Your brand may understand the ideal way to broadcast your content, from Twitter to billboards to online videos. But what about the ideal length of copy to get your content noticed and engage your audience online? The optimal length of your online content will depend on the product or service you are selling and your audience, however, here are some suggestions from Buffer social.
Blog Headline
Think about how much of the headline of this blog post you read. According to KISSmetrics we only scan headlines and absorb only the first 3 words and last 3 words of a headline. If you want an optimal length for your headline, stick to 6 words and make every word count.
Title Tags
The design of Google’s search results page means that the maximum length for your page title is about 60 characters until your text gets cut off. This means the ideal length of a title tag is 55 characters depending on the width of the letters in your text.
Blog Post
Medium.com has measured for long blog posts, the most total reading time on average is 7 minutes which equals about 1600 words. For shorter and sharable blog posts which capture an audience with a short attention span, many bloggers believe 600 words maximum is ideal.
Paragraph
To increase usability of your content, it needs to be scannable by your audience with fewer characters per line. The ideal paragraph length ranges between 40-55 characters as it will appear simple for your reader and is easier for them to scan. Try bolding words or using larger fonts for significant phrases to make it easier for your audience to focus.
Email Subject Line
A general rule of thumb for email subject lines is keeping to a maximum of 50 characters, however, Mailchimp has found that the ideal length is between 28-39 characters.
Twitter
Although it can be tempting to use up the maximum of 140 characters for a tweet but the ideal number of characters for engagement is actually 100. Medium length tweets with around 100 characters have enough space for a valuable post and have a 17% higher engagement rate.
Facebook
Facebook users love short posts. The best length for Facebook content is less than 40 characters. Facebook found higher engaged posts have a very short amount of characters and longer posts performed poorly. Shareable Facebook posts have more to do with the format rather than the length of copy. Images receive 120% more engagement than text posts so it is ideal to include an image with your 40 characters.
Google+
The best length to maximise the readability of your Google+ headline is less than 60 characters – to keep your text on one line. If your headline can’t be contained in one line it is recommended that you write a attention-grabbing first sentence in your post to entice your audience.
YouTube Video
Ideally, the most popular YouTube videos are very short. If you look at the top 50 YouTube videos the average length is about 3 minutes in duration – enough time to engage your viewer and make your point.
Our team at Clarity Marketing have experience writing a wide range of material across a broad range of market sectors. If you need help writing your content we will work with you to understand what you would like to share with your audience and the most effective way to convey this. To find out more give us a call on 1300 060 204 or submit an online enquiry.