Busy creating thrilling social media posts? You haven't got time to be worrying about how long your social media posts should be. Certainly not for each platform you post on. That's why we've scoured the internet for the best data available.
While social media posts can be pretty much any length – except on Twitter – just because you can go longer or shorter doesn't mean you should. Indeed, creating a 1,000-word post only for it to see little to no engagement is pretty disheartening.
Like Goldilocks tasting her porridge, there's got to be a sweet spot. How long should a social media post be? That's what we're answering below. Follow our advice to ensure you're maximising your engagement on every platform.
How Long Should a Social Media Post Be
Facebook is perhaps the most flexible platform when it comes to post lengths. You'll find some posts that could give The Lord of the Rings a run for its money, while others are just a few words long. What's the sweet spot? How long should a Facebook post be?
According to BuzzSumo, posts with less than 50 characters were "more engaging than long posts. Confirming this finding, another study found that posts with 80 characters or fewer received 66% higher engagement.
If you need to say more, remember: Facebook will cut off most of your posts, requiring readers to click "See More." That's why you need to instantly hook your reader in with an engaging first couple of lines. Be provocative or post a question. Once they're hooked, they'll keep reading for longer.
Twitter is a masterclass in headline writing. Almost every tweet has to be concise and compact, delivering its message in 280 characters or less. However, just because you can write 280 characters, should you?
No! Analysis from Buddy Media found that tweets containing 100 characters or less receive 17% higher engagement than their longer counterparts. If you've got something longer to say, parse out your information into a series of bitesize chunks and create a Twitter thread numbered accordingly, e.g., 1/7, 2/7, 3/7…
As for the all-important hashtags: 6 characters is the optimal length – especially considering hashtags don't contain spaces.
Although Instagram is primarily a video and picture platform, captions are crucial to Instagram's algorithm. The right combination of words and hashtags can see skyrocketing engagement. Instagram's caption limit is 2,200 characters, but you'll never need the full amount.
For best results, write captions between 130 to 150 characters long. Instagram recommends keeping your sponsor post captions under 125 characters to support readability. Most people won't read the whole caption, so keep your captions short and snappy.
LinkedIn is a platform for professionals. Here, you can create longer content and see traction. LinkedIn cuts off your message after 140 characters, roughly 25 words, for organic posts, i.e., not articles. Most companies struggle to say everything they need to within this narrow limit. That's where an engaging opener works wonders.
In contrast, longer articles tend to perform far better. Analysing LinkedIn's most successful posts, Paul Shapiro, founder of Search Wilderness, writes, "Posts between 1,900 and 2,000 words perform best. [They] gain the greatest number of post views, likes, comments, and shares. Titles for such posts should be in the 40-to-49-character range.
Your Pinterest captions should tell a story, conjure an emotion, and make a promise in as few words as possible. You're trying to sell your product through persuasive captions and pictures.
Common advice is to limit your captions to 300 characters; studies show they receive the most re-pins. That's a fraction of the 500-character limit. However, anything in the 100-to-350-character range will suffice.
Don't Jabber on For No Reason
Every word wasted is time that could be spent elsewhere in your business. Or, if you're hiring a professional social media writer like Impeccable Writing, it's money down the drain.
Don't sweat it! Let us help you create social media copy that drives engagement and conversions. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation and learn how we can help you improve your social media writing strategy and save time and money for your business.
Don't let mediocre copy hold you back - let Impeccable Writing take your social media game to the next level.
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