Supersize me! <=says your blog - But what if you don’t want to?

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The question of how big it is has been approached by many bloggers since blogs were created – what length should a post be?  Many think that short and sweet is good – posting 3 or 4, 200 word posts a day; others believe that only posting on weekdays and having much longer posts is the way to go, which means a longer post – somewhere in the region of 400 – 800 words.

There are some other bloggers who feel as if they need to write essays, upon essays in order to get their point of view or understanding across to readers, but what do I consider as a reasonable amount for a good quality post?

Well, that all depends on the niche of course and the context of the actual post.  There are a few different types of posts that I would categorise into the following areas – all with their respective lengths:

News post

If you’re reporting a breaking story, then you will be wanting to get a rapid summary of the report you’re looking into in order to be a ‘first poster’ for the event that has happened.  You could always follow up on the story later with a ‘meatier’ post revealing the details of the event later in the day, when you had gathered more information and data.

Link post

This usually contains a short blurb of what other articles the blogger thinks that readers will like – some or all of these can be internal articles, but most are linked to other bloggers.  This type of posting is usually short and to the point with a little summary of the linked to article.

Interviews

Dependant on both parties I’ve seen short and long posts of interviews with other bloggers in posts, but it is more often a longer than ‘usual’ post that asks a number of questions to the interviewee.  Sometimes these posts can become a little long and drawn out, and if you’re not 100% committed to the reading either parties information then you may consider closing the window.

Affiliate review/Critique

A post that generally gets to 1,000 – 1,500 words, or should do! 

If you’re posting about an affiliate program that you use and want some good commissions from, then why wouldn’t you want to put the effort in and go into detail with this post?  If you’re posting only 300 words for a critique of a product or service, would you consider that people are going to:

1.  Consider your review or critique to be objective (and not subjective)

2.  Trust your advice and review of the service or product

3.  Click through and make you some money (hopefully anyway)

Advice for newbies

From my own research and experience my advice would be that you need to post on average of above 400 words per article/post.  If your posts are only 200 words, then is there any point in producing two a day that cover brief topics – I feel that is for you to decide.  For me, just writing 200 – 400 words for a post can be quite challenging in itself, as I do like to write and allow a reader to become involved in the information I’m presenting – maybe this is because I’m an academic at heart, or maybe it’s because I have the need to express the same point in different ways.

The main view I take on how long a post should be depends on what benefit it will be to myself and other community readers, not knowing this or ignoring it could mean you’re on the road to nowhere.

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