01 Jul Blog Posting. How Long Should a Blog Post Be?
One of the most frequent questions I am asked is: how long should my blog posts be, how many words, how many characters?
There is no definitive answer for this. It all depends on what your blog is about, who your target market is, and what your own goals and objectives are. In my case, here at paulbarrs.com, I teach, I train, I help people learn things to improve their business that they don’t already know. However, if I was to create a blog which I wanted to have more viral activity I would have many more pictures. I would share funny stories. I would share anecdotes. I would share stuff that people find light hearted, yet interesting. Now, I could incorporate that into my business blog, but it’s just not my style.
How long are my blog posts? They are as long as they need to be for me to say what I need to say. Though recently I came across another blog where each post was no more than 3 or 4 paragraphs, and alongside that was the pretty picture. The last one I looked at was 2 rabbits on a starting line getting ready to begin the race. The number of shares, the number of likes on Facebook, and re-tweets of this particular blog were huge. There wasn’t much content, but it had a viral component, cute, fluffy bunnies. That wouldn’t suit my blog, but it may suit yours.
But How long…?
It all comes down to what are your goals and your objectives.
How do you determine your goals and objectives? It comes to the end product. What is it that you sell, a service or a product? If you can lead your customer to your product or service by having them share viral, funny, pretty pictures, fantastic. But, if you must prove your worth and your value to them as a, in my case, business coach viral, funny, fluffy cats won’t do it. From an SEO point of view, you probably need five- or six-hundred words. That’s, of course, if you are writing your posts specifically for search engines. My best suggestion: don’t write for computers, write for consumers. Write for the people who will eventually buy your product or service.
How long should your blog posts be? They should be as long as they need to be to say what you need to say. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional viral post, short content, pretty, fluffy pictures or videos. Nothing wrong with that at all.
But, the question you have to ask yourself is, will it serve your customer and lead them towards buying your product. Will it help them make a better decision to say yes? That’s the question. So, with that in mind it’s worthwhile considering maybe offering samples of your product or service, or explanations of your product or service, information about your product or service.
Can you create an infographic? Should you have video samples, maybe audio samples? Can you have a subscription list where you mail them a sample perhaps? How long would it take to do this? That’s entirely up to you.
Just make sure that you are leading your customers towards your product or your service because that is what pays for everything that you do.
