Social Media Means
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Organic Instagram post caption length: 138 to 150 characters Most people scroll through their feed quickly, so it makes sense to keep your captions clear, concise, and punchy. Brief copy is easy to consume. It also doesn't get cut off with an ellipsis.

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Your guide to the ideal length of social media posts for every network. Save time, effort, and get the most from your social media strategy. You’re busy crafting quality content and mastering your social media strategy. You don’t have time to exhaustively compile a list of the ideal length of social media posts for every single platform.

So we did it for you. (Please, hold your applause.)

This isn’t just a list of how long social posts can be: it’s a list of the best social media post lengths to drive the most engagement. If you want more likes, shares, video views, and comments (and what kind of monster doesn’t?!), it’s pivotal to nail the length of your message.

TikTok

LinkedIn

TLDR: Optimize the length of your content and you’ll be more likely to engage and convert your audience. Let’s go. Bonus: Download our free, customizable social media calendar template to easily plan and schedule all your content in advance.

The ideal length of social media posts

People like it when a message makes its point quickly and concisely. It’s satisfying.

Organic posts length: 1 to 80 characters

We scoured the world wide web for research and the most recent study is from way back in 2016… an eternity in Social Media Years. But it’s all we have to work with, so it makes the best starting point we have: In 2016, BuzzSumo analyzed more than 800 million Facebook posts. Based on their findings, posts with less than 50 characters “were more engaging than long posts.” According to another, more precise study by Jeff Bullas, posts with 80 characters or less receive 66 percent higher engagement.

There are a couple of reasons for this…

This extra step doesn’t seem like much, but it will drive down engagement. Every time you ask the audience to take action, a percentage of people will lose interest. Barrier to comprehension: the longer a person reads, the harder his or her brain must work to process information. Content that demands less work to consume and understand will enjoy higher engagement rates.

Paid posts length: 5 to 19 words

Headline, the first text people read, is 5 words.

Link description, which appears below the headline, is 13 words

Here’s a great concise example from AirBnb. No words wasted here.

The bottom line: Whether the post is organic or paid, brevity seems to drive engagement. Capitalize on this by keeping your ad copy concise: don’t use two words when one will do. And keep it clear: omit adverbs, jargon, and the passive voice from your copy.

Learn more social media ad writing tips.

Video length: 30 to 60 seconds

That being said, if you’re hoping to qualify for in-stream ads, you might want to linger a little longer — videos need to be over three minutes to qualify.

Careful! Don’t go over the limit:

But, it bears repeating, just because you have twice the room doesn’t mean people want to see you use it.

Organic and promoted tweets length: 71 – 100 characters

Whether you’re running an ad or not, data from Buddy Media shows that tweets containing less than 100 characters receive, on average, 17 percent higher engagement than longer tweets. This is, in part, because shorter tweets are easier to read and comprehend. Warby Parker cleverly combined a long list of short tweets to get the best of both worlds by creating a long thread for the longest day of the year: quick and cheeky content, delivered in a large volume.

Research by Track Social corroborates these findings:

“The best hashtags are those composed of a single word or a few letters,” writes Vanessa Doctor from Hashtags.org. “Twitter experts recommend keeping the keyword under 6 characters.” Again, this length is about reader comprehension, especially since hashtags don’t support spaces.

Careful! Don’t go over the limit:

The ideal TikTok video length

People have downloaded TikTok more than 3 billion times, which means you’ve got a lot of short attention spans out there in the world to appease. Sure, the short-form video app recently expanded their max video length to 10 whole minutes. But just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should. On TikTok, brevity thrives.

Organic TikTok videos length: 7 to 15 seconds

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To hook a viewer and keep their attention, aim for a 15-second video. The more people who watch and like your video, the more likely you are to appear on someone else’s For You Page, so it’s important to really knock it out of the park. (For more on appeasing the great TikTok algorithm, click here.) That being said, you may still want to try out TikTok’s 7-second challenge. When our own social team tried it, they got half a million likes on their video — not too shabby at all.

TikTok ads length: 21 to 24 seconds

For top performance of ads, TikTok recommends 21-34 seconds.

But of course, length isn’t everything: content and quality formatting matter, too. We’ve got the rundown of everything you need to become a TikTok ads master right here.

Careful! Don’t go over the limit:

TikTok Text Character Limit Caption 300 Handle 24 Bio 80

Ideal LinkedIn post length

More than 810 million professionals use LinkedIn. And as the platform’s user base grows it is more and more difficult to win organic attention. Marketers must continually optimize their messaging for quality, timing, and of course, length.

Organic and paid updates length: 25 words

The research on this topic isn’t very recent, but Hootsuite finds that, as with all other types of social updates, it’s best to keep LinkedIn updates short. The LinkedIn post character limit before the “See More” button is 140. Your message will be cut off at the 140 character mark — like Shopify’s ad here did. As a general rule of thumb, we stick to 25 words or less.

Articles length: 1,900 to 2,000 words

Paul Shapiro, founder of Search Wilderness, analyzed more than 3000 of the most successful posts on LinkedIn’s publishing platform. These posts, on average, received 42,505 views, 567 comments, and 138,841 likes.

He discovered that articles with more words perform better.

“Posts between 1900 and 2000 words perform the best,” writes Shapiro. “[They] gain the greatest number of post views, LinkedIn likes, LinkedIn comments, and LinkedIn shares.” Shapiro also learned that the ideal LinkedIn character limit for titles is between 40 and 49 characters. Titles in this range received the greatest number of post views overall.

Videos length: 30 seconds

In 2017, LinkedIn gave its users the ability to natively upload videos that play automatically in their followers’ feeds. Unlike other platforms, LinkedIn also shares video data (e.g., viewers’ companies and job titles), making it a valuable resource for marketers. According to LinkedIn, the most successful video ads are less than 15 seconds long. But lengths can vary when it comes to LinkedIn native video. For brand awareness and brand consideration videos, LinkedIn recommends keeping the length under 30 seconds. Meanwhile, videos that meet upper-funnel marketing goals should stick to a 30-90 second video length.

Interested in best practices for LinkedIn video? We got you.

Careful! Don’t go over the limit:

LinkedIn Text Character Limit Company Page About 2,000 Comment 1,250 Company Page Status Update 700 Article Headline 100 Article Body Text 110,000 Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Instagram was founded on visual content. The platform was made to showcase compelling pictures and videos, but the right combination of words will promote engagement on any post. The Instagram caption limit is 2,200 characters. But you’ll only need a fraction of that limit to move the needle (as our very scientific experiment about caption lengths can attest). Most people scroll through their feed quickly, so it makes sense to keep your captions clear, concise, and punchy. Brief copy is easy to consume. It also doesn’t get cut off with an ellipsis. Need some writing inspo? Find 264 creative Instagram captions to get you started right here. Again, this length supports readability and ensures that the text won’t get truncated. That means keeping videos here to 15 seconds or less. Short! And! Sweet! Instagram posts can have up to 30 hashtags, making it tempting to stuff each caption with as many as possible. As a marketer, fight this urge. Using more hashtags won’t necessarily yield higher visibility. Of course, picking the right hashtags to use is a whole other story. Our guide to Instagram hashtags will walk you through your options.

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While Reels can be much longer than Stories — up to a minute in length for most people, and 90 seconds for select beta-testers —that same short-attention-span principle applies here. Get to the point quickly and keep it short.

Find more intel on creating engaging Reels here.

Careful! Don’t go over the limit:

The ideal length for YouTube posts

At the end of the day, YouTube is a search engine, meaning it relies on text to organize and rank the nearly 500 hours of video uploaded to its servers every minute. Therefore, in addition to optimizing video length, marketers must front load their content’s title and description copy with relevant keywords—and that means keeping an eye on character count.

YouTube video length: 7 to 15 minutes

Whether you’re watching videos on YouTube or anywhere else, one of the most important KPIs is retention. How long do people actually watch? Are viewers finishing your videos at a high rate? If so, you’re doing something right. Statista reports that the average video is 11.7 minutes long, and the Social Media Examiner endorses this as the ideal, writing that videos between 7 and 15 minutes have the best performance.

Here’s one that’s nine minutes, for instance. Ooh! Ahh!

Of course, there’s more to a successful Youtube strategy than just the right length for your video. Here’s everything you need to know about creating great Youtube content for your business.

YouTube title length: 70 characters

Include relevant keywords to make sure you’re reaching high rankings in Google and YouTube search, while simultaneously being compelling enough to encourage clicks and views. It’s a tall order! And, P.S., it should be pretty tightly crafted: Influencer Marketing Hub suggests keeping it to 70 characters maximum so that it doesn’t get cut off.

YouTube description length: 157 characters

The first 100 to 150 characters will appear until your video, so optimize that chunk of text with both rich description and lots of intriguing keywords.

Careful! Don’t go over the limit:

YouTube Text Characters Video Title 100 Video Description 5,000 Username 20 Bio 1,000 Playlist Title 100

On Pinterest, image size matters. So does the length of your description.

Descriptions length: 200 characters

Studies show that descriptions containing about 200 characters receive the most repins. (For more juicy numbers, check out our guide to must-know Pinterest stats here.) Your Pinterest caption is your chance to add context, persuade, and sell. It’s your chance to tell a story and conjure emotion, to make a promise. The description is your chance to compel.

Careful! Don’t go over the limit:

To really thrive with engagement on this platform, it’s really more about what you’re posting, not how long that content plays for. Our guide to effective Snapchat advertising is a helpful tool whether you’re creating marketing or editorial content. Instead, aim for (we’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again!) short-and-sweet videos that hit hard off the top, like this hot sauce ad, which clocks in at just 20 seconds but makes a serious impact. Captions for snaps can be up to 80 characters, but they’re really secondary to the visual content, so don’t stress too much about making the most of this.

Infographic: ideal length of social media posts

Now, over to you.

This article breaks down best practices, but ultimately, every social account is a unique beast… and you know it (or can learn to know it!) best. Time and experimentation will reveal what resonates best with your specific followers and users. Try running A/B tests to help you determine if the suggested character counts in this guide are, in fact, ideal for you. Use Hootsuite to share quality content on all your social media channels from one dashboard. Grow your brand, engage customers, keep up with competitors, and measure results. Try it free today.

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