Ah, the beauty of blogging. We’ve all read countless blog posts by now. Some good, some terrible, and some absolutely amazing. Think about the ones that were terrible, what do they have in common? Most likely, they are the ones that either (1) took too long to get a point across or (2) didn’t give you enough information.

A typical dilemma that bloggers have is how long their blog post should be. Well, that all depends. Here’s where your writing skills separate you from the blogging masses.

You want to deliver quality content in a concise manner. I mean think about it. Are you inspired to continue to read someone’s long-winded rant? Of course not! These bloggers are narcissistic and believe that everyone wants to know every single thought about a particular topic. Then they go on rambling about the same point over and over. Some of these long posts may also be due to bloggers who feel that have to write a lot to provide value. That is wrong as well. What’s valuable is a reader’s time so make the most of it by getting your point across with as little word lard as possible. I bet half the blog posts out there could be cut in reduced by 50%.

And how about those posts that just don’t say anything? They got you to land on their post and they waste the opportunity to gain a regular reader because the message is simply lacking. Even though it was a short post, you feel you wasted your time just by showing up.

Here are a few things to think about before pushing that publish button.

• Did I get my message across?
• Did I use enough examples?
• Was I redundant?
• Did lose focus and go off on a tangent?
• Would I be proud enough to send this to my mother/wife/son?

Before you publish, quite often, you’re the only judge of your work. Take a moment and ask yourself those questions and that should help you determine whether your blog post is too long or too short. With enough practice, you’ll be able to find that perfect, middle-ground. For most posts, 200-500 words is fine. Every once in a while you may come across a really useful topic and you may beef your post up to 1000 words or more. As a general rule, only a small percentage of your posts should be the latter.

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