Let me attempt to outline some of the advantages and disadvantages of Long Posts vs Series of Posts.
The Pros and Cons of Long Posts
As you suggest – one of the options at your disposal is to simply write one long post. The beauty of doing this is that your readers get all the information on a topic in one uninterrupted post that they don’t need to keep coming back to over time. For reader satisfaction alone a long post can be great.
The problem with long posts is that unless you’re an incredibly gifted writer – many of your readers won’t get to the end of a long post. Studies into how people read online have shown that they respond better to short sharp pieces (although I do find readers respond well when I write long pieces too).
Another problem with long comprehensive posts is that they can actually drain you of ideas that could sustain your blog for a longer period of time. For example instead of writing one long post with 30 tips in it you alternatively could have written 30 shorter posts with 1 tip in each over a full month. I’ve seen a few bloggers launch with incredibly comprehensive posts that cover almost every aspect of their niche. Those posts can do very well with readers an on sites like Digg – but the next day the blogger can often be left wondering if there’s anything on their topic left to write.
The Pros and Cons of a Series
The advantages of a series of posts include:
- more posts to sustain you over time (see the 1 post with 30 tips or 30 posts with 1 tip example above)
- more focused posts help SEO (search engines are better able to accurately assess what a post is about when they have one topic instead of many)
- interlinked posts help SEO (search engines like an interlinked website)
- frequent posting helps SEO (if you have the choice between one post a month or 30 from an SEO perspective I’d go for 30 as search engines like a frequently updated site)
- a series can build momentum (regular posts that build on one another on a daily basis can create anticipation among readers)
- a series can build page impressions (if you’re interested in monetizing a blog with CPM ads then a series can be good as reader will click from one post to the next)
- a series can help motivate a blogger write a longer piece of work (the idea of writing a 30 point post can be pretty daunting – but setting yourself the goal to write a short post each day for a month (or shorter period) can be much more achievable).
Of course the downside of a series is that some of your readers will simply prefer to read all your content in one place at one time and could become frustrated with a ‘bitsy’ series.
Another negative of a series is that it can sidetrack your whole blog. For example – stopping normal posting just to write upon one smaller aspect of your topic for a month could disillusion readers who want you to cover a wider array of topics.
Another Option – do Both
Why make it a choice between a series and a longer post? How about doing both?
One of the approaches that I’ve experimented with a number of times is running a series and then combining all the parts into one post. For example when I wrote my Search Engine Optimization tips for bloggers I wrote it as a series initially but then combined it together into one longer post which I now link to from my top menus.
I find that some readers really appreciated this.
Some might worry that this causes duplicate content problems on your blog – but I don’t think you’d be penalized for it if it was an occasional thing and if you wrote a new introduction for the post (you’d probably also delete some of the connecting introductions to each individual post which would change it too).
For more information on how I generally construct a series of posts on a blog check out 10 Steps to Writing a Successful Series on Your Blog.
