If you’re wondering why your social media posts rarely get the amount of engagement you hope for despite it having eye-catching graphics and convincing call-to-action statements, then maybe your Social Media Post Captions itself are the culprit. Social media post captions are tricky.
Most of us don’t realize it while posting our favorite quotes as our social media post captions, but for a marketer, they can cause digital death.
So, how long should your social media caption be? This question is probably on every social media marketer’s mind.
Where social media is all fun and games for the general user, business users have much to learn to stay afloat. Captions are one of those things.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest, Youtube, and TikTok all give you a chance to share your social content. However, crafting captions that actually sell across these platforms is not a piece of cake. Not to mention that some of these social media platforms only allow a specific number of characters per post.
To solve the mystery of how long a good caption should be, we created this detailed caption-writing guide for the most popular social media platforms. But before diving in, let’s first see how the captions affect engagement rates on different social media platforms.
How Caption Length Affects Engagement
Social media marketers are always trying to find the best practices that can help them to get higher engagement rates. Crafting an ad that can move eyeballs to the desired spot on the screen is absolutely necessary in the current digital world.
One of the most engaging parameters is your social media post captions. Sometimes, a short caption is not enough to convey what you want to say to your audience. While a long one could send them directly on a blissful journey to dreamland. That’s why finding that sweet spot between these two is essential for your social media marketing efforts.
A study conducted by Social Insider reveals that there are different elements in a caption that affect engagement rates across social media platforms. The top ones include using emojis and the message of the caption itself.
There are some negative factors as well that decrease social media engagement. One of them is asking a question in the caption. That’s a nay for the brands which are targeting their audience through social media.
Another factor that research confirms is that Christmas posts only get engagement on Facebook, and negatively impact engagement on platforms like Instagram and Twitter.
The Ideal Social Media Post Length
All social media platforms have different character limits for their captions. In fact, captions vary across different types of content on a single social media platform. Basically, there are two things you should consider when figuring out how long your caption should be: the type of post you’re making and the character limit of the social media platform you’re posting on.
Here’s a quick guide to ideal social media caption lengths across different social media platforms.
1. Facebook
Facebook currently has about 2.85 billion active users and counting. It means that 2.85 billion different people will have access to what you’re marketing to them. This makes Facebook a good platform to showcase your products and services.
But if you’re looking for brand engagement, Facebook is not the place to be. Instagram is leading the social media engagement rate race. While Twitter boasts itself to be the most brand-centric social media platform.
Despite these facts, Facebook has its fair share of users that are potential customers. So, a well-crafted caption is still a must for Facebook. Let’s have a look at what caption lengths work best on Facebook for different types of content:
Character Limit For Ads:
Though Facebook doesn’t impose a limit on their ad captions, a lengthy one can reduce engagement. If you’re a Facebook user, you may have noticed the platform’s “See More” button. If your caption is too long, Facebook will hide a part of it and give users the option to open the entire post if they want to see more. Unless your first few sentences are really interesting, not everyone will bother clicking that “See More” button. That means you’ve just lost potential customers. And all because you couldn’t be bothered to trim down your caption.
So if you’re crafting a caption for your ads, make sure they’re within this ideal post length:
Text and video ad link description- 30 characters
Text and video ad headline- 45 characters
Image ad headline- 40 characters
Image ad link description- 20 characters.
2. Twitter
Twitter has a frustrating character limit. For people who like to write long paragraphs, Twitter is not the ideal place. However, the platform has a considerable number of users. That’s why despite the character limit, many businesses are still scrambling to market themselves on Twitter.
The usual character limit per tweet is 280 characters, but studies have shown that shorter tweets get more resharing and more likes.
How short?
Ideally, a tweet ranging between 71-100 characters gets the highest number of retweets.
In fact, tweets that are shorter or longer than this character limit do not receive the same amount of attention on Twitter.
But how can you make shorter tweets more engaging?
Twitter suggests that using hashtags is a key player in the retweeting game along with the videos that people opt to post on the platform. Hashtags with about 6 characters work best.
3. Instagram
Unlike the text-based social media platforms Facebook and Twitter, Instagram operates on visual content. Even with lengthy character limits for the captions, the cut-off for success is not really long on Instagram.
Think about scrolling through your feed on Instagram and encountering long captions with an ellipsis. Would you stop to tap the ‘see more’ option? Obviously, most of us will scroll past such posts. That’s why if you’re marketing your products or business on Instagram, keep it short and sweet.
The ideal caption limit for organic posts is 138 to 150 characters (suppress your urge to use the 2200-character limit here).
The paid posts require even fewer characters to send the message across. The ideal limit of paid posts is 125 characters.
While the most tempting thing on Instagram is to keep adding hashtags, the fact is that there is an ideal limit to it as well.
Posts that have nine ‘relevant’ hashtags have more engagement than posts with a higher number of hashtags.
4. LinkedIn
Linkedin is the social community for people who are working in the corporate world. Meaning, most of the people here are too busy to read a long post. That being said, Linkedin posts (organic or paid) should ideally be 140 characters.
Linkedin articles are another story though. The articles that get the most readership on Linkedin range between 1900-2000 words. This means you’ll have a better chance of increasing your visibility on this platform if you’re sharing long-form articles.
Linkedin also allows its users to upload videos for which the ideal length is 30 seconds.
5. Pinterest
Just like Instagram, Pinterest is also dependent on images. The platform also has a character limit for captions both on the pins and boards. However, the ideal caption length varies drastically from the character limit.
The description of your pin can go up to 200 characters, but the ideal length is between 100 and 200 characters. You have to play smart here with crafting a story that will attract your consumers.
6. Youtube
Youtube, among all the mentioned platforms, is the most unique. It is a video-sharing platform that solely depends on visuals. Despite this, the length of your caption will still affect your engagement rate.
For Youtube content creators, video descriptions are one way of telling the audience more about the video, its publishing date and time, and other relevant details. This description has a character limit of 5000 and using relevant keywords will increase a brand’s chances of gaining more visibility.
Another text-based aspect of Youtube is the video title that should be at most 70 characters.
The video titles, just like the description should strategically use relevant keywords that will increase the visibility of your content on Google and Youtube’s own search engines.
7. TikTok
Tiktok is also a video-sharing app, but a little bit different than Youtube. While Youtube is almost completely user-centric, Tiktok has app-centric features that allow the users to recreate content as well as adding their own touch of personalization. Moreover, unlike Youtube, Tiktok allows video editing options.
The app also just added a new feature that allows content creators to add a caption to their videos.
TikTok has been the most inclusive while giving the users a chance to create captions for their videos. They have incorporated speech-to-text recognition software that allows the users to transcribe their spoken captions and vice versa. This feature enables visually impaired people to listen to the captions through the voice option.
Staying true to the fast-paced nature of the app, the caption length is only 100 characters. Thus, you need to be precise about what you want to express in the video caption.
Bottomline
Almost all social media platforms have an optimum character limit for captions. The sole responsibility for marketers here is to use each social media post captions limit wisely. There’s no fit-for-all criterion to devise a successful caption on any platform. However, as a business owner, you should not take the caption limit as a hindrance. Rather, think of it as an opportunity to keep experimenting and see the impact of varying caption lengths on your overall engagement. This, in turn, will give you an idea of what works best for your target audience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mandy Schmitz is a freelance consultant and project management expert with 10+ years of experience working internationally for big brands in fintech, consumer goods, and more. Join her on Changeaholic.com to learn how to optimize your business operations and find the latest software reviews.
Featured Image Source: Pixabay
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