Know Your Limits: Best length for Social Media Captions and Emails.
Neither too much, nor too little.
Hello,
I am glad some of you found my last post on tracking metrics helpful. Perhaps that’s the best reward creators like me can get - your valuable feedback. It helps a lot when I hear back from you on what you liked or what would you like me to write more on. Thank you for your precious time.
We are almost at the end of this 10-post series on Marketing for ‘Solopreneurs and Small Businesses’.
We have discussed positioning, messaging, defining your target segment, communication, channels, frequency, marketing metrics, and marketing trends. Phew!
In this 9th post of the series, here’s something for your quick reference - the optimal length of different content formats.
I realized the need for it when I watched two videos that were very text-heavy. And for emails, one of the readers specifically asked me if there are any best practices for the subject line. Email marketing is a topic in itself that I will be delving into detail in one of the upcoming posts. For now, here are some important things to remember while creating your content.
Email subject line length. Preferably 6-9 words and within 40-60 characters. While the email services like Gmail allow up to 70 characters for the subject line, it’s better to keep it short especially for mobile readability. Also, remember to keep the key points in the first few characters. Our eyes tend to pick up the first 3 words in any title.
Text length in stories: 20 to 35 words. Stories are meant for quick communication. Each platform has a different transition duration. But if we take the current most popular one, i.e., Instagram Stories, its photo duration is 7 seconds and video duration is 15 seconds before the transition. For Linkedin, it’s slightly higher. The average human reading speed is approx. 2.5 words per second. This will help you decide your word count per frame. I know we can pause the story by holding the image but why burden the user with additional effort?
Post caption length: 100-150 characters. It varies by the channel and the media format. Generally, captions attract more attention, if the image is powerful. And users click to read more when they find the first few words interesting. As per later.com, the ideal length of Instagram captions ranges somewhere between 138-150 characters, whereas the ideal length of a LinkedIn status update is around 100 characters. Most of these platforms have much larger character limits for their posts. I try to express the key messages in the first 10-15 words. Using catchy and contextual words helps.
The number of hashtags: 2-6 per post. This topic is like a pandora's box. Everyone has an opinion on this topic and ones that they will defend till kingdom come. Some experts say, use as many as possible. And some suggest to not use any at all. Here is my tried & tested verdict - hashtags help. Especially when you are a new brand or a small business, it helps in getting discovered and reaching the audience who might be interested in our content. The number of hashtags to be used vary as per channels: Twitter recommends using 2 hashtags per post, Linkedin suggests 3-6, whereas Instagram marketers suggest 5-10. The actual limits of hashtags on each channel are much more. Use it for sure, but use it judiciously.
Image size: 1200 pixels, 1:1 aspect ratio, square image. This is ideal for Facebook and Instagram posts. It can also work well for LinkedIn and Twitter posts if you keep the key messages or critical elements away from the top and bottom of the image. In case you are creating blog posts with images that you would like to share on social media, then the recommended blog image aspect ratio would be 1.91:1. Image ratio is a very large topic. Since this post is targeted towards solopreneurs or small businesses, I am suggesting the most common one that works for all. Most of these channels also support landscape and portrait images. Here is a quick reference by Hootsuite on the sizes supported by each social channel.
Hope these help as quick reference material for your content. I want to call out that this recommendation about lengths and sizes comes with an expiration date, let’s say it’s Feb 2021 :). Social media rules change faster than we can keep up. And as I am typing this post, there are chances of some of these being updated. In case you see any image not fitting a channel, do check the official announcement section of that channel. From my side, I will try to update this post if I come across any changes in the numbers mentioned above.
Keep creating. Keep posting. Keep growing.
Onwards and upwards,
Kanupriya
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*This post is the ninth post in a 10-posts series that I have created for Small Businesses, Passion Economy Professionals, and Solopreneurs to help them in their Product Marketing Journey. If you liked it and would like to read more, you may read the tenth post here.
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Know more about ‘Connecting The Dots’ here. Looking forward to connecting the dots together :).