Reconnecting...
Are Short Articles The Answer To Article Marketing?
I read recently an advice from an internet marketer (not at WA) who says that: "the ideal articles for EzineArticles are 205-280 words, and that an article above 300 words is too long for people to keep reading as they lose interest".
Even tough I don't doubt that he is successful with his internet marketing business, I totally disagree with everything in this statement.
When he says "ideal for EzineArtices"; it's far from ideal for them, it might just be ideal for him because he likes to write short articles in less than 10 minutes as he mentioned. But as for EZ, these kind of articles are just the kind they have gotten tired of. As a rule EzineArticles see short articles more like spam articles than longer ones.
Are people losing interest in reading your articles?
People will lose interest in reading your articles if they are empty and offer no value to the readers or just trying to sell them. If it's the case, they will leave your article even before getting to the 100 word mark.
On the other end if your article is constructed intelligently and gives answers to some of the questions that your readers have or help them in some way, they will read your articles all the way through even if it is over 400 words.
The benefits of writing longer articles is that not only if offers value to your readers and they will come back for some more, but those articles are more pleasing to article directories as well. On top of this, publishers will more likely be willing to pick up your articles and post them on their sites. This in turn will give even more exposure to your articles.
As far as I am concerned short articles are NOT of any benefits what so ever, beside taking only 10 minutes to write instead of 20. This really isn't worth it to me and my internet business.
I know we all want our articles picked up and used on other sites but a hollow shell of words can hardly be better than an information-packed 1,000 word article.
Now if the intent is to tease the reader to follow the link it may be possible but then it takes a very good talent to pack sufficient interest and value into less than 300 words to "lure" the reader through your link.
Is this a trend of future articles? Has our attention span been so reduced that 15 minutes of fame is too long? Providing value is the bottom line. If you could squeeze it into 300 words you are way better a talent than I.
As far as I'm concerned I'm following good practice.
I learnt to write articles for the web at Suite101, a journalist-focused article site. They wouldn't accept that articles were sufficient quality if less than 400 words.
I suspect Ezine also look favourable on articles over 400 words.
Writing an article "that long" requires a little more skill in retaining the attention of the reader. However if you've not grabbed their interest in the intro, the other 300 words are irrelevant!
