Ideal Length for Instagram, Facebook, X, & LinkedIn Posts

From crafting blogs to social media posts, entrepreneurs usually discover themselves puzzled over what the proper character depend is. It is not at all times in regards to the limits set by completely different platforms however reasonably the optimum variety of characters for consumer engagement.

For instance, you in all probability know the character restrict for a put up on X is 280, however do you know utilizing much less is definitely simpler? (Maintain tight — you’ll quickly know why.)

We have beforehand mentioned how you can optimize your content material for varied platforms. Now, it is time to perceive the specifics of character limits, each obligatory and best, for various on-line channels, multi functional place.

Under is a extra detailed breakdown of character limits and best character counts for posts in your weblog, Fb, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.

What’s character depend?

Why Character Counts Matter

The Size & Character Rely for Every part on the Web

Present Your Character

Why Character Counts Matter

Each social media platform has its personal character restrict for posts. However as we talked about earlier, it is not simply in regards to the character limits set by these platforms; understanding the perfect character depend to make use of in your posts is essential.

Allow us to delve into the highest 5 causes that spotlight the significance of character depend in your content material technique:

1. Optimizes for platform algorithms

Totally different social media platforms have completely different algorithms, most of which take into account put up size to spice up content material visibility. By holding inside an ‘best’ character depend, you may guarantee your put up performs nicely within the algorithm‘s rating system.

This makes your content material extra prone to seem in your viewers’s feeds.

2. Enhances readability

Ever been confronted by a prolonged block of textual content? It‘s overwhelming, proper? Shorter, concise posts with an optimum character depend are simpler to learn and digest.

They give the impression of being much less intimidating and usually tend to be learn absolutely, enhancing your message’s influence.

3. Improves message readability

Abiding by a personality depend forces you to be concise and clear in your messaging. This eliminates pointless fluff and helps guarantee your core message shines by clearly, enhancing its total effectiveness.

4. Encourages sharing

Posts which are quick and to the purpose are extra shareable. They‘re simpler for customers to cite or repost, particularly on platforms like X and Threads, the place character limits are stricter, thus doubtlessly rising your content material’s attain.

5. Enhances cellular consumer expertise

With extra individuals accessing social media platforms by way of cellular units, character counts have gotten more and more necessary.

Posts with best character counts usually tend to be mobile-friendly, providing a greater studying expertise to your cellular viewers.

The Size & Character Rely for Every part on the Web

1. Weblog Posts

Fast reference:

• Put up size: 1,400 – 2,100 phrases
• Title: Below 60 characters
• Meta Description: Below 155 characters

Featured Useful resource: 6 Free Blog Post Templates

Post Body:

When it comes to the length of blog posts, there are a few different items to consider. For example:

• The average reading speed of native English-speaking adults remains commonly cited as 200-300 words per minute, based on the results of several studies.
• At that reading rate, the ideal post length is 1,400 to 2,100 words.
• That aligns with research previously conducted by Capsicum Mediaworks, which indicated that, on average, the top 10 results for most Google searches are between 2,000 and 2,500 words.

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But that‘s just the post body — let’s have a look at the other areas of text that comprise a full blog post.

Title

The length of your title depends on your goals and where it will appear.

Let’s start with SEO. Do you want this post to rank really well in search? It turns out that it often has to do with the dimensions of each entry on a search engine results page (SERP).

For Google, titles of search results are usually contained at a length of 600 pixels — which Moz measures as being able to display the first 50-60 characters of a title tag.

So, if you don’t want your title to get cut off in the search results, it might be best to keep it under 60 characters.

But when in doubt, you can double-check the length of your meta description and title tags with this handy tool from HigherVisibility, or you can use Moz’s title tag preview tool.

For Moz’s title tag tool, type in your headline, and the tool will show you how it would appear in Google results.

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Then, you can optimize your title for social sharing. On X, for example, consider that each post has a limit of 280 characters; however, if you include an image, that doesn’t count toward the limit.

But consider that even the average shortened URL takes up about 23 characters. That leaves you with about 257 characters left for the title and any accompanying text.

In our own analysis at HubSpot, we found that headlines between 8 –12 words in length got the most X shares on average, while headlines with either 12 or 14 words got the most Facebook Likes.

Meta Description

A meta description refers to the HTML attribute that explains the contents of a given webpage. It’s the short description you see on a SERP to “preview” what the page is about.

Moz notes that Google seems to cut off most meta descriptions — sometimes called snippets — after roughly two lines of text. However, there‘s some conjecture that, like title tags, it’s actually based on pixel count.

In any case, it amounts to about 160 characters, though this particular outlet recommends keeping it at 155.

Again, you can double-check the length of your meta description and title tags with this handy tool from HigherVisibility.

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2. Facebook

Quick reference:

• Status updates: 63,206-character maximum | Ideal length is 40 characters
• Video: 120-minute maximum | Ideal length is two minutes

Facebook’s character limit on status updates is 63,206. However, that’s far from ideal, says former HubSpot Social Media Marketing Manager Chelsea Hunersen.

“The social gurus will throw around the number 40 characters,” she says. “That data seems to be backed up by BuzzSumo’s ranking of HubSpot’s own Facebook Page.”

But why 40, specifically?

“Ideally,” Hunersen says, “you’ll want to use the copy in a status update to provide context for whatever you’re linking to.”

That said, she notes, the copy of the status update itself isn‘t as important as the copy in the meta title or meta description that gets pulled in when you insert a link into your post. That’s right — social media posts have their own metadata too.

“Often, people look at the image of the article and then directly down at the meta title and meta description for context clues,” she explains. “A lot of people don’t realize you can change those.”

Even on Facebook, it’s still best to keep your meta title to fewer than 60 characters, and to 155 for meta descriptions.

There are some resources available to those familiar with coding that let you play around with social media metadata character counts, like these templates. But unless you’re a developer, we recommend keeping it short and sweet.

Video

While Facebook allows a maximum of 240 minutes for most videos (excluding Stories and Reels), we wouldn‘t advise posting anything that long unless you’re doing a special, social-media-only screening of a full-length film.

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Facebook recommends keeping videos short to about 15 seconds so viewers are more likely to watch to the end.

3. X (Formerly Twitter)

Quick reference:

• Posts: 280-character maximum
  • Does not include images, videos, or polls
  • Ideal length is 240-259 characters
• Hashtags: No more than two
• Videos: Maximum length is two minutes and 20 seconds

Featured Resource: How to Use Twitter for Business

Marketers everywhere rejoiced when X finally eased up on its character count parameters, and such media as images, videos, and polls, as well as quoted posts, ceased counting toward its 140-character limit.

Still, the “Quote” feature remains available, providing even greater character-saving measures. That happens when you press the rotating arrow icon to post and then add a comment in the provided text box.

You’ve still got 280 characters all to yourself to comment.

Ideal Length Overall

X differs from other platforms in the sense that longer posts tend to perform better and get the most engagement.

According to SEO expert Kurt Gessler, posts with 240-259 characters tend to get the most likes.

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The same goes for hashtags. X recommends holding your hashtags quick, straightforward to recollect, and straightforward to spell. The platform additionally suggests sticking to solely one or two hashtags on the most.

Movies

You may post a video on X by importing a video or recording it utilizing the X app. In any case, the utmost video size is 2 minutes and 20 seconds when you’re not subscribed to X Blue.

X Blue subscribers can add movies of as much as 60 minutes when posting from the web site, and subscribers on the app can put up movies of as much as 10 minutes.

4. LinkedIn

Profiles

Right here‘s a useful record of a few of LinkedIn’s most necessary profile character maximums:

• Skilled headline: 120
• Abstract: 2,000
• Place title: 100
• Place description: 2,000 (200 character minimal)

Foote additionally notes that “if you choose to additionally put up on Twitter from LinkedIn, solely the primary 140 characters will present in your Twitter put up.”

Featured Useful resource: Find out how to Use LinkedIn for Enterprise & Advertising and marketing

Authentic Content material

With LinkedIn’s publishing platform, customers can now compose and share authentic written content material with their networks, or publicly. After all, that comes with its personal character counts, in accordance with Foote:

• Put up headline: 100
• Put up physique: 40,000

5. Instagram

Fast reference:

• Bio: 150
• Hashtags: As much as 30
• Captions: Splendid size is underneath 125 characters

Since Instagram is, in the beginning, a platform for sharing photographs and movies, the first focus is usually your visible content material. Nevertheless, it‘s at all times useful to offer some context and let customers know what they’re taking a look at.

On condition that, listed below are some useful character counts for the textual content you embody together with your visible content material.

Whereas Instagram doesn‘t appear to specify a most complete variety of caption characters, it does be aware that, inside customers’ feeds, the caption is minimize off after the primary three traces. For that purpose, it is suggested to restrict captions to 125 characters.

Nevertheless, do not pass over necessary data only for the sake of holding your complete caption seen. As an alternative, entrance load it with essential particulars and calls-to-action, leaving any hashtags, @mentions, or extraneous data for the top.

As for Instagram Tales, there doesn‘t appear to be a ton of element on character limits there, both. Nevertheless, as a result of the textual content overlays the visible content material — which is the main target — don’t obscure an excessive amount of of the photograph or video with a caption.

Here is a fast instance of a brief Instagram bio from my colleague.

6. Snapchat

Fast reference:

• Character restrict: 80 per put up

Talking of not obscuring visible content material — that brings us to Snapchat.

Instagram Tales was, many imagine, an effort to emulate the options of Snapchat, to create a possibility for customers to share quickly-disappearing photographs and movies.

And once more, as a result of the main target right here is on the visible, you will wish to forestall distracting viewers from it with an excessive amount of textual content.

And, when you‘re on the lookout for extra steerage, simply take a look at this explicit app’s title, bear in mind the “snap” ingredient of it — a phrase that suggests brevity — and check out to not ramble. Here is a fantastic instance of how SXSW makes use of its captions effectively:

7. YouTube

Featured Useful resource: YouTube for Enterprise – A 30-Day Roadmap

Right here we’ve got yet one more community that‘s centered on visible content material, main some to incorrectly assume that accompanying textual content, like titles and descriptions, doesn’t matter as a lot.

That is not solely false. As a video-hosting platform, YouTube ought to primarily be used to showcase a model‘s high quality movies. Nevertheless, like another visible content material, it wants context.

Folks have to know what they’re watching, who it is from, and why it issues.

Sadly, YouTube would not seem to offer any particular parameters over its character counts — besides to your channel description, which, in accordance with the official assist web site, is proscribed to 1,000 characters.

However apart from that, it appears that evidently the one guideline accessible is the alert show that permits you to know, “Your [title or description] is simply too lengthy,” when you’ve entered an excessive amount of textual content in both of these fields.

On this case, we might advise taking the identical method as including textual content to assist your visuals on Instagram and Snapchat.

Like the previous, a video’s description is minimize off after the primary line or two, so frontload crucial descriptors and CTAs, leaving additional particulars for the top.

Present Your Character

As you got down to decide the size of your textual content, whatever the platform, bear in mind to take action with the consumer in thoughts.

Many of those channel-mandated character limits are established for that purpose — to maintain audiences from losing interest or overwhelmed.

Like the rest in advertising and marketing, it is by no means an actual science regardless of the very best knowledge. We encourage you to comply with these tips however don‘t be afraid to experiment in the event that they don’t at all times work.

Take a look at completely different quantities of textual content inside your varied channels, and preserve monitor of how every put up performs.

From there, you may make selections about which forms of content material, in addition to its accompanying titles and descriptions, are essentially the most well-received by your viewers.

Editor’s Be aware: This put up was initially printed in January 2016 and was up to date in December 2019 for accuracy and comprehensiveness.