Why aren't publishing companies following industry standards for ideal Facebook post lengths?
Do a simple Google search for “ideal Facebook post length.”
You probably found the same links I did: Sprout Social touting a 2019 study by BuzzSumo claiming under 50 characters is ideal, HootSuite claiming under 80 characters should be the goal, and other sources claiming anything under 140 characters works.
With a plethora of sources available to publishing companies, why is the average post length from 17 publishing companies 367 characters?
Do best practice rules concerning Facebook post length not apply to publishing companies?
I analyzed the 10 most recent posts with photos (the most effective form of Facebook posts) from each of 17 of the biggest publishers in the United States to determine how effective their posts are in terms of engagement, with three different post groupings:
- all posts with 50 or fewer characters (estimated average for the number of characters displayed on Facebook on mobile devices),
- all posts with 90 or fewer characters (estimated average for the number of characters displayed on Facebook on desktop devices),
- and all other posts.
Of those 170 analyzed posts, only 2 posts were under 50 or fewer characters and only 6 posts were under 90 or fewer characters.
This is far from a statistically significant study, but even this small amount of data supports the general rules of thumb for Facebook post lengths.
So, do best practices concerning Facebook post length apply to publishing companies?
Yes, they do.
Publishing companies’ posts with 50 or fewer characters received 9.0 times as many likes and 15.7 times as many shares as the average publisher’s post. Comments on these two posts were lower than the average (0.37 times as many comments); in a selection with more posts with 50 or fewer characters, the average comments would most likely be much higher.
Posts with 90 or fewer characters didn’t receive as much engagement, but still received 6.5 times as many likes, 1.1 times as many comments, and 11.0 times as many shares as the average publisher’s post.
Take away? Posts created by publishing companies can expect similar returns based on length to posts in other industries.
If you’re managing the social media for a publishing company, make a change: shorten your posts to 50 or fewer characters to generate the highest average amount of engagement for your company. Considering that only 1.18% of this sample of publishers’ posts followed this rule…. You could front-run the industry in terms of social engagement.
Try it. You’ll see.