Blog Length: How Much is Too Much

While curating content (Blog, Video, Social Media agency Post), one should keep in mind that every content format demands a separate strategization .

Since the invention of blogging sites in the 1990s, the word count has always remained a debated turf on which writers still haven’t come to a decisive conclusion. Until about a few years ago, an ideal blog would be around 500-800 words long. But, today, the numbers have risen dramatically.

A study by Medium suggests that the most read articles range around 1600 words. According to Medium’s unique style of attention calculation, it would round out to about a 7 minutes read. However, another study by SerpIQ suggested that the highest-rated articles were about 2,450 words long. So, it is safe to say that an article with about 1600 – 2500 words is ideal.

The reason why people prefer long blogs is that they provide a detailed and in-depth view of the topic and provide a higher quality of perception. Also, there is a certain sense of satisfaction that comes with having completed a long article, which makes your audience feel accomplished.

However, a long and wordy article will do you no good if your material is poor. Word count is only applicable if the content quality is high. Hence, even with a long or short article, the quality of your information is paramount.

Video Length

With a growing number of people who prefer their content displayed to them in the form of a video instead of having to spend minutes scrolling through the screen, it becomes empirical to engage in video marketing. While it may seem simple, video marketing is a very tricky domain to evaluate as the range in videos is exceptionally wide. From a 15 second ad to 30 minutes long video, how can someone ascertain how long a video is too long?

The simple answer that marketers have is that “Your video should be just as long as it needs to be and not a second longer.” This essentially means that a video should encompass everything that is necessary while doing so in a crisp and engaging manner. Viewers have a very short and limited attention span, and you need to make the most out of it. If you keep beating around the bush and intentionally make your video longer, you will lose your audience.

There have been studies and analysis which can suggest the basic trend on different social media platforms. Facebook has shared data suggesting that videos get shown organically to more people when they are at least 3 minutes long. They have also suggested that small businesses should keep their videos at about 15 seconds.

Talking about Instagram, according to Hubspot research, videos that are about 26 seconds long receive the most amount of comments. It also suggests that stories should be around 15 seconds long and hardly more than that.

While educational videos or videos with a lot of information cannot be caped with a certain time frame, we can talk about how long ads or B2B videos can be. Youtube suggests that ads should be around 15-20 seconds long, whereas B2B and commercial videos should not exceed 2 minutes.

If you follow these guidelines, your content will dominate the platform and become a sure-shot hit!

Frequency of Posts

Most clients want to post content all the time. When do you actually ask them to draw a limit?

When it comes to your social media presence and personality, the frequency of your posts plays a vital role. If your post frequency is too scattered, you might lose your audience’s attention and put yourself under the threat of being forgotten. On the other hand, if you post too often, you might become a nuisance for them, and they might start to dread seeing your overcrowded feed. So, when it comes to posting, how much is too much?

According to some of the most successful digital marketers, there is a sweet spot of how many posts you should do in a day to keep your audience engaged and interested.

For Facebook and Instagram, the limit is about 1 post per day. Maximum 2; whereas even that is risky. Some experts say that posting twice a day will only receive 57% of likes and 78% of comments than one post per day.

For Twitter, the sweet spot is at 15 tweets per day. You should also retweet about 7 tweets per day. Anything higher than that will have a negative impact on your audience.

If you follow these simple guidelines, you will be able to maintain good and steady traction on all your social media platforms.

While curating content, one should keep in mind two factors. One, that every content format demands a separate strategization. And two, that every platform needs to be assessed separately. If one keeps these two factors in mind, it becomes easy to win the content game!