The Ideal Length For Online Content

I think we all can agree that different audiences and medium require different types of writing, but it turns out that there are ideal lengths for online content such as tweets, Facebook posts, Google+ headlines,  and blog post headlines.

The ideal length of a tweet is 100 characters

According to Twitter, Twitter’s best practices reference research by Buddy Media about tweet length: 100 characters is the engagement sweet spot for a tweet. 

Creativity loves constraints and simplicity is at our core. Tweets are limited to 140 characters so they can be consumed easily anywhere, even via mobile text messages. There’s no magical length for a Tweet, but a recent report by Buddy Media revealed that Tweets shorter than 100 characters get a 17% higher engagement rate.

Photo by birgerking The ideal length of a Facebook post is less than 40 characters

Forty characters is not much at all. (The sentence I just wrote was 36 characters.)

However, 40 is the magic number that Jeff Bullas, social media marketing guru, found was most effective in his study of retail brands on Facebook.

The ideal length of a Google+ headline is less than 60 characters

To maximize the readability and appearance of your posts on Google+, you probably should keep your text on one line.

Demian Farnworth of Copyblogger studied the Google+ breaking point and found that headlines should not exceed 60 characters.

The ideal length of a headline is 6 words

How much of the headline of this post did you read before you clicked?

According to a blog post by Kissmetrics, you might not have read it at all! According to the post, we not only scan content but we also scan headlines and tend to only absorb the first three words and last three words of a headline. If you can’t restrict your headline to 6 words, at the very least make sure that the first and last three count.