A myriad of factors influence the popularity and circulation of articles. I’m talking about things like content, headline, pictures, and writing style. But there’s one factor that’s often overlooked: word count. During the last year, I’ve consistently observed that 1) relatively shorter posts tend to do better in the WordPress Reader and 2) relatively longer posts tend to better with search engines.

I get the sense that many bloggers follow a large number of blogs and value broad familiarity with what’s going on in the blogosphere. They often seek creative inspiration or something to improve their lives with no particular agenda in mind. This translates into an interest in relatively shorter posts. Search engine users, on the other hand, know exactly what they’re looking for. They don’t have a Reader full of blogs they follow and must go out of their way to find particular content that appeals to them. This makes them more eager, once they do find that content, to linger over it.

Another factor is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which determines how search engines rank the order of webpages. Based on my research, search engines like Google prefer relatively longer posts in the 1,000 to 2,000 word count range. I doubt the Reader has this same preference (without any hard data). Also, when you follow a blog, you get a notification for every new post, even if it’s as short as Word of the Day. As an author determining when to cap your posts, you should consider your audience. Is this post targeted to other bloggers in the WordPress Reader or to readers who will find it via search engine?

I routinely check the site stats WordPress collates, and more than 85% of the the traffic for Creator Villa comes from search engines. That is partially why many of my articles tend to be on the longer side—I believe people will read them and benefit from them. However, I also know an article like this one is likely to generate more interest among bloggers via the Reader, so it’s wise to take into account particular articles as well as overarching site trends.

Is article length something you are intentional about, as a blogger and/or reader of blogs?

Today I want to share one of my few style experiments that I would label a success. I’m a pretty simple guy and don’t spend a lot of time accessorizing. If the car runs, then it’s good by me. But an item on Amazon caught my attention that looked like it could add value to my Honda Civic. And by value I mean the satisfaction I get by looking at the car and the additional cleanliness of an extra layer. Judge for yourself down below, but I’m happy with the end result.

Seat covers cover existing stains on the surface of the seats, prevent future stains, and add style and comfort. I have several unsightly stains from passengers eating and drinking, and now my interior looks brand new. And a lot of people commented on how much cooler the car looks after the installation. I bought my seat covers on Amazon from a company called PIC AUTO. Since my purchase, they’ve come out with a new universal design. I chose PIC AUTO because I liked the price, it had a 4+ star rating, and it was easy to put together. Assembly took about 30 minutes with the help of my brother, and neither of is a handyman. The universal design fit my Civic perfectly and they say it is built to accommodate most cars, SUVs and trucks. (UPDATE: It looks like they got rid of the mesh fabric universal fit in the red and black. The red and black is available in leather and the blue and black is available in fabric mesh.)

Here’s a link to the red and black variety as seen in the featured image. PIC AUTO Universal Fit Full Set Mesh and Leather Car Seat Cover(Red). They also offer Red, Gray, Dark Blue, Light Blue, and Beige (clickable links below). Make sure you check out the before & afters of my car down below.

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Before & Afters:

I hated haircuts growing up. Haircuts were what you got when your parents or the school district wouldn’t let you grow your hair long. My goal was always to have the barber cut off as little as possible. I can’t remember a single time I thought I looked better after a haircut. When I was a kid, my parents would take me to one of those brand-name franchises that would service you in less than 20 minutes. Every visit was with a different stylist who could never seem to figure out my hair in the short allotted time. They would cut it too short or botch the area with cowlicks in the front and back. I could no longer see the logic of paying someone to perform a service I didn’t want done to begin with and thought I could learn to do better myself. Plus, I was already getting my hands dirty as my neckline would get out of control after about a week in-between cuts. I decided to take action and started cutting my own hair.

At first, it wasn’t pretty. I remember grabbing a pair of school scissors I found in my drawer and began imitating my stylist. The first few cuts were uneven and I missed large spots. The neckline wasn’t straight. A few people noticed. But my hair grew back and I continued to make a little progress every few weeks. Eventually I bought a pair of clippers with attachments that made my life a lot easier. I liked the sides and the back short, so I could now get those done within a few minutes. I would alternate between leaving the top at the longest clipper setting (about 1 inch), and cutting it with scissors. I learned how to do my own neckline with a tri-fold mirror and would sometimes ask my brothers for assistance.

Today, more than 10 years later, I still cut my own hair. I’m definitely not a professional, but I have no interest in going anywhere to get my hair done. My initial motivation wasn’t to save money–it was to do a better job than my stylist. But I have undoubtedly saved thousands of dollars over the years. And I’m not convinced I would look any better getting it done professionally.

Learning how to cut your own hair requires patience and focus. It’s easiest for people with shorter hair. For longer hair, you have to use scissors, which require skill and are less forgiving. If your hair is long, plan on watching a lot of YouTube videos. Cutting your hair also makes more sense if you don’t enjoy going to a barber. A lot of people like the feeling of getting “treated” by a professional. It is a form of therapy for them. Or maybe they have a good relationship with a particular barber and like the cultural experience of getting a professional haircut.

If you decide to cut your own hair, the first thing you need are good tools. My last pair of Wahl’s clippers has lasted me 6 years, and I recommend this brand to everyone. This pair Wahl Professional 5-Star Cord/Cordless Magic Clip is a newer version of my old one. There’s no telling how long it will last if you take care of it. If you’re looking for a cheaper alternative, there’s Wahl Clipper Elite Pro High-Performance. It’s cordless and costs about half as much but will get the job done. Both products come with attachments for cutting at various lengths. You will also need a pair of scissors for hair you want to keep longer and for areas hard to reach with clippers. I haven’t bought scissors in a long time, but Equinox Professional Shears Razor Edge is Amazon’s top-rated product and is sharp enough for all hair types.

Remember, YouTube is your best friend. The fastest way to learn is to look up videos on how to cut hair, in general; how to cut hair that is similar to yours, in particular; and how to do so at home without a barber.

Cutting your own hair may not just be something you do to save time and money. It may evolve into an activity you enjoy, like many people when they go see a professional.

The average person speaks around 15-25,000 words in a day. It follows that a day without conversation is as rare as a blue moon. Conversation is the lifeblood of social interactions ranging from small talk to those consisting of the most substance. Everyone stands to gain something by improving their conversational skills. And it doesn’t take as long as you might think.

Celeste Headlee is no stranger to conversation. She spent the early part of her career working as a journalist for Arizona Public Radio and Detroit Public Radio before making the move to National Public Radio in 2006. From 2009-2012, Celeste co-hosted The Takeaway, a live national morning news show produced by Public Radio International. She is the author of We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter in which she shares her biggest insights on the art of conversation gleaned from a career in the broadcast industry.

A few years ago, Celeste delivered a TedTalk that has garnered over 15 million views entitled “10 ways to have a better conversation.” The content of the talk is even more relevant today as human interaction becomes increasingly technologized. Celeste’s advice is simple but effective. Her 10 rules for conversation are 1) do not multi-task; 2) do not pontificate; 3) use open-ended questions; 4) go with the flow; 5) if you don’t know, say that you don’t know; 6) don’t equate your experience with theirs; 7) try not to repeat yourself; 8) stay out of the weeds; 9) listen; 10) and be brief. I have reposted the complete transcript of the talk with permission from Ted. Here’s to better and more conversation.

Transcript:

All right, I want to see a show of hands: how many of you have unfriended someone on Facebook because they said something offensive about politics or religion, childcare, food?

(Laughter)

And how many of you know at least one person that you avoid because you just don’t want to talk to them?

(Laughter)

You know, it used to be that in order to have a polite conversation, we just had to follow the advice of Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady”: Stick to the weather and your health. But these days, with climate change and anti-vaxxing, those subjects are not safe either. So this world that we live in, this world in which every conversation has the potential to devolve into an argument, where our politicians can’t speak to one another and where even the most trivial of issues have someone fighting both passionately for it and against it, it’s not normal. Pew Research did a study of 10,000 American adults, and they found that at this moment, we are more polarized, we are more divided, than we ever have been in history. We’re less likely to compromise, which means we’re not listening to each other. And we make decisions about where to live, who to marry and even who our friends are going to be, based on what we already believe. Again, that means we’re not listening to each other. A conversation requires a balance between talking and listening, and somewhere along the way, we lost that balance.

Now, part of that is due to technology. The smartphones that you all either have in your hands or close enough that you could grab them really quickly. According to Pew Research, about a third of American teenagers send more than a hundred texts a day. And many of them, almost most of them, are more likely to text their friends than they are to talk to them face to face. There’s this great piece in The Atlantic. It was written by a high school teacher named Paul Barnwell. And he gave his kids a communication project. He wanted to teach them how to speak on a specific subject without using notes. And he said this: “I came to realize…”

(Laughter)

“I came to realize that conversational competence might be the single most overlooked skill we fail to teach. Kids spend hours each day engaging with ideas and each other through screens, but rarely do they have an opportunity to hone their interpersonal communications skills. It might sound like a funny question, but we have to ask ourselves: Is there any 21st-century skill more important than being able to sustain coherent, confident conversation?”

Now, I make my living talking to people: Nobel Prize winners, truck drivers, billionaires, kindergarten teachers, heads of state, plumbers. I talk to people that I like. I talk to people that I don’t like. I talk to some people that I disagree with deeply on a personal level. But I still have a great conversation with them. So I’d like to spend the next 10 minutes or so teaching you how to talk and how to listen.

Many of you have already heard a lot of advice on this, things like look the person in the eye, think of interesting topics to discuss in advance, look, nod and smile to show that you’re paying attention, repeat back what you just heard or summarize it. So I want you to forget all of that. It is crap.

(Laughter)

There is no reason to learn how to show you’re paying attention if you are in fact paying attention.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Now, I actually use the exact same skills as a professional interviewer that I do in regular life. So, I’m going to teach you how to interview people, and that’s actually going to help you learn how to be better conversationalists. Learn to have a conversation without wasting your time, without getting bored, and, please God, without offending anybody.

We’ve all had really great conversations. We’ve had them before. We know what it’s like. The kind of conversation where you walk away feeling engaged and inspired, or where you feel like you’ve made a real connection or you’ve been perfectly understood. There is no reason why most of your interactions can’t be like that.

So I have 10 basic rules. I’m going to walk you through all of them, but honestly, if you just choose one of them and master it, you’ll already enjoy better conversations.

Number one: Don’t multitask. And I don’t mean just set down your cell phone or your tablet or your car keys or whatever is in your hand. I mean, be present. Be in that moment. Don’t think about your argument you had with your boss. Don’t think about what you’re going to have for dinner. If you want to get out of the conversation, get out of the conversation, but don’t be half in it and half out of it.

Number two: Don’t pontificate. If you want to state your opinion without any opportunity for response or argument or pushback or growth, write a blog.

(Laughter)

Now, there’s a really good reason why I don’t allow pundits on my show: Because they’re really boring. If they’re conservative, they’re going to hate Obama and food stamps and abortion. If they’re liberal, they’re going to hate big banks and oil corporations and Dick Cheney. Totally predictable. And you don’t want to be like that. You need to enter every conversation assuming that you have something to learn. The famed therapist M. Scott Peck said that true listening requires a setting aside of oneself. And sometimes that means setting aside your personal opinion. He said that sensing this acceptance, the speaker will become less and less vulnerable and more and more likely to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. Again, assume that you have something to learn.

Bill Nye: “Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don’t.” I put it this way: Everybody is an expert in something.

Number three: Use open-ended questions. In this case, take a cue from journalists. Start your questions with who, what, when, where, why or how. If you put in a complicated question, you’re going to get a simple answer out. If I ask you, “Were you terrified?” you’re going to respond to the most powerful word in that sentence, which is “terrified,” and the answer is “Yes, I was” or “No, I wasn’t.” “Were you angry?” “Yes, I was very angry.” Let them describe it. They’re the ones that know. Try asking them things like, “What was that like?” “How did that feel?” Because then they might have to stop for a moment and think about it, and you’re going to get a much more interesting response.

Number four: Go with the flow. That means thoughts will come into your mind and you need to let them go out of your mind. We’ve heard interviews often in which a guest is talking for several minutes and then the host comes back in and asks a question which seems like it comes out of nowhere, or it’s already been answered. That means the host probably stopped listening two minutes ago because he thought of this really clever question, and he was just bound and determined to say that. And we do the exact same thing. We’re sitting there having a conversation with someone, and then we remember that time that we met Hugh Jackman in a coffee shop.

(Laughter)

And we stop listening. Stories and ideas are going to come to you. You need to let them come and let them go.

Number five: If you don’t know, say that you don’t know. Now, people on the radio, especially on NPR, are much more aware that they’re going on the record, and so they’re more careful about what they claim to be an expert in and what they claim to know for sure. Do that. Err on the side of caution. Talk should not be cheap.

Number six: Don’t equate your experience with theirs. If they’re talking about having lost a family member, don’t start talking about the time you lost a family member. If they’re talking about the trouble they’re having at work, don’t tell them about how much you hate your job. It’s not the same. It is never the same. All experiences are individual. And, more importantly, it is not about you. You don’t need to take that moment to prove how amazing you are or how much you’ve suffered. Somebody asked Stephen Hawking once what his IQ was, and he said, “I have no idea. People who brag about their IQs are losers.”

(Laughter)

Conversations are not a promotional opportunity.

Number seven: Try not to repeat yourself. It’s condescending, and it’s really boring, and we tend to do it a lot. Especially in work conversations or in conversations with our kids, we have a point to make, so we just keep rephrasing it over and over. Don’t do that.

Number eight: Stay out of the weeds. Frankly, people don’t care about the years, the names, the dates, all those details that you’re struggling to come up with in your mind. They don’t care. What they care about is you. They care about what you’re like, what you have in common. So forget the details. Leave them out.

Number nine: This is not the last one, but it is the most important one. Listen. I cannot tell you how many really important people have said that listening is perhaps the most, the number one most important skill that you could develop. Buddha said, and I’m paraphrasing, “If your mouth is open, you’re not learning.” And Calvin Coolidge said, “No man ever listened his way out of a job.”

(Laughter)

Why do we not listen to each other? Number one, we’d rather talk. When I’m talking, I’m in control. I don’t have to hear anything I’m not interested in. I’m the center of attention. I can bolster my own identity. But there’s another reason: We get distracted. The average person talks at about 225 word per minute, but we can listen at up to 500 words per minute. So our minds are filling in those other 275 words. And look, I know, it takes effort and energy to actually pay attention to someone, but if you can’t do that, you’re not in a conversation. You’re just two people shouting out barely related sentences in the same place.

(Laughter)

You have to listen to one another. Stephen Covey said it very beautifully. He said, “Most of us don’t listen with the intent to understand. We listen with the intent to reply.”

One more rule, number 10, and it’s this one: Be brief.

[A good conversation is like a miniskirt; short enough to retain interest, but long enough to cover the subject. — My Sister]

(Laughter)

(Applause) All of this boils down to the same basic concept, and it is this one: Be interested in other people.

You know, I grew up with a very famous grandfather, and there was kind of a ritual in my home. People would come over to talk to my grandparents, and after they would leave, my mother would come over to us, and she’d say, “Do you know who that was? She was the runner-up to Miss America. He was the mayor of Sacramento. She won a Pulitzer Prize. He’s a Russian ballet dancer.” And I kind of grew up assuming everyone has some hidden, amazing thing about them. And honestly, I think it’s what makes me a better host. I keep my mouth shut as often as I possibly can, I keep my mind open, and I’m always prepared to be amazed, and I’m never disappointed.

You do the same thing. Go out, talk to people, listen to people, and, most importantly, be prepared to be amazed.

Thanks.

(Applause)