You’re busy crafting quality content and mastering your social media strategy. You don’t have time to exhaustively compile a list of the ideal length of social media posts for every single platform.

So we did it for you. (Please, hold your applause.)

This isn’t just a list of how long social posts can be: it’s a list of the best social media post lengths to drive the most engagement.

If you want more likes, shares, video views, and comments (and what kind of monster doesn’t?!), it’s pivotal to nail the length of your message.

Are you writing too much in your social media posts? Too little? Are your videos too long or not long enough? Read on for our curated research on the ideal character counts for social media posts (not to be confused with character limits) and other types of content on:

• Facebook
• X (formerly Twitter)
• Instagram
• TikTok
• LinkedIn
• Youtube
• Pinterest
• Snapchat

TL;DR: Optimize the length of your content, and you’ll be more likely to engage and convert your audience. Let’s go.

The ideal length of social media posts

The ideal Facebook post length

While you have enough space to craft a short novella on FB, the truth is, shorter posts usually receive more likes, comments, and shares.

People like it when a message makes its point quickly and concisely. It’s satisfying.

Organic posts length: 1 to 80 characters

We scoured the World Wide Web for research, and the most recent study is from way back in 2016… an eternity in Social Media Years. But it’s all we have to work with, so it makes the best starting point we have:

In 2016, BuzzSumo analyzed more than 800 million Facebook posts. Based on their findings, posts with less than 50 characters “were more engaging than long posts.” According to another, more precise study by Jeff Bullas, posts with 80 characters or fewer receive 66% higher engagement.

There are a couple of reasons for this…

Barrier to entry: Facebook cuts off longer posts with an ellipsis, forcing users to click “See More” to expand the text and read the entire message.

This extra step may not seem like much, but it will reduce engagement. Every time you ask the audience to take action, a percentage of people will lose interest.

Barrier to comprehension: The longer a person reads, the harder his or her brain must work to process information. Content that demands less work to consume and understand will enjoy higher engagement rates.

Paid posts length: 5 to 19 words

Every Facebook ad needs three types of content: a Headline, Ad Text, and a Link Description.

After analyzing 752,626 Facebook ads back in 2018, AdEspresso found that ads did best when the copy in each element was clear and concise. According to the data, the ideal length for a:

• Headline, the first text people read, is 5 words.
• Ad text, which appears above the ad, is 19 words
• Link description, which appears below the headline, is 13 words

Here’s a great concise example from AirBnb. No words wasted here.

The bottom line: Whether the post is organic or paid, brevity seems to drive engagement.

Capitalize on this by keeping your ad copy concise: don’t use two words when one will do. And keep it clear: omit adverbs, jargon, and the passive voice from your copy.

Video length: 30 to 60 seconds

Sure, you can upload a 240-minute video to Facebook… but will anyone actually watch it all the way through? With video, one of the primary measures of success is how long people watch, also known as your video retention rate.

For viral content, Facebook recommends videos that are less than one minute or stories that are less than 20 seconds in length.

That said, if you’re hoping to qualify for in-stream ads, you might want to linger a little longer — videos need to be over three minutes to qualify.

Facebook also recommends videos over three minutes for episodic series, live streaming, or story development.

Careful! Don’t go over the limit:

The ideal length of a post on X

So, how many characters are in an X post (formerly known as a tweet)? Back in 2017, Twitter doubled its character limit from 140 to 280 to help make writing on the platform easier.

Still, just because you have twice the room doesn’t mean people want to see you use it.

Organic and promoted post length: 71 – 100 characters

Whether you’re running an ad or not, data from Buddy Media shows that X posts containing less than 100 characters receive, on average, 17 percent higher engagement than longer tweets.

This is, in part, because shorter posts are easier to read and comprehend.

There is a way to get around the character limit on X:

Back in 2022, Warby Parker cleverly combined a long list of short tweets to get the best of both worlds by creating a long thread for the longest day of the year: quick and cheeky content, delivered in a large volume.

X hashtag length: 6 characters

“The best hashtags are those composed of a single word or a few letters,” writes Vanessa Doctor from Hashtags.org. “Experts recommend keeping the keyword under 6 characters.”

Again, this length is about reader comprehension, especially since hashtags don’t support spaces.

Careful! Don’t go over the limit:

The ideal TikTok video length

People have downloaded TikTok more than 3 billion times, which means you’ve got a lot of short attention spans out there in the world to appease.

For most users, the max video length on TikTok is 10 minutes, though the platform has been experimenting with video lengths of 20, 30, and even 60 minutes.

But just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should. On TikTok, brevity thrives.

Organic TikTok video length: 7 to 15 seconds

To hook a viewer and keep their attention, aim for a 15-second video.

The more people who watch and like your video, the more likely you are to appear on someone else’s For You Page, so it’s important to really knock it out of the park. (For more on appeasing the great TikTok algorithm, click here.)

That said, you may still want to try out TikTok’s 7-second challenge. When our social team tried it, their video received half a million views —not too shabby at all.

@hootsuite

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