It’s not just the quality of content you should consider when writing your next blog, but also the ideal length.
The good news is you don’t have to rely on guess work. There are a few factors to consider to help you get it right.
For example:
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Seven minutes is reported to be the ideal read time to maintain attention.
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Native English-speaking adults manage to read approx. 300 words per minute.
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A few taps on the calculator tells us that this places the ideal blog post length at 2100 words.
But that’s just the post body — we also need to take a look at the blog title (together making up your full blog post).
Blog Title
If your aim is for your blog post to rank well in Google then your title should be under 60 characters.
If you also want to optimise your blog post for social sharing (on Twitter for example) then your blog title and accompanying text should be under 116 characters (this leaves a little spare for a web link).
From our experience we find that headlines with between 10–12 words get the most Twitter shares on average.
And, headlines with around 14 words get the most Likes on Facebook.
Most importantly though, as you set out to determine the length of your blog post, always keep your reader front of mind.
You don’t want them to get bored or feel overwhelmed.
Like all marketing, blog posts are never an exact science. No matter how much data we crunch.
Keep a track of your results and consider how each of your blog posts performs. Armed with this data you can begin to make informed decisions about which types of content are most appreciated by your audience. Then write more like that!
