Length Matters in Social Media {INFOGRAPHIC}
I pay a lot of attention to what works in social media.
I have to.
I’m a real estate agent who uses social media to get hired by clients and a blogger who uses social media to get more traffic to this website.
The key is understanding that what works in one social media network may not work on another.
[su_quote]Every piece of content should be as long as it takes to convey the message, and no longer. [/su_quote]
On every social network, users are flooded with a stream of updates. A very short statement on one network can work to get you a lot of attention, but it might be too short on another social network where people expect more information.
Google+ is a perfect example. Long status updates are the norm on Google+, but having a headline in bold that is the right length in the post is critical to getting people to read more.
What is the Perfect Length?
I recently started using Buffer to schedule posts for my twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts. Not only does Buffer make it easy to schedule posts, but they also feed you some really good content. Out of the articles that they offer as suggestions each day, I usually find 2 or 3 gems that I want to share with my networks.
This infographic published on the Buffer blog was one of those gems.
Read on to find the perfect length for status updates, headlines, blog posts, podcasts, videos and more.
Some of this the infographic tips I already knew, but don’t always do when I start sharing. But there were some new insights for me.
It’s hard to implement a bunch of changes at once, so here are my top takeaways that I’m going to focus on:
- Facebook links – I plan to post really short comments when sharing a link.
- Facebook questions – Short direct questions have worked well for me. I need to do more of them.
- Twitter – Keep it short, especially when sharing links. This means editing the post title to as short as possible so I can add my comment at the beginning.
- Google+ – Start with the headline, in bold, rather than a paragraph like I have been doing.
- Blog – With the first 3 and last 3 words the most important, focus on headlines that get people to click through from newsletters and feed readers.
Did you learn anything new from this infographic? What will you do differently in your social media accounts?
