SSWT Internet Marketing Forum

The best length for an article is...what?

Searches on Google reveal ideas from between 370 (this includes title etc)
and 700.

What do you think and why?

Thank you

Richard

P.S. I favour a style of writing that involves using 1 or 2 line sentences with single line spacing between. With regard writing articles do you have to follow tradition in the way you write?

I would love to know this information as well. Thanks for posting this Richard!

In gratitude,

Natalie

What a sweet thing to say, thank you Natalie.

Richard

Hi Richard,

When I write articles for other marketers, they are usually about 400 - 500 words and are often used on their own sites. The ones I have submitted to article directories range from 250 word articles to 600 words. Often the shorter ones are used by people on their blogs as extra content.

As for reasons, I don't think about word count, I just try to be interesting and informative. Too long and people may lose interest - unless you're the kind of writer that people are hanging on to your every word.

I prefer to keep mine between 400-500 words. Many sites will not accept less than 400 words, and with much more than 500 you start to lose peoples interest.

Thank you all for your input.

As I said, I favour a style of writing that involves using 2 or 3 line sentences with single line spacing between.

Should I change this style of writing when it comes to articles?

I use this style in my newsletters and folk do say it's easy to read.

Thank you

Richard

I just submitted an article at ezinearticles and they want 250 to 500 words. Lots of the articles will be read on the screen so they should be short.

If you usually write long articles just split them in two and publish part one in the directory and in the resource box tell the reader - for part two visit my blog at yadayada.com

As for formatting you must follow the rules of the Directory. They do vary so maybe just learn the rules at one major directory and don't worry about the others.

All The Best

Alex

There is no such thing as an ideal length for an article - if you ask me.

The length is a result of how much valuable information you have to share and what kind of article you are writing. Some bloggers I have come across prefer to post only small bits at a time. They make up for it by writing two, three or even more post a day.

Steve Pavlina on the other hand writes articles that take you quite a while to read through. Still he manages to keep his audiences interest and is ultra successful. www.stevepavlina.com/blog (a recent post: 2561 words)

Paul Piotrowski is to be found somewhere in the middle. His articles are well structured and fun to read. www.inspiredmoneymaker.com (his last post: 762 words)

I am a regular reader of these two blogs. Check them out. There is a lot of good content waiting to be read.

The articles I write vary in length. I posted a pretty long article about video promotion. I researched a lot for it and had a lot to say.

My last post was rather short. My intention was simply to let my readers know about a nice little tool I found (actually I found this on Lynn's blog). I described it a little to get people interested and provided links to this service. I did not have to go into great detail for this. Thats why I kept it short.

To sum it up: The important thing is to remind youself that you are writing for humans and not for computers. Put yourself in your readers position and read your text as if seeing it for the first time. Like it? Find it interesting or even inspiring? Great, than publish it.
Did you have to get up to grab a second cup of coffee? Well, you might want to do a little editing.

Have a successful day,
Philipp

www.philippknoll.com

My journalism professors used to always say 400 to 600

I think the more important thing these days is the structure of the article sub-headings to get people to 'get what you're talking about' because these days people (including me) skim through the article to see if it's worth reading.

See copyblogger examples, he always attracts my attention by same-like but attractive sub-headings.

And as for ideal length, 300-400 words and if it's too long separate it in parts! If people see 10 page letter I believe many will be discouraged to read it and just..well...skim.

Down to testing I suppose if you can hold interest for 2000+ words and you have that amount of content to share with your readership then that's the way to go.

However if your knocking out fluff to fill a space or a schedule that your working to save yourself the time and energy.

10 page sales letters must work because you do see losts of them from the same people, time and time again.