July 2

This Is the Thing about Long Form Content

1  comments

Long form content is what Daddy Google tells us to do. At this point as a content creator, you likely know that you should create super long blog posts.

The reason why we need long-form content is pretty fascinating actually.

Back in the old days of blogging, like way back in 2013, the suggested blog post length was around 600 words. Today the recommendation is that you aim for between 2,500 - 10,000 words. 

Yes, you read that correctly.

That is a lot of content. That takes a tremendous amount of planning and effort. Of course, that is part of what makes this type of blog post worth sharing. 

According to the research that you can find here (https://neilpatel.com/blog/long-blog-articles/) people prefer to share long-form content on social media.

It makes sense if you think about it. It is the same reason that Google ranks long-form content above short-form content. The assumption is that it provides a better answer.

I get it. I do.

But here is the thing about long-form content that makes me crazy. It doesn't always make sense. People don't tend to read it. More often than not, people skim the content and then share it.

Now if you are looking up how to do something specific such as build a bench or set up a particular WordPress Plugin, a long post probably makes a great deal of sense. But if you want to find out how long your meta description should be, do you need 3,000 words on the history of the meta description?

Google prefers to rank long-form content, and people prefer to share long-form content. Does this mean that we should only create and provide it though?

I think not. 

I think that it is important and I plan to create plenty of epic blog posts in the future, but there is more to me and my content than that.

Short pieces of content have a special place in my heart. My goal is to help you and inspire you to create change in the world. I want you to go forth and create content too. If you spend all of your time consuming long pieces of content, how will you possibly have time to produce your content?

My question is, should you create long-form content that people may not wholly read to get shares or should you create the content that genuinely helps people?


Tags

best blog post length, How long should a blog post be


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  1. I think you’re right Renee. Long form content is all very well when you need to explain a detailed topic but even then a long post can be too much to take in in one go. It’s a bit like condensing a lecture series into a marathon 5 hour lecture. I guess the answer is to have a mix of posts short and long to engage and inform your readers.

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