This is a question lots of my clients and people I meet at business events ask. Sorry to disappoint you, but there’s no definitive answer!
Seth Godin writes every day, but sometimes it is as little as 70 words and sometimes it’s 700 (and occasionally even more).
The secret is to write what you want to say – and then stop writing. If that’s after 200 words, don’t worry about length – it’s the value that matters. It might take you 400 words to get your message across, it may take a lot more or far fewer, but it doesn’t matter if the message is clear and useful.
Common beliefs about blogs
Nobody reads much these days
People tend to scan, especially when reading on a smartphone, but if you have a good headline and interesting content (to them) they’ll read some, if not all of it.
Long content works
If you’re an expert and are sharing valuable information, people will read it.
You need at least 300 words for SEO
This is not really true. Any fresh content on your website helps with keeping your visibility high with the search spiders. They’re very sophisticated these days and, as long as your content is relevant to the main subject of your website, it will help your rankings and expert reputation.
It doesn’t matter what you write as long as your keywords are in there
That’s no longer the case. The search spiders are well up with AI and read content pretty much the same way we do (except much, much faster!) Keyword stuffing is more likely to figure as a negative than a positive. If you write a load of rubbish with lots of keywords, nobody will read it.
Get ChatGPT to write your blogs
This is an easy way to generate content – but with the best will in the world, it won’t sound like you. At best it reads like a bland, middle-of-the-road AI content generator!! My advice is to either create your own GPT and teach it how to replicate your style or use ChatGPT for ideas, then put your unique spin on the content.
Top tips
- Know what your key message is for each post and ensure everything is taking you towards that outcome.
- Plan your blog – title, subheadings, points. It will make writing much easier and keep you focused.
- Leave it for a day or two and then re-read it and check for sense, spelling/typos, punctuation, etc. Or get someone who is fussy about English to do that for you.
- Be ruthless and edit out anything that doesn’t contribute to the core message. Waffle turns readers off!
- Find a good image that will attract reader attention.
Happy blogging!
