Social Media and the Ideal Length of Everything

Wordstream.com called Kevan Lee's article titled "The Ideal Length of Everything Online" one of the 31 top articles of 2014. Kevan Lee compiled information from social media experts and researchers to tell us, in one long but concise article, what the ideal length is for Tweets, Facebook posts, Google+ headlines, and every other social media caption you can imagine.

Here is a breakdown of some of Lee's most compelling research findings:

TWITTER (tweet)
Ideal Length:  100 characters
Says Who?  Twitter themselves, in their best practices section, as well as Buddy Media research.
Supporting Evidence:  "Tweets shorter than 100 characters get a 17% higher engagement rate." - Buddy Media

FACEBOOK (post)
Ideal Length:  < 40 characters
Says Who?  Jeff Bullas via a study of retail brands on Facebook as well as BlitzLocal
Supporting Evidence:  "40-character posts received 86% higher engagement"

GOOGLE+ (headline)
Ideal Length:  < 60 characters
Says Who?  Demian Farnworth of Copyblogger and Qunitly Research
Supporting Evidence:  "Google changed the layout of posts so that you only see three lines of the original post before you see "Read more" link... In other words, your first sentence has to be a gripping teaser to get people to click "Read more".

BLOG POSTS
Ideal Length:  7 minutes, 1600 words
Says Who?  Medium, SerpIQ
Supporting Evidence:  "The average total [time that people read blog posts] rises for longer posts, peaks at 7 minutes, and then declines."

Check out https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-ideal-length-of-everything-online-according-to-science to see more research findings on the ideal length of social media posts!

Sources:
http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/10/29/best-online-marketing-articles
https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-ideal-length-of-everything-online-according-to-science