How Long Is Too Long Nowadays?
I get this question a lot: “Should my thought-leadership articles be long or short?”
My answer? “Yes.”
That’s not a hedge. It’s my honest advice.
Yes…true, people’s attention spans are shrinking. Brevity is the soul of wit. But authority is the soul of expertise.
If you have little to say on a given topic, what message does that implicitly send to the intended audience? More than that…what message does it send to the algorithms on Google and social media platforms? Not the one you want.
These platforms have released the details of changes to their algorithms that favor “helpful” content from “authoritative experts.” They are suppressing content that sniffs of AI…you know, the short punchy blog posts that you think people want to read?
Short = Sweet?
So yes…experiment with shorter posts. They could very well be the bite-sized bits of wisdom your network is hungry for. But don’t be exclusive to them.
Both the people you need to pay attention and the algorithms that are indexing your content — and both are constantly judging the value and authority of your expressed expertise — value depth and differentiation.
And if you thought this post was too long to read, then I have a shorter one I can send you!