How Long Should Your Social Media Post Be?

There isn’t a secret recipe to achieve social media engagement. There also aren’t any definitive rules for the frequency, length or time of day of your post. It all depends on what is best for your brand and what your audience is looking for, and this will vary for each company or person.

“The truth is that what really matters is the core of the content that you produce, and how that connects with your target market — but that also doesn’t mean that you should just ignore all the best practice advice out there and post whatever you want, whenever you want,” says a Social Media Today article.

Data and analytics can be helpful to your business and for planning strategy and dictating best practices, but it’s also a good idea to learn about how you’re most likely to reach your end goal — by sparking more engagement.

According to marketing communications firm Sutherland Weston, this starts with discerning what the optimal social media post lengths are. The agency created an infographic and a listing of the perfect size for text in its respected platforms.

“And there are some key considerations here — like how much room you have in the preview pane and what research suggests about engagement. It’s worth noting these pointers, and either testing them out, in variance to your existing practices, or making them a starting point for your experiments,” according to Social Media Today.

Here are Sutherland Weston’s suggestions for the best social media post lengths for higher engagement in 2020.

Twitter:

People are 17% more likely to retweet or engage with 71-100 character tweets. Adding a visual (photo, video, GIF) can increase engagement by 650%.

Facebook:

40-50 characters is ideal, but posts with 40 characters or less have 86% more engagement. 

Instagram:

An entire caption will display in the feed if it is 125 characters or less;
otherwise, you’ll have to click “…more.” Try adding your hashtags in the comments.

LinkedIn:

After 140 characters, your post will be truncated with “see more.” Aim to write shorter if you want people to see your entire message. 

YouTube:

Video titles display in full in the search bar if they are 70 characters or less. For video descriptions, try to use 5,000 characters or less for maximum visibility.

photo credit: yagi studio