Matter Solutions previously wrote about “how many blog posts should I write for my business”, analysing several HubSpot studies and looking at how much time is dedicated to writing the blog posts. Since writing this, Orbit Media Studios have released their 2016 data, which could have a big impact for businesses who have a content marketing strategy in place.
In 2015, Orbit Media Studios found 48% of bloggers spent two hours or less per post, with only 16% spending more than four hours per post. This was only a small increase from data collected in 2014.
However, in 2016 there has been a huge increase in time spent writing, with the average blog post taking 3 hours 16 minutes to write, this is 26% more time than in 2015. Twice as many bloggers now spend over six hours on their average post. In 2015, half of the surveyed bloggers spent less than two hours writing a post. In 2016 that has decreased to a third.
The dramatic increase in time spent per article can be attributed to the increasing popularity of long-form content. Orbit Media Studio’s data found the average blog post is now 1,054 words. The amount of blog posts that are under 500 words is strongly declining, while the percentage of blog posts over 2000 words has doubled. Backlinko found pages with longer content ranked significantly better, and the average word count on a Google first page result is 1,890 words.
Long-form content is increasing in its popularity simply because it achieves more results than shorter content. There are a few reasons why it is able to achieve such results:
In 2015, Moz teamed up with Buzzsumo to analyse the shares and links of over one million articles. Amongst their findings, they looked at the impact of content length on total shares and domain links:
This data shows long-form content consistently gets higher average shares and links than shorter content. This is consistent with their findings from 2014. This finding is supported by HubSpot, which found articles with a word count over 2,500 words received more shares on social media. Furthermore, they also found a positive correlation between high performing pages and word count over 2,250. HubSpot found posts between 2,250 and 2,500 words earned the most organic traffic.
The increasing popularity of long-form content means content is being posted less frequently. HubSpot’s study found companies that published 16 or more blog posts per month got 3.5 times more traffic than companies that published between 0-4 per month.
Orbit Media Studio’s 2016 data found the percentage of content produced daily is decreasing, with the percentage down more than 50%, with a 7% increase in weekly posting, and a 38% increase in monthly posting.
As more time is invested into writing high quality, long-form content, the amount of blog post produced decreases.
However, in a disappointing finding for businesses, increasing the word count and quality of a blog post does not necessarily translate to an increase in result. In line with HubSpot's findings, those who post more content will still achieve higher results, despite the length of the post.
Businesses are investing more time in long-form content, which lowers the frequency of blog posts and therefore does not increase traffic to the website. The continual production of 500 word blog shows many businesses simply do not have the time to dedicate to writing a blog over 3000 words. If you don’t have the time to dedicate to a 3000 word long blog article, but short, 500 word blogs won’t get shares, then what is the solution?
Both Entrepreneur and Forbes have predicted that, come 2017, there will be an increase in dense content. Usability Geek describes this as “the ratio of content on a page in relation to the size of that same page.” Content dense posts usually have more keywords, and is easy to understand, and therefore helps to improve a website’s SEO. While the recent trend has been to produce increasingly long posts, people may not read the entire article, as it is too long, complex and requires too much attention. Content density is all about an articles per word value. It’s sometimes better to write a shorter article that has a higher value, rather than produce a 3000 word article that is dull, unnecessarily detailed and convoluted. This means there could potentially be less time spent writing, while the readers will receive more value.
It’s clear that there is an increasing trend to writing long-form content, and there are many advantages to gain from producing such work. It’s important to consider whether it is better to produce long-form piece of higher value to gain more social media shares once a month, or if it’s better to produce 1000 word pieces more frequently to continue gaining traffic.
Matter Solutions previously wrote about “how many blog posts should I write for my business”, analysing several HubSpot studies and looking at how much time is dedicated to writing the blog posts. Since writing this, Orbit Media Studios have released their 2016 data, which could have a big impact for businesses who have a content marketing strategy in place.
In 2015, Orbit Media Studios found 48% of bloggers spent two hours or less per post, with only 16% spending more than four hours per post. This was only a small increase from data collected in 2014.
However, in 2016 there has been a huge increase in time spent writing, with the average blog post taking 3 hours 16 minutes to write, this is 26% more time than in 2015. Twice as many bloggers now spend over six hours on their average post. In 2015, half of the surveyed bloggers spent less than two hours writing a post. In 2016 that has decreased to a third.
The dramatic increase in time spent per article can be attributed to the increasing popularity of long-form content. Orbit Media Studio’s data found the average blog post is now 1,054 words. The amount of blog posts that are under 500 words is strongly declining, while the percentage of blog posts over 2000 words has doubled. Backlinko found pages with longer content ranked significantly better, and the average word count on a Google first page result is 1,890 words.
Long-form content is increasing in its popularity simply because it achieves more results than shorter content. There are a few reasons why it is able to achieve such results:
In 2015, Moz teamed up with Buzzsumo to analyse the shares and links of over one million articles. Amongst their findings, they looked at the impact of content length on total shares and domain links:
This data shows long-form content consistently gets higher average shares and links than shorter content. This is consistent with their findings from 2014. This finding is supported by HubSpot, which found articles with a word count over 2,500 words received more shares on social media. Furthermore, they also found a positive correlation between high performing pages and word count over 2,250. HubSpot found posts between 2,250 and 2,500 words earned the most organic traffic.
The increasing popularity of long-form content means content is being posted less frequently. HubSpot’s study found companies that published 16 or more blog posts per month got 3.5 times more traffic than companies that published between 0-4 per month.
Orbit Media Studio’s 2016 data found the percentage of content produced daily is decreasing, with the percentage down more than 50%, with a 7% increase in weekly posting, and a 38% increase in monthly posting.
As more time is invested into writing high quality, long-form content, the amount of blog post produced decreases.
However, in a disappointing finding for businesses, increasing the word count and quality of a blog post does not necessarily translate to an increase in result. In line with HubSpot's findings, those who post more content will still achieve higher results, despite the length of the post.
Businesses are investing more time in long-form content, which lowers the frequency of blog posts and therefore does not increase traffic to the website. The continual production of 500 word blog shows many businesses simply do not have the time to dedicate to writing a blog over 3000 words. If you don’t have the time to dedicate to a 3000 word long blog article, but short, 500 word blogs won’t get shares, then what is the solution?
Both Entrepreneur and Forbes have predicted that, come 2017, there will be an increase in dense content. Usability Geek describes this as “the ratio of content on a page in relation to the size of that same page.” Content dense posts usually have more keywords, and is easy to understand, and therefore helps to improve a website’s SEO. While the recent trend has been to produce increasingly long posts, people may not read the entire article, as it is too long, complex and requires too much attention. Content density is all about an articles per word value. It’s sometimes better to write a shorter article that has a higher value, rather than produce a 3000 word article that is dull, unnecessarily detailed and convoluted. This means there could potentially be less time spent writing, while the readers will receive more value.
It’s clear that there is an increasing trend to writing long-form content, and there are many advantages to gain from producing such work. It’s important to consider whether it is better to produce long-form piece of higher value to gain more social media shares once a month, or if it’s better to produce 1000 word pieces more frequently to continue gaining traffic.
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