From my academic perspective, 300 - 500 its OK. some academic books are 250 - 1100 pages. Those with 360 pages contains specific few chapters about the topic, Those with up to 1100 pages contains many chapters about topic, more chapters contain basic info up to book half way, the rest is additional info for the reader/student to enrich himself.
Coming back to the topic, say what you want to say from the beginning in your posts/article. If you have covered main points, indicate to reader that the rest is for further reading/reference. That's my take. Because if you battling for word count, you will loose focus on your discussion.
Example if you write about twitter, (300 to 500 words)
Twitter +Facebook (600 - 900 words)
Twitter +facebook + linkedin (900 1500 words)

It depends on how many topics/heading you have. More headings/subheadings the longer the posts/articles. Fewer headings/subheadings the shorter the posts/articles
But for me 300 -500 words is enough

I agree with you , go straight to the point and offer your viewers the information they need about your product.

I was trying to find some info on an accessory i needed and found 2 posts about it , one with around 2500 words and the other with like 400 , i couldn't finish reading the long post before i got bored and found everything i was looking for in the short one.

In my case i didn't want to know how the writer messed up with the accessory ,i only needed to know how it works.

Im by no means as experienced as many other WA members but whenever i feel im using "filler words" i end the post.

Thank you for writing this blog! Before going to bed last night, I starting asking myself how I was going to generate so much content. You have prompted great responses from the community.

Seth Godin ranks at number one with blog posts of 40 words - but he has a lot of authority as well!

Posts need to suit your audience - video content often has very little written content and ranks well (especially since Google took over YouTube)

The bottom line is Google needs to know what your post is about so if you are writing short posts they need to be very specific, possibly answer a question. Several short posts on a similar theme each linked to each other will show Google you have enough content to rank.

You just have to be more strategic with short posts, as you get to know your topic better you will find writing longer will become easier.

According to statistics the longer the content the higher you will rank. You will also rank for more keywords if your content is longer and if you use the comment platform, you will get even more content.

There is nothing wrong with creating an article that is 1000 words long, but just remember to add a conclusion at the end for the lazy reader that does not want to read the whole article.

You should also put your internal links at the beginning to avoid a low bounce rate. Hope this helps :)

The thing is that Google ranks longer content higher than a short one. Google wants to offer the best information available and it has found (it's very smart, you know) that longer content is more thorough.

So if you write a 300 word article and somebody else writes an 1500 word article on the same topic then that 1500 word article ends up in front of your post in Google SERP.

That's why it is highly recommended to put some more meat into the blog posts and articles.

Hi I did some training recently maybe this will help a little General tips on writing your first post

You want to give enough information as you can. I don't think you can do that with a short post.

Jen,

I have always thought that 300 was more than enough and I agree that it doesn't matter what the count.

Content quality should be #1

Thank You Jen,

Tony

I wrote something on this also a few months back and also got some feedback .. take a look and it might clear some things up :) Word Counts​.