One of the pieces of blogging advice you may get is to keep posts short. People don’t have long attention spans, and they flit from piece to piece of information without staying long at any particular one. Writing short posts can be nice also because you can write without making a big time commitment.

Still, I personally prefer to write longer posts much of the time. Most of the time, “longer” means just a few paragraphs, but at other times, I like to use the post to explore my thoughts. It’s hard to get into the guts of an idea or concept in 100 or 200 words. Just because I like writing, it can be tempting to keep writing. The trick is to actually go somewhere with my comments rather than to follow the train of thought until it ends in the middle of the woods, instead to end strong and with a point that connects with people.

I personally don’t mind reading posts or articles of six or eight paragraphs. To me, that suggests that authors are going somewhere with their thoughts, supporting their ideas with experiences and events, and going beyond a surface commentary and analysis.

Notice that I said six or eight paragraphs. Much more than that, and I’m going to think I don’t have time for this and go elsewhere.

I asked a question on Twitter a couple of weeks ago: “If you read blogs, what makes a blog post interesting to you?” I received just a few replies:

  • “Topic/theme of interest to me, speaks to me, about something I want to learn about”
  • “the personality of the writer. I like wit that isn’t prententious”
  • “What makes an interesting blog post: Tell me an idea or insight you’ve had, and why it’s important to you”

So length may be a factor in engaging people, but it’s certainly not the first thing. I’m not saying that Tom Johnson agrees with me here, but long posts are not one of his seven deadly sins of blogging so far (they’re listed in the first paragraph of his post on the first sin). Writing on topics that are interesting, that connect with people, is the key and the challenge.

If you hate long posts, let me know. If you love them, let me know. But I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m interested enough in a topic and analyzing it enough to write a lengthy post about it.

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