Tuesday Tip: Ideal Content Lengths for Social Media

Blogs

To write effective blog posts, choose content ideas that reflect the needs of your consumers. Direct the content as you want, using how tos, high quality journalistic style, personal storytelling, lists, product reviews, curated content, etc. Try to keep your blogs evergreen, meaning they will continue to be relevant in the future. Be sure to have an interesting title, headings, calls to action, links to your offer, and images.

Blog post lengths:

• Short 500-800 words
• Medium 800-1500
• Long 1500+

The ideal blog post length is 1500 words, with 50 character titles.

Facebook

Facebook posts should be short, only 1 or 2 sentences, but jam packed with valuable, engaging content. Offer current information, a newly released product, or pose a question. Include an image and a link.

Ideal length for a Facebook post is 1 or 2 sentences.

Twitter

To write killer tweets, you have to think short and sweet. To master pith, draft your message and then edit your word choices carefully. Take advantage of verbs, sensory descriptions with adjectives, and avoid filler words, like "very". Right before you are ready to click Tweet, edit one last time.

Twitter limits posts to 140 characters, but the ideal length is between 75-100 characters.

Instagram

The key to Instagram is clearly visual.  Instagram requires an image, and that is the showcase of your post. The caption that accompanies your visual image should also be productive. Keep your caption short, use two hash tags at the most, and your call to action can't be an active link. Storytelling can supplement your image in the caption. It's also OK to go caption free and let that showcase visual tell the whole story.

While images are the most important, captions of 100 characters or less are ideal.

YouTube

Video content is currently king. But, that video should be highly valuable and short. 3 minutes is an ideal length, because videos should be engaging and snackable. Video is great for tutorials, how tos, behind the scenes, informative explanations, product demonstrations, sharing expertise, narratives or live events. Combine video/visuals, text and your active or voice over audio, plus background music to add mood. The challenge with video is quality-high definition, great lighting, clear audio, and professional looking scenery.

Ideal video length: 3 minutes

Pinterest

For perfect pins, combine an attractive image with readable text. Text should be large enough don't, and high enough contrast to be legible while scrolling through a Pinterest feed. Your caption should be descriptive, with additional details about the pin, and a call to action plus link to more information. How tos, info graphics, categorical interests, and mini "ads" (think food photos with a call to action to click a link for the recipe) are all really successful on Pinterest. Pretty, inspirational photographs also garner a lot of Pin It attention, especially when someone is trying to curate ideas on a board.

Ideal Pinterest caption length is 200 characters