Pros and cons of long and short posts — The age old debate

So it’s not really an age old debate, it just sounded kind of catchy.

There is no limit as to how long you can write a blog post. You can write them as long as you want, or as short as you want. From the ridicu­lously long posts of Patrice Karst to the short, under 30 words posts from the Unwrit­ten Rules of the Inter­net blog. You can see how blog­gers feel about express­ing them­selves online. Some can do it in a lot of words, and some in a few.

In this post, I want to high­light the dif­fer­ences between long posts and short posts, and why one could be bet­ter than the other.

Shorts Posts: Pros and Cons

Shorts posts are a great way to quickly reveal your thoughts to other peo­ple. How­ever, they often leave some things unsaid that really should have been noted in the post.

Pro: Easy to write, saves a bunch of time

Time is some­thing every­one wants these days, but most peo­ple can’t seem to find free time. You could be busy with a job, your per­sonal life, and of course tak­ing care of your blog. The idea of writ­ing a short post on your blog is the best thought in the world.

Con: Users want­ing more infor­ma­tion that you haven’t delivered

I see short posts look like rushed posts, and rushed posts lead to spelling and gram­mar mis­takes, incor­rect infor­ma­tion, and some other grue­some things. While your time may be impor­tant, you should real­ize that your blog is impor­tant and hand­ing out bad infor­ma­tion to your loyal read­ers is not a good thing. It can espe­cially be bad depend­ing on the niche you’re in!

Pro: Short posts have a bet­ter chance of being read than long posts

It’s true, posts with shorter length will def­i­nitely be read more than a long post. What’s bet­ter than quick, infor­ma­tive read? Besides, there will be the group of your read­ers who are lazy and are just look­ing for those short posts. Why not feed their lazy lit­tle appetites?

Con: Did I for­get to mention…?

This is a com­mon ques­tion you will be ask­ing your­self after a fairly short post I’m sure. It is pretty likely that you may for­get a key point of idea in your post if it’s really short. Before­hand, you should map out your key ideas and sum­ma­rize them really intel­li­gently for your readers.

Long Posts: Pros and Cons

Long posts are packed full of infor­ma­tion. While some things can get repeated, there are plenty of lengthy arti­cles that cover tons of great points in them.

Pro: Your post will be full of thor­ough expla­na­tions, and will cover plenty of key points

The pur­pose of your blog is to inform your read­ers about the niche you’re in right? What bet­ter way to do that then have a long post chopped full of great infor­ma­tion? You have no bound­aries as to how many words it takes to describe some­thing, and you prob­a­bly have plenty of time to cover every sin­gle point of the topic.

Con: It’s easy to get lost in your writ­ing, and start bab­bling about some­thing unre­lated. You can even start repeat­ing yourself

You could be on para­graph 154, and say to your­self “I for­got to men­tion some­thing!”. The unfor­tu­nate fact how­ever is you already talked about it in para­graph 68, but you prob­a­bly forgot.

It wouldn’t be too hard to stray off topic in the post either. You can go from talk­ing about cats, to talk­ing about how to change the oil in your car in one sen­tence I bet. It just takes one measly lit­tle com­par­i­son to get you started. Be care­ful of that.

Pro: Leaves plenty for read­ers to think about, and then some

A good blog post is a blog post that gets read­ers to think about what you have said. If you leave them with ques­tions, and pro­vide in depth infor­ma­tion, it will cause them to want to find things wrong with what you have said and make their own opin­ions about it.

Con: Your post will prob­a­bly take more than one time to read

While this is not always a bad thing, it’s an annoy­ing thing. Short posts will prob­a­ble just require one read, but longer ones will require more. If some­one is read­ing your posts, things that will cause them to reread could be:

• Con­tra­dict­ing yourself
• Pieces of infor­ma­tion being in wrong place
• Infor­ma­tion not explained well enough

Just remem­ber to always keep your post orga­nized, watch what you say, and go into tons of detail when­ever possible.

What I think

I think a post that explains the sub­ject per­fectly is a good enough post. Whether it is in 500 words, or 50 words, as long as I learn some­thing I think the post is just right.

While this post is on the long side, I hope you have thought about how you write your posts. If you have any other pros and cons of long posts vs. short posts, let me hear it in the com­ments sec­tion! I will be happy to add it to the list.

Sug­ges­tions by you

• One of the impor­tant things you can do to make longer posts more read­able is to break up the daunt­ing wall of text. This can be done with pic­tures, dot points, bold head­ing etc, like this post has done. It makes a big post look smaller.

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