I recently shared a Social Media Examiner post called “The Ideal Length for Blog Posts, Tweets, and Everything Else in Your Marketing” on Facebook. It’s all about the optimal length for things you do in social media and it brought me up sharp I can tell you.
I have been advising my clients on some simple rules for blogging; 12-14 sentences, 3 paragraphs 1 or 2 pics and, most importantly, 1topic. If you have more than this you probably have more than 1 blog post. Now, I’m not feeling guilty about this, these “rules” are designed to make blogging less overwhelming to the beginner, but I do now need to update my info so that people know what is the optimal length if they are aiming to get found. And that includes me.
Blog posts:– optimal length 1,500 words! OMG! Really, 1,500? Well that is optimal for ranking based on the research the guys at Orbit Media Studios gathered. So using the word count function in MS Word I thought I’d go for the 1500 just to see what it amounts to. Phew, I can tell you, there has to be some serious urge to rank and to be more of a writer to get to that number. This is 213 so far!!!!!!!!!
Now the questions arise: What is practical for the blogger, their time and topics? Maybe more important, who is their audience and how much will they be prepared to read? Let’s face it, who has time to read an essay? I know I don’t as a general rule. My advice, for the best option, would be to strike a balance and head for the optimum without boring your audience to death or scaring them off.
Many people obviously do this optimal length very successfully – I know one in particular who is my client and has an audience that wants his content. Check it out here Glory To God For All Things. Father Stephen has a committed and engaged following and his posts always elicit a great set of back and forth commentary.
I aspire to this level of writing skill, depth of knowledge and committed readership. Now you want to know the total, right? Only 370, sigh.