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Reasons to Write a 300-Word Business Blog Post

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Fascinated by the Writer’s Yearbook 2023 article “10 Reasons to Write a 100-Word Story”, I began thinking of all the discussions around the questions of the optimal length for blog posts. Ran Walker, explaining while he’s stopped writing novels, said “I could no longer bring myself to write stories where I had to expand them beyond what I felt their natural lengths were.” Writing shorter stories forces you to refocus and choose only what’s important, Walker says. Word count matters, but it’s about condensing, not expanding, changing for the better the way you pace your story and what you choose to show the reader. Using just 100 words allows you to “create a resonance in a single moment.” Following is my (under-300-word) opinion post:

How long should your blog posts be? asks Wall Street Journal’s Joe Bunting. When it comes to our writing, we want more, he admits, not less: more readers, more comments, more backlinks, and more traffic. He’s experimented with different lengths, Bunting says, finding that each has advantages. Shorter posts tend to garner more comments, while longer posts get shared more widely. Medium-form posts are good for generating discussion. Very long, in-depth, heavily researched posts (2,400+ words long generate more Google traffic, he notes.

“Though content must be relevant, it might differ in types, mediums, formats, and style in order to arouse interest or evoke debate…but to be read at all, blog posts must always deliver upon their promise,” firstsiteguide.com cautions. “Before blogs became political in the early 2000s, they were merely means to make private thoughts and opinions public. The personal touch, however, remains their vital characteristic to date.”

Opinions have always differed on the optimal size for a blog post. Having composed blog posts (as both a Say It For You ghost writer and under my own name) numbering well into the tens of thousands, I’m still finding it difficult to fix on any rule other than “It depends!” I agree with Ran Walker that purposely keeping content short forces us to choose only those elements that drive home the single point that is the focus of that one post. Research on “duration neglect” reveals that when people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length, rating an experience based on the peak (the best or worst moment) and the ending. Writing shorter posts allows me to “create a resonance” around a single concept.

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Is the Size of Your Blog Post Inflated?

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For the second time this week, an article in the Indianapolis Business Journal caused me to consider some of the unique challenges of blog content writing…

“Looking for signs of inflation? Check the sizes of the goods you buy,” observed Cecil Bohanon & Nick Curott in the Indianapolis Business Journal. “Sellers of many consumer items resorted to reducing the quantity of the product to obviate explicitly increasing the dollar price of the product.” In other words, the package of cereal or cookies, or gum, stayed the same size; there was just less stuff in the box!

“Why are cereal boxes half empty?” Well, ABC Packaging admits, “bigger boxes give the impression that there is a lot of cereal inside”. “Large packaging is misleading and not fair, consumer campaigner Fred Isaac was saying back in 2016.

Well, duh….But economics aside, as a blog content writing trainer, I caution against “inflating” the length of blog posts. What’s the current wisdom on the subject? Brightedge.com offers the following advice in favor of longer posts: “If your piece does not provide enough depth or if it only gives a cursory treatment of the topic at hand, it may not be deemed high-quality content. You will want to dive deeper and provide more information as well as have an optimal blog post length.” “While attention spans may be going down, the average word count of blog posts is on the rise,” observes blogtyrant.com.

At Say It For You, we tend to agree with the checklist Jasmine Gordon offers. We blog content writers will know we’re done with a particular post IF:

  1. we’ve covered the topic in depth
  2. we’ve offered more value than the competition
  3. we’ve incorporated high-quality visuals
  4. we’ve verified our research and facts

My take is similar to that of Fred Isaac: Honest packaging should mean that longer posts deliver more information and a deeper dive into the subject. Having composed blog posts (both as a ghost and under my own name) numbering in the tens of thousands, I’m finding it difficult to fix on any rule other than “It depends!”  I think maybe Albert Einstein said it best: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” In blogging, I’ve found that as long as you stick to a central idea for each blog post, you need to “say it until it’s said”, making your post as short as possible, but not shorter.

Ask yourself – Is the “package” filled with necessary, useful information, or is the size of this blog post inflated?

 

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Blog Content Writing – Up For the Count

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word count for blogs

One “fake fact” included in Alex Palmer’s book Alternative Facts is that part of the reason Charles Dickens’ novels ran so long is that he was paid by the word. Truth is, while his novels’ length was often dictated in advance, Dickens’ earnings were pegged to the number of novels sold.

Today, some professional writers for hire choose to charge based on word count or page count, while other ghostwriters prefer to charge flat project rates or hourly fees, varying by experience, subject matter and location, Brafton, a leading UK content marketing company explains.

As much as we all wish for it, there is no simple answer to the question “What is the right length of a blog post?” A longer blog post doesn’t necessarily rank better than a short one. The reason search engines generally appear to favor longer posts is because they are detailed, hence considered to be providing more information to readers. But, when writing blogs, one needs to consider the topic, the goal, the target audience, the industry, and the competition to find which length works best. Focus should be on quality, not quantity.

You know your business and your customers better than anyone else, so why would you hire a ghostwriter to take over such an important task as blogging? There are plenty of reasons, Shandra Cragun of BKA Content explains:

  • You lack the time to write lengthy, informative blog posts.
  • Writing isn’t your strong suit.
  • The content creation process overwhelms you.
  • You want to elevate your brand’s story with well-written and highly engaging content.

In terms of word count, Cragun observes, there are some topics for which only so much can be said, while there are others about which a lot more can be said. Don’t give a ghost blogger a word count request that far exceeds the collective information on the subject, she cautions.

Opinions have always differed on the optimal size for a blog post. Having composed blog posts (as both a Say It For You ghost writer and under my own name) numbering well into the tens of thousands, I’m still finding it difficult to fix on any rule other than “It depends!”

Chip and Dan Heath’s book The Power of Moments describes research that found that when people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length, instead rating the experience based on the “peak” (best or worst moment) and the ending. My conclusion about word count? As Albert Einstein famously said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

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Blogs That Go WHAC

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Write less,” advises Seth Godin in the preface to his book The Dip. Now Brant Pindvidic, in his book The 3-Minute Rule, tells us to “say less to get more from any pitch or presentation”.

At Say It For You, I teach the principle of “reading around”, emphasizing the point that business bloggers are going to need to spend at least as much time reading as writing. Even after almost a decade and a half creating blog content for business owners and practitioners, I feel the need to keep up on what others are saying on the topic, what’s in the news, and what problems and questions have been surfacing that relate to what my clients offer. But now, both these business authors are making the case for less, not more, when it comes to sales pitches, speeches, and blog posts.

It seems this “reading around” habit of mine has presented me with a dilemma: Godin’s and Pinvidic’s advice to write and say less seems to fly in the face of the latest trend towards long-form blog posts with a word count numbering in the thousands.

Brant Pinvidic’s advice is based on the science of approach motivation. “Every time you make a pitch, presentation, or proposal to try to influence anyone to do anything, your audience’s first impression will be fully formed in less than three minutes”. And it’s not that we’re all dumbed-down, he says, but that people today focus more intensely and efficiently, he explains. The WHAC outline helps organize the key information you need to impart – and dictates the order in which you present that information:

W – What is it? (What is your offer?)
H – How does it work?) work? (Why are the elements of your offer and why are they valuable or
Important?)
A– Are you sure? (This is a fact or figure that backs up your information and establishes
potential.)
C – Can you do it? (Your ability to execute and deliver.

In the first two stages, the W and the H, the audience will conceptualize. In the A stage, they will contextualize, judging whether your offer is true real, and right. In the C stage, the audience will be asking whether this could actually happen in the way being described.

Transferring this model to the arena of blog marketing, I’d suggest that the WHAC sequence could be employed over a series of blog posts rather than using it all in one. One concept I emphasize in corporate blogging training sessions is that blog posts can stay smaller and lighter in scale than the more permanent content on the corporate website or the content in white papers. What helps the separate posts fit together into an ongoing business blog marketing strategy are the blog “leitmotifs” or themes.

Whether Godin’s “Write less” advice is suited for us blog content writers remains a matter of debate. On the other hand, “Read more” continues to be a requirement for imparting bog posts with WHAC!

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In Blog Marketing, Write Less??

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“This book is really short,” writes Seth Godin in the acknowledgments section of The Dip. This is something he’s learned from his readers, he says – Write less. “Seth Godin,” the book jacket explains, is one of the most popular business bloggers in the world. “While Godin doesn’t claim to have all the answers, he will teach you to ask the right questions”.

So, from a blog content standpoint, is “writing less” a good idea? Maybe not, according to these three sources, writes Jasmine Gordon of lean-labs.com.

  • Medium – The ideal length of a blog post is seven minutes or 1,600 words.
  • SERPIQ – Top three Google results are between 2,350 and 2,500 words.
  • Neil Patel – Posts of at least 1,500 words earn the best SEO and social sharing results.

On the other hand, Gordon points out:

  • Data from Write Practice indicates that posts of 275 words are best for eliciting comments.
  • While visual media is not technically part of the word count, it’s an aspect of length,, because it takes time to consume.
  • Some topics don’t need 3,000 words to be covered adequately.
  • If you’re blogging multiple times a week, you can afford shorter, engagement-driven posts.

At Say It For You, we tend to agree with the checklist Jasmine Gordon offers. We blog content writers will know we’re done with a particular post IF:

  1. we’ve covered the topic in depth
  2. we’ve offered more value than the competition
  3. we’ve incorporated high-quality visuals
  4. we’ve verified our research and facts

What’s more, Gordon says, if your name is Seth Godin (to whose book, The Dip, I referred in Tuesday’s blog post), all bets are off (Godin’s posts, God bless him, are often 75-500 words long).

“Opinions have always differed on the optimal size for a blog post,” I wrote just a little over a year ago. Having composed blog posts (as both a Say It For You ghost writer and under my own name) now numbering well into the tens of thousands, I’m still finding it difficult to decide on the best length for each post.

From Chip and Dan Heath’s book The Power of Moments, I learned about a phenomenon called “duration neglect”. The basic concept is that when people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length, rating it based on the best or worst moment in that experience. I suspect that principle holds true when readers are experiencing a blog post. They are going to remember only two things – the best part and the ending.

The long-form/short-form debate will no doubt continue for decades to come, but my own instinct is to stick to a central idea for each blog post, then “say it until it’s said”. Along the “write less” theme, Seth Godin once offered a piece on the length of business meetings, in which he observed “Understand that not all problems are the same, so why are your meetings?”

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