Should you "write short"?
Ever since I joined Substack, the best practice I have heard was to “write short”. It started as shorter than 1,500 words, and then it reduced to 800-1,100 words. Is that good advice, though?
Hi friends,
If you want to dive deeper into standing out on Substack, I highly recommend checking out this piece.
Ever since I joined Substack, the best practice I have heard was to “write short”. It started as shorter than 1,500 words, and then it reduced to 800-1,100 words. Probably in a year it will be a tweet, but I tend to write long. When I first came to Substack every post I wrote was 5,000+ words. Since then, I’ve been interspersing long posts with shorter ones, and I finally get it.
I see now that “write short” means “shorter posts get better engagement”. Engagement generally means more likes, comments, and restacks. I would also include simply more opens or reads into that mix.
Recently I’ve been testing writing short (approximately 1,500 words or below), and they easily get read more and shared more than my longer posts.
The thing with short articles is that they are usually focused on one point and one point is easier to share than a manifesto. I can share a singular conce…
