What do you mean by Character Count?
The length of a post on social media significantly impacts the effectiveness of your content.
Adhering to the character count limits set by each platform ensures that your messages are displayed in full on your profile or feed, effectively conveying the essential information to engage your audience. However, exceeding the character count can result in confusing and truncated content.
Mastering character counts on social media can be challenging as guidelines change, and simply utilizing the maximum character allowance doesn't always guarantee audience attention.
Character limits on social media platforms:
Understanding the basics of character counts is crucial for refining and enhancing your social media strategy. It's important to note that the maximum character count for a post and the ideal number of characters for engagement are two different aspects. For example, while Facebook allows up to 63,206 characters for posts, a study by Jeff Bullas found that posts with fewer than 80 characters receive 66% more engagement.
Here are some key character count limitations to be aware of on popular social media platforms:
Facebook:
- Facebook Posts: 63,206 characters
- Facebook video and text ad copy: 90 characters
- Facebook image ad text: 90 characters
Twitter:
- Tweet (Twitter): 280 characters
- Twitter DM: 10,000 characters
- Twitter handle: 20 characters
- Twitter profile name: 20 characters
Instagram:
- Instagram caption: 2,200 characters
- Instagram bio: 150 characters
- Instagram username: 30 characters
LinkedIn:
- LinkedIn update: 700 characters
- LinkedIn about us: 2,000 characters
- LinkedIn Page name: 50 characters
- LinkedIn status update: 600 characters
Pinterest:
- Pinterest profile name: 20 characters
- Pinterest board description: 500 characters
- Pinterest bio: 160 characters
YouTube:
- YouTube video title: 70 characters
- YouTube video description: 5,000 characters
Determining the appropriate character count:
While the maximum character count for each social media platform serves as a helpful reference, it should be considered as a starting point for your posts.
Understanding your audience is a crucial factor in managing character count. For instance, LinkedIn users often seek thought leadership posts and insights, and research has shown that posts between 1,900 and 2,000 words perform best on this platform. Conversely, most other social channels tend to yield better results with shorter and concise character counts.
On Instagram, although captions can be up to 2,200 characters long, users scrolling through images prefer shorter content. Therefore, it is advisable to keep your character count concise and impactful.
Tracking your character count:
The most effective approach to determining the ideal character count for your brand is to observe your audience's response. Utilize the maximum limits and online suggestions as a starting point for your initial posts, and then analyze how your audience engages with content of different lengths.
Experimentation may be necessary to discover which posts resonate best with your specific audience. Thankfully, tools like our character counter can accurately measure the characters in each post, ensuring you adhere to the appropriate character limits.
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