Taking Longer to Keep Business Blogs Short

Short is not easy in writing or in speaking.  In fact, short is much more difficult, stresses USA Today founder Al Neuharth.

Neuharth wasn’t trying to offer business blogging assistance, but he might well have been. "Getting things short and to the point is the most important thing we should keep in mind…in writing or speaking," he explains.  Why? "Long-winded stuff loses the attention of listeners, readers, viewers, friends, and even family", he adds.

As a freelance SEO copywriter offering business blogging help, I can say that Neuharth’s advice about losing attention is doubly true when it comes to online searchers.  Scanners rather than readers, searchers who arrive at your business blog need virtually instant assurance they’ve come to the right spot for the information, advice, or products they need.

Deborah Tannen, linguistics professor at Georgetown University isn’t as forceful about brevity as Neuharth.  "Brevity hones thinking and forces clarity," she concedes, "but can also mean losing subtlety and nuance."

In corporate blogging training, I offer advice that’s a compromise between the two views: Make blog posts as long as they need to be to get the point across, but not a single sentence longer. Remember that blog content writing needs to be personal and conversational, not terse.

Daniel Scocco leans more towards the Neuharth camp: "If you’re lucky," he warns, you will have online readers giving you 30 seconds of their time.  He advises: "Get to the point, quickly." "Choose simple words."  "Edit, removing unnecessary words and sentences."

Whoever said this blog content writing thing would be easy?  As Scocco reminds us all, "Size does matter, and less is more."