the end of the day… whether you like it or not.

Cameron writes for Optune a Strategic Marketing and Communications consultancy business based in Melbourne, Australia. Stop by his site there is a lot of interesting information you may find useful as a blogger or writer depending on your fields of expertise.

Thank you Cameron for such an informative piece.