Which do you prefer, Long posts or Short posts?
After publishing my 3,000 word article yesterday which talked about how you can put a price on a Blog I had few mixed views about writing long posts and a couple of comments which discussed the fact that people generally scan articles rather than read the whole article. I have decided to ask my readers which they prefer to read, long posts or short posts.
There are benefits to writing both types of post and I am planning on writing an article on this later this week however I would like to know how you feel about reading short posts and long posts. Do you prefer one type of post over another? Does it annoy you when I write long posts? Would you prefer the longer posts to be available for download?
I would like to hear your comments on this, also please vote which you prefer.
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I don’t think people have the time or patience to read an entire long post unless it is something they are really interested in.
People are suffering from content overload. Most blogs have come up with several mechanisms to aid readers including effective use of bold text, clear headings and heirarchy, and the dreaded numbered lists.
By writing essays for blog posts I feel you will be severely limiting your readership.
@Ben thank you for your comment. You have a good point there, I think you are right to a certain extent. That is part of the reason that I have tried to expand the types of articles I write on the Blog.
I am not just writing long articles these days, I also write short articles and bullet point articles with just lists.
I think this is the best strategy to try and get everyone interested.
Thank you for your comment.
I generally agree with Ben. Usually I don’t have time to read long posts. If however you are describing a specific item such as your pricing post, I think it needs to be that informative. If I am going to sell my blog or think I might in the future I would just bookmark that and come back and review the one post. This would be vs. having to read & find several posts if you had broken into pieces.
Will,
I write long articles. I do this because while Ben has stated that you may be limiting your readership, it is all who you want to target.
100-500 word sugary posts could never get detailed about much of anything and if you are writing to try to teach then a 500 word essay on “how to make money” will not separate you from the hordes of other people who will write something similar….
Plus, the biggest payoff is the additional content that gets crawled and indexed.
I have data that shows that people’s attention spans aren’t as short as you think. For example, my blog is averaging 3:42 for last month with a bounce rate of 60%. Not bad, right?
However, be aware that not everyone will like long posts.
@ Johnny, thats an excellent point to make. If an article isn’t totally relevant to the reader at the current stage however they may believe it would be relevant in the future then bookmarking the page would probably be a great idea, especially with something so thorough and in depth. A great comparison too. Thank you.
@ Leo, firstly I am glad to see another Blogger who writes long articles. You do have a good point, however I also see the other side of the arguement, just as Ben stated you are limiting your readers however I suppose for myself, because I already write the more time consuming articles, adding a couple of short posts each week which get to the point relatively quickly should not be that hard.
I agree that with that amount of words you would be very restricted to teach anyone anything, however as I have seen in the past some points don’t need explaining but with my Blog I am here to teach people rather than provide them with short points.
Another excellent point about the seperation between the normal abundant amount of Bloggers who just write the same old in every post, I suppose by writing longer articles I am able to seperate myself from the latter.
Again, the last point you make is golden. People still agree that content is largely important, I am not sure if people still believe content is king however it is definitely still up there with the queen. Therefore as you said it is great for the search engines.
Thats a great number, personally this Blog is about 60% bounce rate since I changed the design, it used to be 2.7% believe it or not, I even wrote an article on it.
Thanks Leo and everyone for your exceptional views and your great points. I have enjoyed reading them very much.
I prefer a medium sized post. Not too much but not too little. Also including the main headers so it’s easier to read so I can scan the parts that interest me personally.
WOW 3,000 words…thats a long post.
I guest the size of your posts should vary depending on your site content and your target audience.
I think if you have something to elaborate on that’s quite lengthy you can give it to your readers as an ebook.