You can’t help but stumble upon more and more blog postings as publishers are increasingly turning to blog, RSS and Web2.0 formats for publishing their information. 

Sometimes it’s just plain painful trying to find a point in the thousands of words as blog publishers ramble on.

So, it begs the question, how long should blog postings be.

There are a few factors to take into account when considering how long your blog postings will be…

• What is the point of your post
• Detailed information or news
• How often do you publish
• What is the point of your post – to drive back-links, inform readers, announcement, etc…
• Impact on search engines

It’s not like this is the first time such an argument has come up…remember,

• short sales letters or long?
• long articles or short?
• (more recently) videos under 0-minutes or longer?

I can share what is working for us.

First, I like to publish at least daily – sometimes multiple times each day.  My feeling is it drives more traffic, but more importantly I enjoy doing it and can’t imagine days where I don’t try and post something of value (except weekends of course).

Second, I try to post at least 2-3 longer, more detailed, educational posts each week for a few reasons that include offering additional value to my readers, but also providing the basis of submitting to other blog publishers from cross-posting, tracebacks and Web2.0 ratings (such as Digg’s)

Third, I like to balance the purpose of my posts between education, informing, announcements, reviews and other news items that I think will be of interest to my subscribers.  Often, it’s a guessing game, but I can tell by comments, number of visits, opt-ins, conversions (in the off-chance I include a product link in a posting), and various analytics programs from Google and Feedburner. 

Fourth, I try to stay on purpose with some entertainment or opinion, but I stay very conscious of rambling on.  Nothing bugs me more than rambling in a lame attempt at looking like you have a personality – it happens in all media: print, blogs, audio (one of the big problems with podcasts), and video.  Longer posts need extra special attention to make sure they offer tremendous value or else they will lose interest FAST!

There you have my experience and theory on length of blog postings – same holds true for any content publishing such as articles, websites, audio and video. 

What are your preferences, do you like short or long articles and blog postings?

Jeff