The Ideal Length of Content: Long or Short?
The debate for the ideal length of content has taken centre stage for a while now, and there’s no indication that it will leave the limelight any time soon.
Writers and Content Marketers have been knocking their heads together on the length of their posts and tend to focus mainly on whether to make a post long or short, without thinking about the actual content in question.
For some copywriters, charging per word is the norm, so cramming in a lot of words means making more money, whether the extra words are necessary or not. Some however, know just when to cut the line. To these people, quality matters more.
In other cases, clients or employers slap an expected word count to a project, for which a writer must stick to. While some might be aligned to an accurate evaluation of the project, others are just plucked out of a hat. This often puts writers in a tough spot, as the word count to work with is often too large or too small.
So, the crux of the debate is: what is the ideal length for any piece of content? Blog posts, guest posts, interviews, landing pages and product descriptions – is there a one-size-fits-all approach?
The answer is simple. No.
The length of a blog or guest post cannot realistically be ideal for any product description or landing page. In fact, every article shouldn’t necessarily be restricted to a word count range.
However, there’s one ingredient – regardless of length – that every content form must contain:
Quality.
Yes, quality. You’re not looking to merely beef-up a website with blocks of words like newspaper pages. The primary aim is to keep the reader informed and interested. Then you can take up other means of conversion from there on in.
So, whether you’re writing a blog of 3,000-10,000 words, or a small product description of 100-300 words, without good quality, your content is as good as useless.
Again, what is ideal? Long or short? We are about to find out.