How Long do You Really Need to Write a Blog Post?
If you’ve cracked this one, then you’ve probably found the holy grail of writing blog-posts.
Having worked on brand and content development for some time now, I constantly come across various kinds of writers.
Some say word count is no measure to judge the efficiency of a writer, while others try to go off topic by saying that content quality decides how many words they write in how much time.
Is that even fair enough?
Is it even a question a writer should ask them self?
In my opinion, definitely yes!
If you need to survive in the present day marketing scenario as a writer, then success doesn’t come in by doing what you like.
Good thing is, we have cracked the technical norms of writing user-friendly landing pages and attractive blog-posts.
But is that enough?
Having so many questions about effective writing this year, I thought this one was worth a second look. And here’s what I found out…
Starting With The Statistics
It’s always a good idea to get a hold of stats whenever you are researching about something. Works for me at least!
Hubspot surveyed around 4000 marketing professionals and found that most of them took around 1-2 hours to finish a post!
Quite interesting!
So clearly, we can establish that writing a good blog post has got nothing to do with taking your own sweet time.
If language and technical skill is something that comes naturally to you then wrapping up with a good piece of content shouldn’t be a problem.
We Can Now Start Thinking of The Length of The Post
Possibly another conundrum that most ‘writer’s’ haven’t been able to solve yet.
Dwelling more on how long posts should be, what works best for me is to go with the flow.
Blog posts must be informative, interactive and should speak out to a target audience. It should solve a problem or serve a purpose for them.
Ideally, the length of a piece of work depends on what you are trying to communicate with your audience.
Are you looking to drive leads ?
If so, then try to write benefit driven content instead of making it product driven. This is one time when writing short and effective content can work to your advantage.
Similarly, if you are trying to explain a concept, service or product to your readers, make sure you do it flawlessly with a hint of humor. (Only if you can get away with it!)
Getting back to an ideal blogging time benchmark, anything that gets your creative juices flowing is good enough.
There is no harm in writing a 2000 word post if it’s something that gives value to your readers.
Most marketers write anywhere between 1800-2500 words.
It’s amazing how they they write long enough and still keep their readers involved and drive traffic through their blogs!
Perhaps, something to ponder on another time.
To be consistent or to be deep?
Moving on, and coming back to the time we need to write an ideal post, let’s also address the elephant in the room.
‘The Quality of Your Content’
I have interviewed so many writers and yet, I haven’t found one who agrees that writing good content has very little to do with the time you take to write it. Every writer/marketer’s is also entitled to have their own personal opinion.
Another study by Orbit Media Studios shows some interesting findings.
Which also contradicts what I just said before.
They gave 1000+ bloggers an exact set of questions and found out that:
-Only 48% of bloggers take up to 2 hours or less to write a post.
-16% of bloggers take more than 4 hours to finish writing a blog.
-The time spent to write a typical post has increased by 8%
But,
Keeping the quality and length of an ideal blog post in mind, I thought it was best to see how marketers were actually doing it in real life.
Crazy Egg founder Neil Patel used to take up to 6 hours to write a 1000-2000 word post.
He easily does it now in under two hours!
Not just this, he also figured out a way to improve the quality of his content over time.
We all love his posts, don’t we?
Not bad at all, I’d say…
Jeff Bullas also has a similar benchmark. He feels that if you are focused enough, it is easy to write 1000 words within the hour!
Moving on to the guest posting master Danny Inny, it’s almost the same mantra.
Inny had to write 14 guests posts in just 6 days! He broke it down to working just 6 hours everyday.
And what was the result?
A total of 17,481 words, taking 77 minutes per post and writing up to 971 words an hour.
Isn’t that just amazing!
And we can really trust these people when it comes to quality!
Their blogs drive traffic and their readers just love them!
Every website analysis tool will probably tell you the same about them.
And The Lesson To Learn is?
If you are someone who feels that it may take a day or two to finish writing a good post, then it’s probably not enough.
Marketers these days are agile, proactive and know how to indulge an audience.
Everything else is simply an excuse!
Many successful people are writing amazing content in less than two hours.
And I honestly don’t know how any writer could ignore that!
They key out here is to understand that people who have mastered the art of writing effectively have also been a part of their trade for quite some time now.
Providing value to their customers via a blog is something that comes naturally to them.
If you want to do the same then start writing about something that you understand well.
Be it travel or healthcare or marketing!
Remember sky’s the limit… If you know what you want to write about, then there are no if’s or but’s to worry about.
If I could write this 1000 word post in less that an hour, then so can you.
Do you accept the challenge?