Character count

On social media, the length of a post often affects the impact of your content.

Following the character count rules of each platform means that your messages display fully on your profile or feed, conveying the information essential to converting your audience. Alternatively, go over the character count, and you risk posting confusing and truncated material.

It’s often difficult to master character counts on social media. Not only do the guidelines change at times but using the maximum character allowance isn’t always the best way to earn audience attention.

Character limits on social media

Understanding the basics of the character count is a great way to refine and improve your social media strategy. Importantly, the maximum character count for a post and the ideal number of characters for engagement are two different things. For instance, Facebook posts can feature up to 63,206 characters, but a study by Jeff Bullas found that posts with fewer than 80 characters receive 66% more engagement.

Discovering the right character count on each channel is a mixture of knowing your limits and knowing your audience. Some basic character count limitations to be aware of include:

Facebook

• Facebook Posts: 63206 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

Finding the right character count

Although the maximum character count for each social media platform is a useful guide, it’s only a jumping off point for your posts.

The nature of the audience on each channel is an essential factor in managing character count. For example, people on LinkedIn are more likely to be seeking thought leadership posts and insights. Because of this, research into successful LinkedIn posts found that longer posts, between 1900 and 2,000 words, perform the best. On the other hand, most other social channels get better results from a short and sweet character count.

On Instagram, captions can be up to 2,200 words long, but people scrolling through pictures are going to be less inclined to read a lengthy caption. It makes sense to keep your character count short and punchy.

Tracking your character count

The most effective way to choose the right character count for your brand is to pay attention to your audience.

Use maximum limits and online suggestions to guide your initial posts, then measure the response your audience has to different content lengths.

You may need to experiment to find out which posts resonate best with your audience.