Do you think long and drawn out posts or short posts are best?

I had a interesting discussion with my psychologist yesterday about blogging. He said there have been many studies that if you drag a topic on for too long that you are going to loose your readers. He suggests that I make short and to the point blog posts in order to keep people interested. Do you think long and drawn out posts or short posts are best?

Greg

Short posts are best IMHO as they're easier to process and less of a time investment. Although I tend to break the rule and ramble on I do notice the difference in response to short vs. long posts both on forums and blogs.

If you look at major sites, lots of times they will break up complicated tutorials and such into sections. I used to think this was just to inflate page (and therefore ad) views but part of it is probably about readability.

If I click on a blog post and it's paragraph after paragraph I'm going to close the tab unless it's something I'm really interested in or the intro is just that good.

I doubt it but they are always doing study groups.

P.S. proper spelling is my serious downfall. I have a mental illness and did not do good in school because of it.

I also think the format in which it is posted. For me, I have to have long posts to show people step by step on how to do things. But I break it down into steps and even sections so people can take breaks and come back to it later if they need to.

With my type of blog there really isn't much content that could be broken up. But I do like your idea.

It is a excuse if you have a learning disability, granted my spelling has improved over the years. Through repetition of posting on forums, but I suffer from memory loss. Tomorrow I will not even remember this conversation unless the forum sends me a reminder.

EDIT: memory loss is one of my many symptoms.

Thank you, I am glad you like it. I hope to really ramp things up after the first of the year. My wife is buying me that 12.8mp (thought it was 14) 8GB bloggie Sony camera that does 4hrs of 1080p video. (I'm getting it for Christmas) My plan is to add high rez pictures for download as well as add high rez video to the website. I want people from all around the word to get a in depth view of our community.

Greg, if are making spelling errors, why don't you use spell check? All of my community used to complain about my spelling cuz I wasn't paying attention, until a friend showed me FF spell check. Now, I carefully re read everything I put up so that it makes a good impression on readers. This helps with building our reputation as serious, efficient "speakers"

How to use FireFox spell check

These, I like^^

Long posts have their place, but lately, on some forums I've been on, if the OP is long, and very long, you'll get response posts upon the thread that begin only reading the shorter posts, while apologies go up saying that "I didn't read the first post cuz it was too long"

I would usually ignore stuff like that, and just say they're missing out, but...if the OP could have made a shorter, punchier opening salvo with the same bullets but wrapped up shorter, would the audience have been larger?

Anyone else think Twitter is masterful for forcing us to sharpen up upon our "edit selves" mode?


gogo

I use 2 spell checkers one in chrome and the other in jet pack. They seem to work well.

I know what your talking about I see it time and time again on forums where they said they didnt read the OP because it was too long. Its sad really!

Greg

Is it though?
I've really been thinking about this.
Maybe they're just asking for peeps to drop the extra, and instead keep it clear?

Do you text or Twitter...do you know what I mean?



gogo

Ya I use twitter and facebook.

P.S. It helps with visitors but I would much rather have my visitors coming from google searches.

Really depends on your base, but it's interesting to see folks clump and gravitate towards different styles. As I'm sure you guys can ascertain by reading my posts, I tend to ramble. A lot. I've been known to throw down 6000 word expositions if I really get wound up... of course, I still try to keep the individual sentences snappy. A big turn-off is to have to read multiple sentences that wend their way through fifteen commas before you hit a period.

Sometimes I'm successful. Other times I'm not. Historically we've had issues with some of us getting too impressed with our own vocabularies, so I tend to ramble a bit if I feel I need to explain. Otherwise I end up having to explain words like "verisimilitude" (which is a buzzword of mine that comes out without me even really noticing it) over and over.

I prefer shorter posts. Unless it's really an interesting one, I become bored, loose concentration if it's a really long post.

I prefer short when possible.

Two more votes for short but sweet posts, please keep up the feedback guys.