I’ve been blogging for more than 7 years now and I’ve been using the Web as a primary information source for nearly twice the time.  One thing I can say is that we have more and more content on the Web, sometimes too much.

With that in mind, we can also say that the attention span of people just drops off: too many interesting videos, articles, applications, status updates, blog posts… So I come to a magistral conclusion: your blog posts are too long. I don’t have the time to read a long post: I have other information to grab on your blog or somewhere else. I also may read your post in front of my computer, but I may be in line to pay my groceries, waiting for someone to start a meeting or have two minutes to kill before the movie start.

Also a long post is most of the time boring. You can argue that it’s a matter of good or bad author, I will argue that’s not the problem: if you are not able to get to the point with about 500 words, maybe the topic isn’t good enough or you don’t know it well enough. If you really want to talk about all the facet of the topics, make a series of posts.

In my mind, a good blog post should be between 250 and 500 words maximum. You did a post with a lot more words: rethink it or do a series. You need to make a long blog post because it’s technical or it’s not like this easy-going no-real-value opinion blog post I just did? Bullshit! If you want to be credible, you need to create a long text? Bullshit! If I want to show your expertise, you need to put more examples or give more meat to your readers? Bullshit! Simple is the new complex!

I don’t have the innate knowledge, this is my opinion, and I don’t ask you to change your mind or tell you what to do, but take some times and try to see which blog post got more traction or is way more interesting the next time you read some. So, did you think that shorter blog posts are better? Are you a fan of long blog posts? Do you feel that you need something complex to understand easily a topic? Share your thoughts.

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