Long vs Short Articles: How Long is A Piece of String?

So, finally, after many a year, I have decided to start a blog. Why now? and just plain why? You might ask.

Well in short it is because the process of writing articles is a long and drawn out one, usually taking a couple of hours at least, whilst, by contrast, blogging takes a shorter time and is good for quick commentary and ideas, rather than expansive and verbose articles and how-tos. What’s more is that many a web reader has a short attention span and they won’t even bother reading entire articles. Which raises the whole question about how long should an article be online?

Personally, I will always write long articles, as required, and will use the blog as more of a notepad of ideas that may or may not be relevant to the core content on the site itself. Both articles and a blog can be best used for marketing and promotion, acting as more of a honey pot, though a blog can also more readily be used for non-core content, purely for the benefit of PPC ad revenue.

At the end of the day, the most important element in all of this is that you create original and useful content for the web, things that visitors will raise their eyebrows at, link back to, or respond with comments to. The more you want to use any content to act as a honey pot for your services, the more you need to focus on content pertaining to such things. But on the whole, just do what comes naturally and write about things you care about.