On Short-Short Blogging
25 April, 2024
By short-short blogging, I mean the kinds of posts that Seth Godin and Dave Winer often publish. Brief posts — around 350 to 400 words at most. Or maybe even just a few dozen words.
While short-short blog posts are sometimes, though not always, link stations, they can be quite powerful. You can’t do much analysis or offer much insight in that limited number of words, but short-short blog posts can be a great way to:
- Put ideas out there for consideration and comment.
- Make a brief comment on a topic of note or interest.
- Write just enough about a subject or an idea to pique the interest of your readers.
In some ways, going short-short takes us back to the roots of blogging. To the days before blogging became a long-form way to express yourself on the web. To the days before everyone started obsessing about keywords and SEO optimal lengths of posts and all of the stuff that really does little for a blog.
Good short-short blogging definitely isn’t easy. Writing a short-short post can be more difficult to pull off than a penning a longer one. If you’re planning on doing some short-short blogging, you’ll need to:
- Zoom in on one key point of a topic or idea.
- Make one key argument or comment. That argument or comment should be an informed one.
- Have a call to action for your readers — for example, to leave feedback or to post their own take on the topic.
- Include relevant links to back up your argument or comment, and to refer back to what you’re talking about.
Give it a try. You never how your readers will react to short-short blog posts until you publish them.