Tag: Pocket

I’m often overwhelmed by yet another measurement of one social channel or another but this extract from a recent Buffer article caught my eye.

“The ideal length of a blog post is 7 minutes, 1,600 words

When measuring the content that performs best on their site, Medium focuses not on clicks but on attention. How long do readers stick with an article?

In this sense, an ideal blog post would be one that people read. And Medium’s research on this front says that the ideal blog post is seven minutes long.”

Importantly they dicsuss about measuring attention or the time someone has spent on a particular page. Generally more time spent on a site or page is a good thing but on some pages you might not want people to linger so long, such as checkout pages, either way I find it a more human metric of what people find interesting rather than shares or clicks.

(As a follow on I also found this article on the Verge interesting about how many people may share an article but do they read it?)

Sadly our blog readers only reach an average of 1 and a half minutes, too short?

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Matt Cutts from Google explains why having a long established site on an old domain may not be enough to keep above new upstarts in Google search results.

His key points were:

• Take a fresh look at your site.
• Don’t coast on your number one position
• Update your site regularly

If you’re feeling down, build something says Rands.

“When I am in a foul mood, I have a surefire way to improve my outlook – I build something. A foul mood is a stubborn beast and it does not give ground easily. It is an effort to simply get past the foulness in order to start building, but once the building has begun, the foul beast loses ground.”

Like Rands, I often find building lego models with my children settles the mind after a day with my head in a screen or two. There’s a simple pleasure to it, something I can plan, build and complete in 20 minutes after dinner.

Sadly larger scale projects like my office, a truly blank slate in the garden, require a little more consideration and “consumption” of information before I feel ready to begin.

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Ben