You may have heard that longer blog posts are “better” than shorter blog posts. But, nothing could be further from the truth – provided you know how to make an impact with a short blog post. After all, it’s the content that matters most, not the length. Short blog posts, from 300 to 500 words, serve a purpose too. That’s why it’s really best to include both long and short posts. Once you learn how to write short posts with impact, you’ll see the benefits of doing so.

* Start with a Compelling Headline – You know it’s true. You read a blog post, or anything for that matter, based on the headline that you clicked through. Your headline needs to tell the reader what’s in the content without being absurd or tricky. Tell them what you’re going to tell them for the most impact.

* Be Concise – A short blog post with all the fluff removed will make a huge impact because it’s based on one main subject and point. You won’t have to worry about losing your readers’ attention with a short blog post that imparts one important point to the reader. Good editing will help make short blog posts impactful.

* Make It Scannable – People read differently online than they read on paper. On paper people always read from left to right. Online people tend to scan something from top to bottom first, looking at the left side of the page. Using bullets, headlines, and attention-grabbing headlines will help guide the reader.

* Laser Focus the Topic – A short blog post needs one laser-focused topic to consider with one main point. For example, instead of “Five Reasons to XYZ” you might want to write about “The Most Important Reason to XYZ”.

* Engage Your Readers – Always ask for comments. You can make a huge impact with engagement after your one-topic blog post. This makes the short blog post worth more than a larger post in terms of shareability and activity.

* Include Relevant Imagery – Using the right images for your short blog posts carries new weight, because the better your image the more likely your blog post is to be shared by those who read it. A well-composed blog post along with the right image (which, by the way, can stand in for approximately a thousand words) will make a huge impact.

* Practice Good Copywriting Technique – The best thing you can do is to remember that verbs are more important than nouns. Actionable content gets better results. Most people don’t think about copywriting when composing a blog post, but with a short blog post it’s imperative if you want to make an impact.

* Know Your Audience – Which platforms does your audience use to access your content? How can you customize your content to match audience needs, wants, and preferences? What does your audience want and need to know? Any way that you can do that will improve the impact of your short blog posts immeasurably.

Short blog posts also take less time to write than longer blog posts. They don’t have to keep the reader’s attention as long, and focus on only one topic at a time. Focus each short blog post on a minute topic that is important to your audience for the most impact. In addition, a shorter post will be better written than a longer post due to the attention paid to ridding a post of extraneous words and sticking to the point.

When creating content for your online products, services, and marketing materials it can be easy to become stale, boring, and out of touch with your audience – to the point that they can no longer relate to you. If you keep in mind first your audience and then your goals, you will be able to overcome these common problems.

Tell Your Story

Starting from your customer’s perspective, tell your story with them in mind. You can speak to them from the voice of a customer yourself. After all, why did you create the products or services that you did? Did you do it because you needed them yourself? How did you discover the need for your product or service? Why you? Stay in the perspective of the customer during the story and they will relate to your offerings better.

Don’t Be Pretentious

Instead of using jargon and “corporate” speak, talk to your audience members as if they’re your equals and you’ll become more human to them. It will also give you a chance to show your personality to them. While you do want to be a thought leader and a teacher, you don’t want to appear as a know-it-all and boring.

Seek to Be Relevant

Stay up-to-date on your industry so that you can remain relevant. Don’t stick to the old ways of doing things long after it’s not being done any longer. Pay attention to what’s coming down the pike and you’ll always stay on top of your niche and be relevant to your audience.

Use Plain Language

Speak to your audience as if you’re talking to a good friend. Write how you talk. No need to use bigger words than you would normally use. If it helps, get some voice to text software and talk your blog posts and content. You can also try doing vlogs if it helps you avoid using language that is unnatural to you.

Focus on Your Audience

No matter what you are writing, blogging, vlogging, and doing, it’s always supposed to be about your audience. They need to know what’s in it for them, and to keep the focus on them over yourself. Instead of seeking to glamorize yourself and put yourself above them, put them on a pedestal and make it all about them at all times.

Make Each Word Count

Once you finish writing a piece of content, edit it for extraneous words. Pare it down so that your writing is concise and to the point. Try writing shorter sentences instead of long-winded sentences. In addition, don’t make paragraphs too long and keep each blog post to one narrow focus.

Keep One Voice across Channels

Regardless of which channel you’re promoting your content on, it’s important that you know what your voice is. The tone, voice, and feeling of what you put out to the world should feel the same whether they read it on your blog or read it on LinkedIn.

Include Appropriate Imagery

With any content, you can get your point across easier if you use images. Sometimes a concept is just easier to express with an image and other times the image just helps set the mood and tone for the entire post.

You can incorporate more humanity, humor and personality into your content by remembering who your audience is and who you are. Seek to be yourself, while also delivering great content to your audience.

One of the things that can be frustrating when you start an online business, is knowing whether or not the hard work you’re putting in is making an impact at all. This can be hard to tell if you don’t know the signs, when you’re not making a full-time living yet from your efforts. Here are some good indicators that you’re making an impact.

You Have Regular and Increasing Website/Blog Visitors

Building traffic on a website or blog takes time. You’re not going to get a million page views overnight. But if your visitors are increasing and regular then that shows that what you’re doing is making an impact. Pay close attention to individual blog posts or other content that is getting the most the most traction and do more content like that.

Your Content Is Being Read, Shared, and Commented On

If people who visit your website read, that’s great, but if they share and comment on what you’re doing, that’s even better. Engagement is a much better indicator of impact than pure site visitors. Be sure to reply to those who comment and if you are notified of shares, thank them.

You’re Consistently Making New Connections

Are people seeking you out more and more to connect with you on various social media accounts? If so, that is a great sign that you’re making a huge impact on their thoughts and actions with your online presence.

You’re Being Invited to Speak at Events

A very exciting thing that can happen when you’re making an impact in your niche is getting invited to speak at events – either online or offline. It might frighten you, or feel as if it’s way out of your comfort zone, but it’s important to accept opportunities as they come that will further your business goals.

Your Content Is Being Curated

If other people are talking about your content on their blogs and websites and sharing it, then you’re absolutely making an impact. This type of engagement is an excellent indication that you’re making waves within your niche as a thought leader.

You’re Getting New Email Subscribers Every Day

If you’ve set up an email subscribe form (and you should) and you’re getting new subscribers every day, then you’re making a huge impact. Every subscriber will take you closer to your online business success goals.

You’re Building a Community

The more you build your business, the more you will (if you set it up right) build a community consisting of prospects and customers. Your customers will become fans for you, convincing the prospects to join them. You can do this via your Facebook page or a LinkedIn group, or even with a forum on your own website. Often it happens rather organically when you’re making an impact.

You’re Earning Money

You promote products and services and start making money or someone asks to pay money to put an advertisement on your website. Even just a few dollars means you made an impact on someone.

In addition to these success indicators, some other signs that you’re making an impact are that you’ve taken the time to create a professionally designed blog that you’re proud of, and keep it updated regularly.

If you need to hire a writer, first you have to determine what type of writing you want. There are several types of writing that you will need to promote your business.

Often it can be difficult to know what type of writing you need, though. It’s easy to think that all writing is the same, but it’s not. There is writing to communicate and writing to sell.

Writing to Communicate

This type of writing is what you need to communicate information to potential and future customers. It might be blog posts, white papers, advertorials, eBooks, eReports, and other informational type content. This is what you need a content writer for. This type of writing is intended to teach, inform, engage and inspire.

Writing to Sell

This type of writing is usually called copywriting. It is a special type of writing using specialized skills. Writing to sell is all about your sales pages, sales emails, direct mail, websites and brochures. This is a completely different type of writing and is exclusively focused on making sales. It uses tools of the trade like emotional trigger words that help a reader choose to make a purchase.

Content Marketing

Writing to communicate is used in content marketing. When you place your content on other websites as with guest blog posts, or articles in online and offline magazines, it’s important to know how to write for information, entertainment and engagement in such a way that isn’t overtly selling – like a sales page, for instance. This isn’t to say that good content marketing doesn’t include some light forms of copywriting.

Sales Page Writing

On a sales page you will need to inform, but more importantly you’ll need to compel the reader to take action. This is probably some of the strongest types of copywriting that you will do outside of display advertising, banner ads, and email that is designed to push sales. This type of writing is completely different from content writing, even when content writing is spruced up with some good copywriting.

They’re Different But Can Be Combined

It’s important to understand the difference between writing to sell and writing to communicate. Just for reference’s sake, what you are reading right now is an example of writing to communicate. You are given a lot of information, being taught something, and there are no emotional trigger words being used to get you to make a purchase. However, it can change. If, at the end of this information the point is for you to purchase or sign up for something, it will soon become clear by the types of words used.

Copywriting helps with every type of writing for business. It’s in the headlines of a blog post. It’s in the headline of the next email marketing message you send your audience. Copywriting is what makes you want to read the next word written and drives you to want to learn more. Copywriting brings life to the words on the page or the screen.

Without copywriting, no one will read what you have to say. If you want results from the content that you put out to the world, learn as much as you can about copywriting or hire an expert.