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?
I knew most of these but I learned some new things as well! Thanks for sharing this Karen, I’ll be tweeting it shortly!
The FB one surprises me – fewer characters than a tweet? I thought the whole point about Fb was you had room to write more, and if someone hits the more button to see what else you said that counts as a click, which equals engagement which equals higher reach. I’ll test it out though and see what happens.
This is great information and well needed! Thank you for sharing and really simplifying what is needed in content.
I love your analogy with the zoo. Great tips! Linking up this week for the Wed hop. Have a great end of the week.
Awesome. Great things to know. Tweeted!!
This is really intensive information! It’s always hard to navigate all the different social media sites and remember what to do where. Thanks for taking the time to make this up!
I agree 100% that sometimes we get too much information thrown at us. My suggestion is to focus on remembering the tips for the social sites where you get the most engagement.
Happy Thoughtless Thursday! The internet is a zoo. Well written. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for joining Thoughtless Thursday. This information is great and very useful!
A lot of good information on a rather confusing subject. Thank you.
Very useful information…great infographic…thanks for sharing!
Wow! This was some really great info!!!!
Thanks for sharing on Thoughtless Thursday!
ღ husky hugz ღ frum our pack at Love is being owned by a husky!
the only number i remember when it comes to social media is 140 😀
Nice reading this post. I think the Facebook one is not clear, are you talking about a Facebook update with a link or without a link?
I used to post short messages on Facebook with a link, was working well. And from last one month, I am keeping is long, this is also working good. I feel the image speaks more than the text.
I agree with the other lengths that you mentioned. Thanks for sharing 🙂