![]() ![]() It is likely that many blogs are displaying an estimated reading time that is too low, especially blogs that discuss programming, science, or other technical topics. However, if you plan to show estimated reading time to your readers, there is another important factor to consider first. I am not sure if it can be automatically added to Pulse articles. The estimated reading time calculation is easy to perform manually because it only uses simple arithmetic. I included an estimated reading time on this post, using an estimated reading speed of 250 words per minute.ĭisplaying estimated reading time increases engagement according to marketing studies, which explains why blogs show this statistic to readers. Maybe LinkedIn would be willing to add it as a Pulse feature if it increases engagement, and the evidence for this argument is promising. ![]() While this calculation can be done automatically on Wordpress, as far as I know it needs to be done manually on LinkedIn posts. This statistic can be added to the introduction of the Pulse post. Simply look up that number and divide it by the average reading speed to calculate the estimated reading time. Word processing software lists the number of words in a document under file properties. LinkedIn Posts Can Include the Default Reading Timeĭuplicating the calculation used by the Wordpress estimated reading time plug-ins is very simple. I would guess that recent linguistics research discusses much better algorithms for calculating how long an article takes to read. Reading level formulas have also been around for a while. Several websites reported an average reading speed of 50 to 75 words per minute for technical articles.Įngineering blog posts that use a reading time plug-in could be greatly underestimating reading time for technical articles if the blogger doesn't adjust the default setting. Technical writing takes much longer to read than content about other topics. Another article reported that college professors read at a pace of 675 words per minute. However, professionals can also read articles more quickly than people without specialized education. I would guess that a more complex text, such as an article written for professionals on LinkedIn, would take longer to read than a news article aimed at the general public. These formulas calculate statistics like the length of an average word, or the number of syllables in each word, to determine the grade level of a text. Even as far back as the 1950s, automated reading level formulas were created to determine the ease of reading text. They could be improved without deep programming knowledge. The reading time plug-ins I saw are very simple. The Estimated Reading Time Calculation Could Be Improved Combining that statistic with the average reading speed statistic indicates that a post of about 2100 words will get the most engagement. The blogging website Medium also calculated that a reading time of 7 minutes maximizes engagement. The effects aren't huge, but both metrics improved by double-digit figures in studies shared by Ann Smarty. Marketing studies have shown that displaying the estimated reading time reduces bounce rates and increases the amount of time the reader spends on the website. They also did not check other analytics data to determine how long a website visitor actually takes to finish reading a post.ĭisplaying the Estimated Reading Time Does Increase Engagement The plug-ins I saw did not use advanced techniques like natural language processing or machine learning. Using a simple word count algorithm, a plug-in can calculate that a 1500 word article would take about five minutes to read. The plug-ins typically used a default setting of 275 to 300 words per minute to estimate reading time. They count the number of words in the article and then divide that number by the average reading speed, measured in words per minute. Many of them are open source, so they can be freely used and modified. Several estimated reading time plug-ins are available on Wordpress. How Estimated Reading Time Algorithms Work Finally, I wanted to know if including the estimated reading time could be done on LinkedIn. Another question was whether the default reading time calculation could be improved. I wanted to know how the estimated reading time calculation worked, and whether including estimated reading time increased engagement. So I decided to research the estimated reading time concept further. Apparently, these websites think showing the estimated reading time to their readers improves engagement. This includes news publications as well as marketing websites. Recently, many websites started displaying the estimated reading time for their articles. This blog post should take about 3 minutes to read. ![]()
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