Looooong Blog Posts vs. Short Blog Posts

[Rick Smith]

I was listening to an episode of the “Unemployable” podcast yesterday. If you’re not familiar with that podcast, Brian Clark (of CopyBlogger fame) does 90% of the interviews. He has various guests and they discuss a wide variety of topics. The overall theme is being, well, unemployable by mainstream “society.”

Most of the time it’s pretty good. I listened to an episode last week where Brian and his guest we’re making comments about the recent U.S. presidential election and the current state of the U.S. presidency. Quite frankly, I was put off by their comments. But when Brian and the guest stick to the subject at hand, the episodes are pretty good. I’ve gotten several ideas from the podcast.

Anyway… during the episode I listened to yesterday Brian Clark was interviewing Darren Rowse (who started ProBlogger). They were talking about blogging making a “comeback.” (I didn’t know it ever left!) And Darren made the point that much of what he was seeing for blog posts were 1200 – 1500 word blog posts (or longer) and that people were posting one or two of these per week instead of posting 300 – 500 word posts every day.

Sean talks about posting daily blog posts, videos, articles, etc. to build your expert presence. And he recommends those posts be on the order of 300 – 500 words. (I know Sean. It’s not a hard and fast rule. 🙂 ) So here’s my question. Which do you think is better? Long blog posts like those guys were talking about posted less frequently? Or short blog posts posted every day like Sean recommends? Why?

[Trevor Dumbleton]

Both work depending on your audience and how they’re finding you.

In my view, less often but longer is preferable and there are some others who would agree with that viewpoint. This post goes into quite a bit of analysis and a YouTube report I read recently was pointing in the direction of longer videos so it’s not just written content.

That said, if it’s the difference between putting up short-ish posts or none at all because long-ish ones seem daunting then go for the shorter ones. My recent posts seem to be in the 1,000 word region and I can type those quite fast. As a reader, if the info is interesting I’ll keep reading, if it isn’t then it doesn’t matter if it’s only a few hundred words.

[Don Sturgill]

The bigger question is value: You’ll get more SEO bang from the longer post because it will have more keywords and concepts to catalog.

You’ll get more overall return from a post that’s relative to your audience, true to your topic, and delivers information in a way that is helpful and interesting. Bloggers need to take a lesson from fiction writers… keep the pages turning.

[Rick Smith]

And the debate continues. 🙂

FWIW, I’ll probably use a mix, though I suspect they’ll tend to be on the shorter side (at least in the beginning) with links to all the YouTube content videos I’ve been recording.

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