Recently, I had a discussion with Mickey from Retro-Ramblings regarding personal blogging. We’ve talked about the dilemma it seems all bloggers struggle with, “Do I write for myself, and no one will read it? Or do I write for others and hope their views make me feel successful” and we’ve talked about various types of posts and how some generate more interest than others, mainly posts that contain lists.
I was reflecting on our conversation, and I thought about a blogging question that has haunted me for years: at what point does a blog post become too long and you lose a reader?
I hate to admit it, but I know I’ve looked at certain posts in my RSS and been like, “Damn, I don’t know if I got time for this right now.” Half of the time, I save them for reading later when I do have time, but the other half of the time I just move on to the next thing. Being a writer who can be a bit wordy, it makes me wonder how much of my own writing is ignore because it’s viewed as too long or too verbose?
In early 2020, when I feel like I started on a proper path of blogging, I announced that I would keep all posts under 750 words and if it went longer than I’d split the post up. I didn’t adhere to that rule for very long, but I do wonder if it was a mistake.
Then I guess this brings up the question, once again, am I writing for myself I’m worried about word length or am I writing for others? Back to square one it seems.
Any thoughts?
I don’t know I go by the post needs to be as long as it needs to. One sentence is good but so is 2000 words. Don’t get to caught up on word count.
I say write as much as needed. If people are going to read it, they are going to read it – if not, then maybe they don’t value to know what you have to say anyways?
With that said however, if the post is getting longer than 2000 words, I would probably opt to have it split. Partly for the sanity of the readers, and it gives them some space to breath. If they did enjoy the first part, no doubt they will look forward to reading the second part when it releases or when they have time to do so.
I’m with Matt’s first sentence.
I once wrote “A story is only as long as its telling.” No matter how long or short, that’s how long it is.
It’s an indictment of the modern world that people don’t have the time or attention span to read longer pieces. It’s why I have deliberately limited the number of feeds I subscribe to so that I can spend more quality time with those I do.
If I really want to read something I’ll make time for it and, hopefully, others will too.
Thank you everyone for replying and those who sent me texts. It seems the answer is clear… write as long as you need and forget about the rest.
This is a great question, and one I struggle with frequently. Many of my posts are pretty long and admittedly I’m frequently long winded in person too.
My wife is actually college-educated at writing and proper grammar, and she always tells me its too long to keep peoples attention, especially her own. Sometimes I agree but I always feel like I’m phoning it in by purposely omitting information for the sake of brevity. I’ve just decided that if I lose readers because of how long they are, so be it.
I feel like that’s a good take. I too, tend to ramble on a bit in real life. I’ve worked hard the last couple of years at trying to edit my explanations by cutting out unnecessary information, but it’s definitely a struggle at times.