Want to know the ideal length for a Post?
The ideal length of a blog or post is something that is very important. If your post is too long you will lose the reader's interest and if your post is too short then your post might be viewed as a post of lesser quality.
The average reader...
has a very short attention span. If your post catches their eye and they decide to click open your post then the first thing they will do is skim through your post quickly to look if this might be something they are interested in.
The reader will start quickly reading the first paragraph, then glance over the middle and finally scroll down to the end. So it is important to make these parts of your post stand out.
Because of the short attention span of the average reader it is important to not use very long paragraphs and use dividers or pictures.
The reader will mentally note the length of the post, anything too long will feel like it is too much effort to read and anything too short will be thought of a post of lesser quality. Like all things in life you will have to hit that sweet spot.
The sweet spot
A seductive introduction/first paragraph and eye catching pictures will persuade readers to take notice of your post, if they find that your post has the "ideal" length for their reading pleasure, well that is hook, line and sinker.
A lot of research has been done on the ideal length of a blog and the outcome is that readers prefer articles that will take them about 6 - 7 minutes to read, this equals posts of about 1600 - 1700 words (max).
Be sure to use pictures and paragraphs so that you don't lose the attention of your reader. A good structure of your post will keep things fresh and your readers' attention focused on what you are trying to convey.
Steemit
Steemit differs from other social media sites however, there is a lot of content on the site and reading and curating posts takes a lot of time. Let's say that you want to spend your 10 100% votes on good content, reading 10 minute long posts would take you a long time (even assuming that you find the quality articles in one go). Since curating and creating content is what most Steemians do on Steemit I think that for Steemians the reading "sweet spot" is lower than for other blog sites.
If look at the length of some of my high earning posts I find that they average around the 1000 words. This is an average reading time of 3 - 3.5 minutes per post.
https://steemit.com/gaming/@xervantes/why-the-dreamcast-was-ahead-of-its-time
https://steemit.com/htpc/@xervantes/home-theater-pc-basics
https://steemit.com/gaming/@xervantes/the-history-of-gaming-consoles
I also looked at other authors like @sweetsssj and low and behold her latest post is also around 1000 words long. Other high earning authors posts vary from 500 - 1000+ words.
The Takeaway
Make sure that you pimp your post with an inviting title blog picture
Make that first paragraph/introduction so that readers are drawn into your story.
Organize your post evenly, with good spacing and pictures.
Ideally use about 1000 words (3.5 minutes of reading material).
End with a summary or conclusion of your write up.
My take on this is that with the use of pictures and videos 1000 word posts tend to look longer than they actually are, because of this the post will have "high quality content" appearance. The reader will have the pleasant surprise of spending only 3 - 3.5 minutes reading through your riveting story.
Click here if you want to check the length of your post.
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Wow, this is brilliant! I will have to read it again before my next post and put it into action! Thanks @xervantes! Tip!
Thanks @flauwy, means a lot coming from you.
@xervantes got you a $1.48 @minnowbooster upgoat, nice! (Image: pixabay.com)
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This post has received a 0.78 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @banjo.
@xervantes, great work with this post mate,
Its true that most readers have a short attention spam,and seek out those eye popping headlines and pictures.
This post definitely caught my attention! Great work mate =)
Hey @gingerninja, glad to know that it worked :) thanks for the resteem.
Well I kind of expected my 5k word one to be too much for most but that’s why I enjoy writing longer things lol –once in a while. Nothing like providing a table of context to scare away a few : )
That’s nice to know for you it’s around 1k words. I tend to write around that or a bit longer maybe in the 1.5k range. Even some of my shorter ones tend to be 500 words. Either way I do use few images and even text dividers to make it easier on the reader.
One thing I think I need work on. Maybe you spent some time looking into this as well. How big should an image in the body of the text be? I tend to be lazy and I don’t use left or right align for an image. Also out of being lazy I tend to keep them around the same size as the cover image.
I have been trying to figure out the exact size of an image too. The thing to take into consideration is that people view the site from either their pc/laptop or a mobile device (and at different resolutions). This will make it hard to know what the ideal size of the image should be. What may look good on one device may look less good on the other. I tend to keep my images centered at 640x480.
This is a really nice piece. Do you know how many words it is?!
If you count the words in the picture around 900. Remember you don't need exactly 1000 words 900 - 1100 is also ok depending on your post.
Thanks dude! I noticed that the longer the post, the fewer comments I have, so I think you are onto something here!
Especially when you are just starting on Steemit people tend to skim through your posts when you have a large and loyal following you can make your posts longer. It can be discouraging if you spent hours upon hours on a long post only to find that no one takes the time to read it.
Exactly.
Checkout some of @curie's supported articles this week. At some point I'll analyse what's going on here!
this one out of curie this week: https://steemit.com/@antiquecourtyard
3 posts and off the blocktrades pretty sharpish!
Hi @xervantes! @flauwy is sending you 0.1 SBD tip and @tipU upvote
:)
send tips with @tipU | earn interest in @tipU profit
This is excellent!
I usually prefer reading shorter posts. I have found some long ones that I bookmarked for later, but I never go back to them usually.
I will implement this in my posts! Thanks!