Ideal Social Media Post Length: A Guide for Every Platform

Social Media Post Length: The length must be neither too long nor too short, must be precise to the mentioned criteria of different social media channels. It must be accurate if your business relies on social media content and is also seen.

The top social media platforms have different text and design norms. Every social media user must have this related valuable knowledge to keep them updated.

In record, it has been seen that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are the most popular profile-based social media platforms. Surveys show:

• Facebook had approx. 2.3 billion users
• Instagram had 1 billion users
• Twitter had 330 million users
• LinkedIn had 303 million users

You are reaching millions or billions of social media users, after posting on any of these platforms.

Guide to Social Media Post Length

Two factors must be considered are – your audience’s attention and the formatting parameters of each social media platform.

• Your content length will determine your attention span. 
• Platform formatting depends on the design developed by social media sites. An example – character limits!

Social media has done various studies on the related platforms, for their word counts and length. It is based on engagements, likes, comments or shares. Social media companies also focus on ideal limits that can fit their format. E.g. – Twitter strictly limits the character count, and thus advice writing to it.

The Best Length for Social Media Posts

Facebook

Facebook is the busiest social network and gains audience traction with their posts. It is against low-quality content and only wants high-quality content visible.

You need to stand out and ensure that your posts remain visible. Among the top social platforms, Facebook demonstrates the largest difference between its recommended character count for posts and its actual limit.

Following are the lengths of different features for Facebook

Best Length for a Facebook Update: Quality Facebook content or Facebook statuses of around 40-80 characters perform best. Studies have found that your posts work best at 40 characters or fewer, earning 86% more engagement than longer posts. So re-check your entire blog post before uploading to Facebook!

Best Length for a Facebook Ad Headline: Facebook ad has an unusual structure. It follows with an image and then an ad text. The headline is placed directly below the image, which is followed by the link description.

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The effectiveness of headlines can bring you an entirely new audience or lose you, followers. Over recent years, it has been found out that the popular headline length was five words.

Best Length for Facebook Ad Body Text: The length has been increasing since the passing years. To date, it is 19 words in 2019. Readers are prepared to read a small amount more at the top of sponsored posts now before they visualize at the ad itself.

Best Length for Facebook Ads Link Descriptions: At the bottom, is the link description that has shrunk over the last few years. Facebook suggests it should be 30 characters long. Your description needs to be long enough to make it clear about where it is send, and who is clicking on Call to Action.

Twitter

For Twitter, the maximum length was 140 characters, but now for a Tweet, the length has increased up to 280 characters.

Following are the lengths of different features for Twitter

Best Length for a Tweet: You are more likely to get attention, and encourage them to engage If you limit your tweets between 71 and 100 characters. Many include entries from everybody who are important, similar topics.

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Best Length for a Twitter Hashtag: The best hashtags are a single word with only a few letters. The hashtags must be under 6 characters.

Twitter Character Limits

• Direct message on Twitter: 10,000 characters
• Twitter Handle: 15 characters
• Profile Name on Twitter: 20 characters

Instagram

Instagram is inherently visual, you might have not noticed any character limitations. But they are there!

Following are the lengths of different features for Instagram

Best lengths for Instagram Captions: People are interested in looking at images and videos, and not to read long captions. It will be better if you limit yourself to 138 to 150 characters. Studies have mentioned that your captions must be shorter less than 125 characters.

The best length for Instagram Ads Captions: It is better to use short, concise text. Ideally, it must be less than 125 characters for ad captions. Your image or video must be in the limelight with a small amount of help from the text.

Best Number of Hashtags for Instagram Captions: Hashtag is extremely used on Instagram, and you can use up to 30 in a post.

But first, find out if the hashtags you use are relevant to your post or not. Secondly, you must not use the same hashtags all the time. At present, 4 to 9 hashtags are a good quantity on Instagram.

Best Number of Characters in an Instagram Hashtag: After a brief analysis, it has been seen that hashtags with 21 characters gave the most engagements. 22 and 23 characters were also successful, but not as compared to 21 characters. Content and type of hashtags also do play an important role out here.

LinkedIn

Following are the lengths of different features for LinkedIn 

Best Number of Characters in a LinkedIn Status Update: LinkedIn is more text-based than other social networks. Status updates are on LinkedIn, and if short, it will perform best!

The ideal length for a LinkedIn status is approx. 100 characters. If more, your message will be cut off.

Best Number of Characters in a LinkedIn Publishing Post: There have been recent changes to the working of the LinkedIn algorithm, which shows that people use LinkedIn publishing to create entire blog posts on the platform. Posts of 1900 to 2000 words perform best according to Studies!

Pinterest

Pinterest image size matters, along with the length of the related description. The actual image pixel must be 600, having a 2:3 aspect ratio. The descriptions containing about 200 characters get more views and repines.

In Conclusion

Ensure that your social media posts are visible and easy to read. These posts must include some form of hyperlink. The above details about the length have mentioned that shorter is better. 

The quality of your social media content will finally determine whether people will engage with it or not. Utilizing some of the marketing tools and writing impressive engaging content will connect you to your desired audience.