Some of the best blog posts are also the shortest. Blog posts that offer information rich copy, with all the unnecessary fluff stripped out, get to the point quicker and save the reader valuable time. This post about social media experts is one of the most read on my blog and it’s just 112 words long!
Why do many commercial bloggers write mainly longer format posts?
From what people tell me, there seems to be 2 reasons. The first reason, is that it’s believed by many that unless a post is more than 300 words long, it will not rank well on search engines. I have seen enough evidence of this to believe there’s truth in it. However, if you are in the UK right now and you ask Google: “What is a social media expert?”, you will see that 112 word post I mentioned earlier on page 1 – Out of over 42Million results.
The second reason, which I am going to focus on in this post, is the belief that the longer a post is, the more valuable it will be, and the more people will want to read and share it. My experience over the past 24 years in Marketing, is that the quicker you can make a valid point, without all the fluff that typically weakens a message, the more impact your message has. Because of this, I think it’s worth adding some shorter blog posts to your commercial blog.
Seth Godin understands the value of brevity
One of the reasons Seth Godin’s blog is so popular, is that his posts are never any longer than they need to be. Seth’s blog posts are focused, information rich, but never too long. That’s because Seth understands the power of brevity. This means some of his posts are just 1 or 2 paragraphs in length. With Seth’s blog, you get all the juice, without having to wade through acres of bloated content.
Interestingly, I noticed a post on Seth’s blog recently, which is apparently his longest post of the year. If you look at the number of times people have ReTweeted that post, you will see that it was actually less popular (from a sharing perspective) than many of his very short posts. BTW: It still achieved over 900 ReTweets, which is amazing!
I’m not suggesting you ONLY write short blog posts
There are good reasons for writing longer format posts, (including SEO.) I wrote earlier this week about how to write more great blog posts, and it’s almost a thousand words long.
Here’s what I’m suggesting: The next time you have an interesting point you want to make, but you think it may be too short for a blog post, try publishing it anyway! You may be pleasantly surprised with the feedback you get. Don’t waste all your short, insightful ideas and opinions on Facebook or Twitter – Write them on your blog and then share them across your social networks.
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