Michael Hyatt recommends shooting for posts that are 500 words in length, though he notes that Seth Godin is the master of super short, but wildly popular, blog posts. (Say, in the 200 to 400 word range.)
Yes, I know I'm a writer and that it's my job to write, but, hey, if you were a gardener and never did anything but weed and harvest, you'd. Be. Bored. And have back problems. Or if you were an Olympic swimmer and never got out of the pool, you'd...well, you'd be a raisin. How attractive.
So I thought short posts were the only way to go...
And I learned how to get across an important idea in a short amount of space. Which, as it turned out, was really useful, because I soon got an account on Twitter and then I really had to learn brevity. Plus, marketing a book effectively is all about how quickly you can convince your target audience that they really need your book. You don't have a paragraph to do that. You have ONE SENTENCE.
Incidentally, this post is nothing like the posts I learned to write. It rambles. It's got diminutive parenthetical comments everywhere. That's because I'm writing it for me. If you don't know what I'm talking about, visit my ABOUT page.
Then I came across new data that showed that longer blog posts are more frequently shared.
"Aah! What do I do? Do I write short posts or long posts? Maybe I should write longer posts and post less often. Maybe I should just switch to writing longer posts. Maybe I should do a combination of lengths..."
So my word count crept up. And guess what? NO EXTRA SHARES.
But then two things happened.
- I got several comments from various people that they really liked the idea of my #5MinuteFiction. I didn't know that anyone would be really taken with the idea of a story so short they could finish it before they finished their bowl of breakfast cereal. But people were actually reading them. Huh. From the way marketers talked, nobody wants to read a novel if it's under 60,000 words in length. But apparently people like reading microfiction. In this case: short = good.
- One of my posts from ReadyForHimToday.com "went viral" (well, about as viral as anything of mine ever gets). And I realized that it wasn't because of the length, the scannability, or even the graphics, although I'm sure all of that had a subtle influence. What was the real secret?
The content. People told me later, in person and on social media, that what I shared really touched them. So they shared with their friends. |
So, bottom line on word count...
If that's 200 words, fine. (More time for me!)
If that's 2000 words, I'm up for that.
Posts are like kids. You can't squash them into the mold you think they should fit. You have to observe their natural aptitudes, strengths, and weaknesses, then fit the situation to their needs. Only then will they shine.