What’s the Perfect Length of a Facebook Post?

July 28, 2016

Written by NewsWhip

We look at the average length of the most shared Facebook posts from five leading Facebook pages, and find that shorter is better. 

How long are the most shared Facebook posts?

When we say Facebook post, we’re talking about the bit of accompanying text that social media managers write to describe a link on their page.

NBC News Facebook Post

You have about 400 characters to use up before your post is truncated, but more and more pages are completely minimising the length of their posts.
Using NewsWhip Analytics, we looked at the average word count of the most engaged Facebook posts from the official pages of the five biggest Facebook publisher in our June 2016 ranking.

A few caveats: these numbers didn’t include emojis. Hashtags were counted as one word. For this analysis, we were only looking at posts with links back to the page’s website, rather than all posts including images and native and live videos.

Here were the average word counts of the top 100 most shared Facebook posts of the following Facebook pages in June:

How long are the most shared Facebook Posts?

Three of the surveyed pages – BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post and BBC News – have very short captions. Of the 500 posts we reviewed, 168 (33%) were ten words or less. 17 consisted of just one word.

The wordiest post that we found was from Fox News, at 57 words.

BuzzFeed had the shortest posts, at an average of just 11 words. Some of their posts used more emojis than words, and others were variations on traditional

Meanwhile, Fox News had the longest average posts of the five, at 24 words.

[fb_pe url=”https://www.facebook.com/FoxNews/posts/10154387325996336″ bottom=”30″]

Considerations when writing your Facebook posts

So, what can we learn from the numbers?

The main takeaway is this: when writing on Facebook, it’s important to be succinct.

The key consideration for the five publishers we reviewed was to make sure that the post text can be seen by the reader before being shortened with a ‘Read More’ message. You have around 400 characters before that happens, but getting to the point as quickly as you can is usually a good idea.

One popular tactic that we saw again and again in these rankings was to use a key quote from the story to make a point about the substance of the story.

[fb_pe url=”https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/posts/10153709843317217″ bottom=”30″]

Of course, the text that you use in the headline of the post can be adapted so that’s it’s different to the original headline on your site.

Experiment with different posting formats to see what resonates with your audience. Are they looking for more information, humour, a memorable quote or something else? As ever, reviewing the data is key.

Want to learn more about crafting that perfect post? Read more in our 2018 guide to content creation.

 

You might also like

Sports supremacy continued on Instagram in March 2025

Sports supremacy continued on Instagram in March 2025

Last month we launched a new series focused on highlighting the top posts and publishers from across different platforms. This series focuses on a control group of 50 publishers so as to see the impacts of seasonal trends across a consistent group. In February, sports...

Hard news rivals entertainment publishers on TikTok in March 2025

Hard news rivals entertainment publishers on TikTok in March 2025

It’s time for our March TikTok analysis. We’ll be using the same benchmark of 50 publishers to understand who’s leading on TikTok and what type of content is driving their success.  Here are some key takeaways from this month: ESPN remains the dominant publisher,...

NewsWhip

Related articles

Sports supremacy continued on Instagram in March 2025

Sports supremacy continued on Instagram in March 2025

Last month we launched a new series focused on highlighting the top posts and publishers from across different platforms. This series focuses on a control group of 50 publishers so as to see the impacts of seasonal trends across a consistent group. In February, sports...

read more

The NewsWhip Note

A weekly analysis that highlights stories of outsized media and public interest every Wednesday. From brand crises to viral media moments, this newsletter covers it all.

Sign up for the NewsWhip Note