How Long Should Your Social Media Posts Be?

Whether you’re a social media professional or a novice, the same idea applies when it comes to knowing the optimal length for your posts. Having the right amount of written content that provides value can lead to quality traffic as well as conversions on your website.

If you don’t get to the point fast, your content will be ignored. With shorter attention spans, there is less time to sell your products and services. You need to learn how short you can make a blog post without losing the reader.

But, it’s important to consider how to max out the potential of every post so readers get the most out of what you have to say. Take another look at your social media posts, and then look at your competitors.

You will notice that most companies use both long- and short-form social media posts. Here are the best social media posting strategies when it comes to character length:

Facebook Post Length

What’s the best Facebook post length? If you’re a busy marketer or page admin, it’s likely that when you write a post on Facebook, brevity is your main goal, as short posts tend to do well. However, Facebook allows users to write 63,206 characters in regular posts.

An organic Facebook ad should be fewer than 80 characters long (receiving 66 percent more engagement). If it's a sponsored post, keep it within 18 characters.

However, there are some instances where this doesn't apply for publishers and thought leaders. People follow for their ideas, not their concision.

With more and more groups and people to follow, many people's Facebook news feeds are becoming increasingly cluttered.

Twitter Post Length

Twitter is quickly becoming one of the most important online marketing channels for businesses. Even though the site still has not reached the level of Facebook in terms of total users, it is still well worth using.

Gone are the days of 140 character tweets. Twitter has since increased their character limit to 280 characters. The optimal number of characters have been found to be between 240 and 259. People find that is when they tend to get the most likes, replies, or retweets.

Instagram Post Length

If you’re looking to use social media to grow your business, consider Instagram and its emphasis on visual content. When it comes to almost any type of content, whether it be a blog post or a social media post, using short captions is constantly recommended.

Despite Instagram being mainly an app for sharing photos, they allow users to make relatively long captions, that being 2200 characters. There’s a lot of space for you to explain the context or promote something in the bottom of the post itself. Instagram cuts your caption short though as to only show the first 125 characters.

A lot of users in the social media world are fond of using lots of hashtags in their Instagram captions. It has become a norm or rather, an unspoken rule that as users, we’re supposed to do the same.