The argument is pointless.
I have a lot of respect for Joanna Wiebe and her team at CopyHackers. But the debate between long vs. short content has gone on long enough.
Too long.
When Buzzsumo discovered that more words per post leads to more shares, people forgot one simple fact:
Correlation does not equal causation.
As my friend Nat Eliason (@NatEliason) of Sumo stated,
“The problem is when people try to reverse engineer ‘virality’ or ‘popularity’ based on meaningless variables instead of just writing something really really good.”
[bctt tweet=”It’s like everyone who thinks that if they start waking up at 6am they’ll magically become Elon Musk. @nateliason” via=”no”]
If Neil Patel finds out that the optimal time to share on Twitter is 2pm, that doesn’t mean you should jump off the bridge either.
Newsflash: You don’t have the same followers as he does. When they are active on social media has very little to do with your own tribe.
What’s the harm of reporting this type of information?
As I was going through a backlink report to see who linked to Klientboost and send a thank you note, I came across this beautiful piece (update – this article is now dead. This further demonstrates the point I’m about to make).
That article has almost everything going for it. But she forgot one simple detail:
Ouch.
As with all quality sites that link to my clients, I sent her some serious promotion love.
I felt bad that someone had fallen into the lie that creating great was all she needed.
Though I can’t read someone’s mind (I’m a marketer, not a mind-reader), it wouldn’t surprise me that these stupid factoids lead her to write a guide on surviving burnout to cope with her own pain.
How do you know whether your audience wants short or long? Make hypothesis and test it.
Or do what I do and write from the heart and don’t-give-a rip how many words you need.
If you want to keep your costs low, this article by Siddharth Bharath (VP of growth at Thinkific) should give you some killer insight how to be strategic with your time and money.
Some final thoughts from Benji Hyam (@BenjiHyam) of Grow and Convert:
“People who are unfamiliar with this space [will] think that writing a 750 word post will make them more successful than a 300 word post (or vice versa). I don’t think word count matters at all. Word count isn’t going to make one company blog more successful than another.”
Data doesn’t lie; only the analysts that misinterpret the data do.
A lot of truth to this piece. I’ve had a lot of success writing longer 3-4k word pieces for one of my sites, but it’s because that site’s audience really wants that type of content. On one of my other sites, writing an amazing 4k word post is a great way to waste 10 hours.
Curious to learn what type of site doesn’t do well w/4K posts?
My initial hunch is entertainment/news sites, but that’s just a guess. 🙂
Absolutely Jason! I, for one, have never paid attention to length. I prefer focusing on my audience when I write. It has served me well.
Would I love my posts to go viral? Like everyone else, I suppose. But, to be honest, I had rather know that 10 people have found my content useful and applied my tips successfully, than seeing 100,000 shares on Twitter without any further action.
Glad you found it useful Cendrine!
Hmmm, I’d challenge the last bit. I mean, out of 100K shares, that’s gotta help more than just 10 people ;).
+1. Ultimately comes down to whether something you write can deliver value.
While we can assume that a 1000 words can deliver more value than 300, word count should not be the only factor to take into account.
There are merits and demerits in both.
A 1000+ word can surely convey more than a 200 or 300+ word post, another thing is that, if its a 3000+ word post many will keep it as a bookmark, but later forget to read it!
Another point is that in this busy world many do not find time to read a 5000+ word post.
Thanks for the post to discuss.
Keep sharing
Best
Philip
PS. I found this post on the pages of Growth hawkers page.
Hey Jason, this REALLY needed to be said.
The debate continues and continues.
I think we could boil this debate down to two words: “it depends”.
On my old gaming site we could publish 300-500 words of content and it’d go down well because that’s what our audience was after. That’d fit with our editorial calendar too because we’d publish about 10-15 posts each week. Who’d have time to read 10-15 long-form posts about video games each week?
On other sites I manage, longer content does super well but the occasional short post could probably get more engagement initially but would taper off over the long term unlike a more detailed post.
There’s a balance to be found between content frequency and length.
Long-form/short-term can be folded into positioning too. For example if someone starts a blog and wants to cater for those who are always looking for very meaty resources & detailed guides.
This reminds me of when I was at school saying to my teacher “how long does this essay need to be?” and they’d say “how long is a piece of string?”.
Love it Adam! Got a kick out of that last line :).
I have a hunch that entertainment sites can get away with short form content. Godin, on the other hand, just drops pearls of wisdom (as I aimed for here).
I think the occasional change can be a great way to change the overall pattern, such as Copyblogger’s famous 10 steps for becoming a better writer – http://www.copyblogger.com/become-a-better-writer/.
Now sitting at 11K+ shares!
Awesome 🙂
Good point. Entertainment sites seem to be a good fit for that kind of content. Love Godin’s peals of wisdom – this definitely comes across in the same way.
Interesting thought actually, last year I had an idea to turn my personal website into a blog where I just share nuggets of marketing wisdom. Sort of with the aim to encourage people to do one thing.
The complete polar opposite of Blogging Wizard. Sometimes we need a big blueprint for a topic. Sometimes we just need one thing to focus in on and in a way, we’re probably more likely to take action.
Love that Copyblogger post. Didn’t realize it had that many shares!
I keep wanting to do the pearls of wisdom approach on STM, but keep running into “don’t have time” mentality.
Maybe I just need to ship :).
True! But sometimes we really don’t have the time. Although, other times like you say, we run into the issue of where it’s just mindset.
I found it a bit ironic that after I read this post, I clicked to read your previous one and it’s 6600 words. 😉
Contrast is a beautiful thing :).
And yeah, thought of that too before shipping. Gotta know what’s needed when.
Hi Jason
To quote Thomas Jefferson
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
I’d would rather read a 1000 word article that informs, engages and entertains me rather than a long winded one that adds no further value than the shorter one.
Your link anchor “this beautiful piece” links to an expired domain by the way.
Shame I don’t do broken link building – LOL
My first visit to your site, like your style
Great quote John. There’s a lot of truth to that statement. Yet many marketers I know still fall in that trap.
Thanks for the info on the broken link. Yet that kinda proves my point even more :P.
Thanks for dropping by John! Hope to see you on my next piece.
This is something we keep coming back to, as if the form of the content is the most important thing. The most important thing is how the reader feels when they consume your content.
Do people feel differently about long content than short content?
We cannot really know but we can get clues from the data, much objective analysis has been done on the subject and I even wrote a “long blog post” on why it may be worth creating longer blog posts. But I think it’s way too complex too give a definitive answer.
The truth is there are many variables when it comes to how people feel about a piece of content and also how they react. The goal is branding, linkage, social media signals… etc. But getting to that elusive sweet spot will always cause us to be looking for the edge.
I am sure this debate will go on, and the best way is to look at your own content and your own audience and that you exactly want to happen.
Great insight Lyndon (also great insight in your post your referenced – http://www.cornwallseo.com/search/2016/04/big-blog-posts-rank-google/).
Revisiting this thought, I believe the website’s goal may change what direction they should go.
When I interviewed Steve Rayson from Buzzsumo (contentpromotionsummit.com/speakers/steve-rayson/), he mentioned 80% of the highest shared B2B articles were short form.
Steve’s article on what goes viral (http://okdork.com/2014/04/21/why-content-goes-viral-what-analyzing-100-millions-articles-taught-us/) got a lot of attention towards long form, but that only reflects the average. From what he saw, there are a lot more garbage short form posts that skewed the average.
My theory?
1. The short-n-sweet method is best for getting social traffic faster.
2. Long form is best for ranking in Google faster.
cc @adamjayc:disqus and @jacobmcmillen:disqus – thought you might be intrigued by this added insight :).
We write what we feel like, and some stories are very short, others very long.
Never gave a squat about what others do, but we do enjoy growing audiences daily.
Some like it long, some like it short.
For 7 decades we have followed our own instincts.
And never lacked for followers, readers, customers and cash flow.
Very poetic Chuck :).
As I see it, if you attract 1,000 true fans, the rest won’t matter.
Hope to hear more from you again.
Jason