Google generally seems to like online content (e.g., blog posts, articles) in the neighborhood of 400-600 words. I’ve heard as low as 200 words. That doesn’t mean you should stop writing if you happen to be a marathoner rather than a sprinter. However, you might want to split long posts into shorter, linked posts. Or not.
Content Is King but Relevance Is Emperor
No matter how long or short your online content (in terms of blogging) make it relevant to the reader. Readers will put up with a lot—rambling, poor grammar, bad spelling, and the misuse of the possessive “your”—for relevant content that actually teaches them something useful. Short posts don’t seem to cause too many problems either when they are relevant, because short-post blogs that have a targeted audience and purpose can become authority sites, despite their diminutive stature. Here are some blogs to which I subscribe, because they are relevant. Take a look and see if you can learn and apply any of their examples to your own content.
eHub and PicoCool: Short but Sweet
Emily Chang’s site eHub and Chang and Max Kiesler’s site PicoCool are two examples of brief content that is not only interesting, quirky, illuminating, and often entertaining, if not downright useful. On eHub, you can find brief summaries of new web and mobile applications, along with a link to the source site for each application. Summaries tend to be 2 or 3 sentences, at most. PicoCool showcases unique examples of design—web, industrial, human-factors, fashion, you name it. Typically, each post consists of a graphic illustration or photo, and a sidebar of information that ranges anywhere from 30 words or so to 200 words. Both sites are elegant, well-designed, minimalist, and prove the case for not changing your site design every other week.
Mid-Length Is Always In Style
Tim Berry’s Planning Startups Stories blog is one of my favorites. As somebody who has always been interested in small business, I find Tim’s blog to be full of wisdom, humor, insight, and sometimes provocative ideas about small business. Tim writes from his long experience as an entrepreneur and business owner (there IS a difference, IMO) and made a conscious choice, right from the start, to incorporate his own personality into the blog, rather than opt for a more generic corporate tone. Tim’s approach makes reading his blog more like having a chat with a trusted friend than getting advice from a consultant. And that tone makes you want to interact through comments. His blog posts tend to run around 400 words on average.
Long Content: As Long As It Takes
Dosh Dosh is an excellent blog covering online business, internet marketing, and product marketing. Maki, a philosophy student in Toronto, writes all of the content for the site. Maki used to blog more frequently than he does today, but that’s fine because his posts are quite long and detailed. These well-written posts range from 1500 words on up. If long content is appropriate to your interests, your subject matter, your audience, and your style, then go for it.
This post is just over 500 words. For help with your blog, see our list of inbound marketing services.
