Hacker Noon Study 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 minutes? A lesson learned from top writers. A few months ago, I’ve analyzed 694 posts from 10 writers that I follow on , and that I think are top Medium writers. They have between 50k and 150k followers. I’ve analyzed all the articles they posted between July 1st — November 30th, 2016. During that period, each writer posted between 22 and 213 articles, that were somewhere between 1-minute and 32-minute reads. Medium So here are the results of all these posts. Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts More than 60% of the posts are 3-, 4- or 5-minute reads, and more than 90% are 2- to 9-minute reads. Yet, it looks like longer posts have more recommends: the average number of recommends for 4-minute reads is about 600, whereas it is close to 1,000 for 9-minute reads. It even goes up to 4,000 recommends for 32-minute reads! Yet, only two 32-minute reads have been posted. So you probably think that you should write 30-minutes-long posts. Well, actually it’s not that simple. Let’s learn some more by breaking it down to each writer, to find out what is actually the best-performing post length. If you don’t want to have a look to each graph for each writer, you can directly skip to the Learnings . James Altucher 144k followers top writer : , , Business Entrepreneurship Life Lessons Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts Number of articles written between July — December 101 Number of recommends for these posts 37,000+ That makes an average of 360+ ❤ per post Posts that he writes the most 3-minute posts (29%), 4-minute posts (23%), 2-minute posts (17%), and 5-minute posts (13%) Posts that seem to get the most ❤ 8-minute posts (620+ ❤, yet he only wrote two), and 5-minute posts (580+ ❤) Darius Foroux 65k followers top writer : , , , Inspiration Business Life Startup, Productivity Editor of (20k followers) Art of Practicality Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts Number of articles written between July — December 39 Number of recommends for these posts 46,000+ That makes an average of 1,100+ ❤ per post Posts that he writes the most 5-minute posts (36%), 4-minute posts (26%), and 6-minute posts (13%) Posts that seem to get the most ❤ 7-minute posts (2,500+ ❤) Benjamin P. Hardy 123k followers top writer : , , , , Entrepreneurship Life Life Lessons Productivity Self-Improvement Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts Number of articles written between July — December 37 Number of recommends for these posts 83,000+ That makes an average of 2,200+ ❤ per post Posts that he writes the most 7-minute posts (16%), 4-minute, 5-minute and 9-minute posts (14% each), and 6-minute and 11-minute posts (8% each) Posts that seem to get the most ❤ 32-minute posts (3,900+ ❤) and 8-minute posts (3,800+ ❤) Larry Kim 173k followers top writer : , , , , Social Media Venture Capital Business Startup Entrepreneurship Editor of (139k followers) Marketing and Entrepreneurship Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts Number of articles written between July — December 213 Number of recommends for these posts 79,000+ That makes an average of 370+ ❤ per post Posts that he writes the most 4-minute posts (25%), 3-minute posts (19%), 5-minute posts (17%), and 2-minute posts (14%) Posts that seem to get the most ❤ 8-minute posts (550+ ❤) and 5-minute posts (540+ ❤) Steven Levy 108k followers top writer : Technology Editor of , (16k followers), (3k followers) Backchannel What’s The Future? The Apple Watch Project Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts Number of articles written between July — December 22 Number of recommends for these posts 12,000+ That makes an average of 540+ ❤ per post Posts that he writes the most 4-minute posts (18%), 5-minute and 11-minute posts (14% each), and 7-minute and 8-minute posts (9%) Posts that seem to get the most ❤ 22-minute post (2,400+ ❤, yet he only wrote one), 18-minute post (1,200+ ❤, yet he only wrote one). His 11-minute posts have also a good average (880+ ❤). Thomas Oppong 90k followers top writer : , , , , Psychology Life Lessons Productivity Creativity Life Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts Number of articles written between July — December 33 Number of recommends for these posts 35,000+ That makes an average of 1,000+ ❤ per post Posts that he writes the most 4-minute posts (64%) and 5-minute posts (15%) Posts that seem to get the most ❤ 6-minute posts (1,700+ ❤) and 5-minute posts (1,400+ ❤) M.G. Siegler 146k followers He writes a lot about . tech Editor of 500ish Words Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts Number of articles written between July — December 49 Number of recommends for these posts 6,000+ That makes an average of 120+ ❤ per post Posts that he writes the most 4-minute posts (33%), 5-minute posts (27%), and 3-minute posts (20%) Posts that seem to get the most ❤ 7-minute posts (250+ ❤, yet he only wrote one) and 3-minute posts (170+ ❤) Mark Suster 97k followers top writer : Startup Editor of (20k followers) Both Sides of the Table Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts Number of articles written between July — December 25 Number of recommends for these posts 10,000+ That makes an average of 400+ ❤ per post Posts that he writes the most 5-minute and 7-minute posts (20% each), 3-minute posts (16%) Posts that seem to get the most ❤ 8-minute posts (810+ ❤) Tobias van Schneider 89k followers top writer : Design Editor of (13k followers), (2k followers) Desk of Van Schneider Semplice Magazine Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts Number of articles written between July — December 23 Number of recommends for these posts 16,000+ That makes an average of 690+ ❤ per post Posts that he writes the most 5-minute posts (22%), 4-minute, 6-minute and 8-minute (17% each) Posts that seem to get the most ❤ 4-minute posts (1,600+ ❤) Jon Westenberg 103k followers top writer : , , , , Writing Startup Entrepreneurship Life Life Lessons Editor of , , , Creatomic The Voidist Productive. by Speedlancer TECHOZ Number of recommends may have changed slightly since I analyzed the posts Number of articles written between July — December 156 Number of recommends for these posts 83,000+ That makes an average of 530+ ❤ per post Posts that he writes the most 4-minute posts (32%), 3-minute posts (20%), 5-minute posts (17%) and 2-minute posts (13%) Posts that seem to get the most ❤ 10-minute posts (3,600+ ❤, yet he only wrote one), 9-minute posts (1,300+ ❤) and 6-minute posts (1,200+ ❤) Learnings 8-minute posts are king It seems that the ideal length for a post to get the most recommends is . For three of these ten writers, the 8-minute posts are the ones bringing the most recommends on average. Then comes the 7-minute posts. 8 minutes Long posts have a lot of potential It is also interesting to note that a few long posts (two 32-minute posts written by , and one 22-minute by Steven Levy) are the ones bringing the most recommends on average to their respective writers. So it is also possible that writing long posts is a good way to get a lot of recommends. Benjamin P. Hardy Though, writing long posts is likely a difficult exercise — not every writer can keep the reader’s attention during 20 minutes. It probably needs a lot of work and talent to master. I would suggest reading pieces of to learn how to do that, given his impressive numbers of recommends for his long posts. What’s also interesting with Benjamin is that he always recommended his own stories a few days after releasing them. A good way to give a second boost to your posts — provided that you have a good amount of followers of course. Benjamin P. Hardy Writing on Medium is about giving something valuable to your readers. Needless to write an 8-minute post just because numbers are showing here that this is what brings the most recommends. If you can make your point and deliver the value in 4 minutes, it’s even better. Remember, less is more. Yet of course, when writing, you can probably go deeper into the analysis in 8 minutes rather than 4, and that may be the reason why 7- and 8-minute posts are that much appreciated — . long enough to make a good analysis, but short enough not to lose your readers halfway Ultimately Don’t get this wrong: it’s not you will write an 8-minute post that people like it. Instead, write what you have to say without focusing on the length of your post. Once you think it’s done, check how long it is (an 8-minute post is approximately 1,800 words). because will If it’s way under 8 minutes, ask yourself: “ ”. Did I make a good point? Is the analysis going deep enough to deliver something valuable? If it’s way over 8 minutes, ask yourself: “ ” Am I going to lose my readers halfway? Can I cut anything useless, that doesn’t add anything valuable? All in all, this 8-minute mark should act as an indication for you, rather than a rule to follow. I’ll finish with what said : Darius Foroux in his post Focusing primarily on anything that is not writing, is a waste of your time. Hope you found this post useful, and if so, please don’t hesitate to click on the ❤ so that other people can also see it :) You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn , and if you want more stories like these, you can follow me and subscribe to my Newsletter .
