The answer to this question posed by my client this afternoon is the proverbial: it depends.
There is no one prescribed perfect length for blogs, webpages or emails as ultimately, it’s the content inside that makes a difference. Despite this, there are experts everywhere who will claim otherwise. Let me just prove that this is a subject about which not everyone agrees.
No sooner had I finished reading Donald Miller’s “Building a Story Brand,” where he advocates that everyone reduce their web content by half, did I open Inc. Magazine’s September 2020 issue (I’m behind on my reading) to find Oatly! Oatgurt’s full page display ad mocking the idea that less is more by filling the page with 25 lines with near agate type — wrapped around a product shot — mocking proverbial advertising techniques.
Miller makes the point that website visitors are lazy and won’t read your copy, so he encourages his clients to replace text with visuals. He has a point. People are terribly lazy but prospects who are interested will dig in and search engines rely on fresh, rich, organic text to optimize a site so there has to be a compromise someplace. As a best practice for writing web copy, we typically argue that 300 words is the minimum for a well performing and educational web page.
Oatly! Oatgurt’s copy argues that advertising is too focused on sales and then proceeds to mock the idea of the tried and true call to action (CTA), calling it gimmicky in most instances. By being intentionally confrontational in their headline and copy, they draw the reader into both a conversation and a sort of scavenger hunt that is only resolved if you reach the footnote, or “asterisk,” where the product is finally clarified. There are thousands of great examples where fewer words worked wonders in display ads but for readers who stick with the Oatly! story all the way to the end, this example of more was more and worked wonders in engaging the reader in not only their product offering but acquainted them with their company culture, too.
Which brings me back to the question about blogging and the perfect word count. Blogs of fewer than 250 words simply mean that you didn’t spend enough time trying to plan out your story and blogs longer than 600 words, though well performing for SEO, may lose the attention of your reader. Keeping your blog posts between 350-500 words means that you’ve composed a well-thought out idea while still leaving more to the story to be addressed on another day (in another post).
This post is courtesy of MMC Principal Jennifer Koon