Guide to Social Media Post Lengths in 2020
How long shoiuld a post be on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube?
Best length for Posts on Social Media
Just how long should your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Youtube posts be? Experts have recommended to get the most engagement, that you follow these guidelines for posting on the differrent social media platforms. Just because some platforms let you write a short novel (literally) doesn’t mean it is a good idea, so as you will learn there is a difference between how long a post 'can' be and how long it 'should' be. Try adjusting the length for each platform to see if you see better engagement on your social media.
Each platform has a different maximum character count, and equally, each platform has its own set of best practices.
You don’t want your post to be so long that it loses your readers’ attention, but it also needs to be long enough to get your point across. There’s a fine art to navigating what length will test best with your audience. Below are the latest recommended best length for posts on social media.
An image, gif, or video doesn’t take away from this limit, so you're free to write great captions for your visual media.
Best length for posts on Facebook
If you wanted, you could write a novel on Facebook. Each post can have 63,206 characters, but the recommended character count is drastically less than that. Like with the graphic, you should focus on keeping your posts short and sweet. The sweet spot for a Facebook post is somewhere between 40 and 50 characters.
Best length for posts on Twitter
A few years back, Twitter upped its character limit to 280 characters for all tweets. However, data shows that tweets between 71 and 100 characters get the most engagement when compared to longer posts. So make sure that your post is long enough to get your point across, but short enough to be engaging.
Note: Unlike @ mentions, links will take up some of your word count, and they get shortened after 23 characters.
Best length for posts on Instagram
Even though you can have up to 2,200 characters in an Instagram post, remember that Instagram is media-centric, meaning your focus should always be on the visuals with Instagram. Within those 2,200 characters, you can include up to 30 hashtags.
To ensure that your entire captions shows up in the Instagram feed, they recommend keeping your captions under 125 characters.
Best length for posts on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a unique social network. You can post statuses, videos with captions, and blog posts.
As you'd expect, statuses and blog posts have different character limits, so we'll walk you through both of them below.
Your LinkedIn statuses can be up to 700 characters long on company page posts, and 1,300 characters for statuses on individual accounts.
On the other hand, articles have no real character limit. However, it's been reported that posts over 120,000 characters will get cut off by LinkedIn's blogging network.
To ensure that your entire caption appears while people are scrolling through their feed, keep your post to under 140 characters. Otherwise, LinkedIn will cut off your posts with a "See more" button at the 140 character mark. Anything beyond this will be hidden—no matter if your audience is viewing on a desktop or mobile device.
On the LinkedIn article side, treat it as a blog post: make your articles long enough to get your point across, but short enough that you keep your audience engaged.
Best length for Youtube Title & Description
Video Length
There isn’t a perfect length that we recommend for videos. We wish there was a perfect video length that we could just rattle off which would instantly boost your rankings up on Google’s search results, but the truth is that you should make a video that’s the best length for the information you need to tell.
At a minimum, though, we recommend that videos are three minutes long.
Video Title and Description
When writing the title and description for your video, these are the real “money-makers” in terms of SEO rankings.
When you’re making your titles and descriptions, stick to these guidelines:
Title - 100 characters, but try to keep it under 70 so your title does not get cutoff. A must is to use keywords that address your SEO goal.
Description - YouTube’s own training materials recommend using the first few lines of your description to explain your video using SEO keywords, but use your keywords naturally so it doesn’t read like SEO spam.
The description of your video can be 5,000 characters long, and it’s another way you can increase your visibility in search results and make it easier for people to find your content. Be descriptive and useful, and always include the link to your website and social presence to keep people engaging with you.
Recommended Lengths for Social Media Posts
PLATFORM | CAN BE | SHOULD BE |
|---|---|---|
63,206 Characters | 40-50 Characters | |
280 Characters | 71-100 Characters | |
2,200 Characters | Under 125 Characters | |
700 Characters | 140 Characters | |
Youtube - Title | 100 Characters | 70 Characters |
Youtube - Description | 5,000 Characters | 5,000 Keyword Rich Characters |
