There’s always some new advice from a blogging expert on how long blog posts need to be — they should be longer, shorter or even broken up into several bite-sized chunks. It can be frustrating to know which version is right.
It would be great if there was a magic number that guaranteed the best results. But that’s like asking someone to tell you how long your conversations with other people should be. Sometimes you don’t need to say more than a few words or sentences. Other times, you can enjoy a long chat. It all depends on how much you have to say to each other, doesn’t it? With that in mind, what’s the real answer when wondering ‘how long should a blog post be’?
Base the length on what you need to share
The same approach to a conversation works well with blog posts. Sometimes, you just want to share a quick tip or perhaps a recipe, for example. In that case, writing 200 to 300 words is adequate. Add an enticing image and you’re ready to publish your blog post.
On other occasions, you want to go into a little more detail. You want to cover different aspects of a topic, share some examples and give your readers as much information as you can. In those cases, make the content as long as it needs to be. Long posts are beneficial in various ways. They help to establish your authority on the topic and, if the content is great, they are often shared on social media. They also give the search engines a lot of text to sift through and increase your chances of ranking for long-tail keywords.
Include a mix of blog post lengths
The best advice is to mix longer and shorter blog posts. It will make your blog seem more natural and organic. Don’t force yourself to reach a certain word count if you don’t have that much to say on a topic. Keep it short and to the point rather than filling it with fluff for the sake of it. Your readers will thank you.
If, on the other hand, you have a lot to share in a different post, go for it. Break the longer content up into small paragraphs and help your readers stay on track with subheadings and bullet points. Make it easy to scan longer posts so that your readers can get an idea of what the content is about before they commit to reading it all.
If you find yourself writing a few thousand words, consider breaking it up into a series of blog posts instead. It will help both you and your readers from getting overwhelmed with one long post. Link from one part of the series to the next to make it easy for your blog readers to follow along.
Don’t overthink the word count for a blog post
Above all, enjoy the process of writing and pay attention to what your readers prefer. If your short posts tend to do better, consider keeping your posts short and to the point. If you’re getting a lot more engagement and social media shares for your longer posts, combine a few of the shorter blog post ideas into a longer one. Whatever you do, don’t get hung up on the number of words.
Do you tend to write short or long blog posts or a mixture of both? Let me know in the comments!
Image credits
Main image: Nick Morrison on Unsplash. Second image: Karolina Kaboompics on Pexels. Third image: ThisIsEngineering on Pexels.
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