Yesterday’s advice was to blog more.

This advice was based on statistics from HubSpot, which shows that businesses that blog more, receive more qualified leads.

The advice is sound. Blog more. Get more inquiries. Sell more. Increase profits.

I stand by the advice to blog more.

So why am I tell you to now blog less?

Let me explain…

Why You Should Blog Less

There is a niche for some businesses to blog less. This doesn’t mean that blogging won’t be as much work. What I’m suggesting some businesses (possibly yours) should do is to create blog posts that are really more like stories. I’m talking about blog posts that reach into the thousands of words range where the story captures the attention of your readers and keeps them engaged for 20 minutes or more.

These posts take effort to create. They require extensive research and patience. With a long story post it’s essential to work on compelling storytelling in order to keep the reader attentive for a long period of time. The post also has to be good enough to have a long lifetime. Because you won’t be publishing as often, it will be necessary for your posts to be read by a large audience. You want each reader to share the post with friends, family members, and colleagues.

Recently, I’ve been subscribing to updates from the service – Longreads.

This site aggregates interesting stories that are well into the thousands of words in length. They are stories about businesses. Stories about individuals in business. There are a variety of topics covered on the site.

What each story has in common, though, is the fact that they are long and interesting. People love long form content when the content is entertaining, educational, and enlightening.

It’s a tough task for a blogger to take on the task of writing their own long read. It is just as much work to write a blog post that is 5,000 words long as it is to write 10 posts that are 500-words. Each strategy can be rewarding and it’s my belief that there is room for any blogging strategy to use both regular blog posts along with a few long reads.

With this strategy, you’ll attract a variety of readers while making sure your content can have a lifespan longer than just a few days. Long reads typically last longer. Like good books, long reads will be bookmarked, shared, and re-read for years (hopefully). Writing these kinds of posts is an investment in your website and your business.

So the point of this post is to consider blogging less.

Actually, a better way to say it is to publish less while still publishing just as much content. Consider publishing content that tells a story. You can interview folks in your industry. You can write a long case study about one of your clients. You can write a feature story on a business or an individual that your audience will find interesting.

There are many ways to write long reads. Find a format that works for your and consider writing less for your business blog.