How Long Should Your Blog Posts Be?

When I first started blogging, I was so focused on the word count and making sure my posts were long enough that it caused more of a headache than anything. In fact, it almost always "paralyzed" me which ended up causing me to not post as frequently as I wanted. Back when I started - I don't see too much of this anymore - there were gurus saying posts should be this length, or another one saying no it should be shorter and broken up into even more bite size chunks. It made me nuts! I never knew who to listen to.

So...how long should your blog posts really be?

It would be great if there was a magic number that guaranteed best results, wouldn’t it? But that’s like asking someone to tell you how long your conversations with other people should be. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a few words or sentences; sometimes you have a nice long talk. It all depends on how much you have to say to each other, doesn’t it?

This exact same approach should be followed when it comes to writing blog posts. If you're a food blogger sharing recipes all you really need is a short post (probably about 200 to 300 words) and an image and bam, you're good to go. Same with writing devotions - you want, short, bite-sized easy to digest posts.

Of course, there are times that warrant longer posts. Sometimes going into more depth is needed. In those cases make it as long as you need to make it. Long posts aren't bad. In fact, they can help you build your expertise by showing your authority on a topic.

In my opinion, a combination of short and longer posts is a good mix. If you're going to write longer posts, keep in mind that people often scan content so be sure to use headers, bold, and italics to make important points stick out (but don't over do these either). If you find that a longer post is extremely long (let's say for example a thousand or more words), think about whether it would be best broken up into a couple different posts and do a series on your blog making sure to link to all the parts so people don't miss them.

My biggest piece of advice - don't force yourself to follow some guru who says you have to make a blog post so many words. Instead, focus on enjoying the writing process and think about your readers as your write - give enough information about the topic to get your point across and that they won't be left confused.