You should go nowhere near your character count on Twitter
The internet, and social media in particular, has driven home the idea of short and snappy commentary. Capture the public’s attention, maintain it for a brief time, and get your message across. But are there rules?
Well on Twitter, yes. Quite strict when it comes to parameters, the social media entity that changed the game when it emerged a decade ago limits users to 140 characters. But is that, even, too long?
Research by Sumail and Buffer Blog claims that tweets with 71-100 characters have a 17pc higher engagement rate with the end user.
That figure actually drops in half on Facebook, with posts of fewer than 40 characters gaining 86pc more engagement than longer posts.
For Google+ it gets a bit complicated, requiring a gripping intro sentence to capture the audience, with e-mail subject lines in a strange barometer of 28-39 characters.
What’s most interesting, though, is the modest size of modern paragraphs. The online community seems to have rejected lengthy tracts of text for shorter, concise paragraphs.
According to this infographic, seen on Tech Infographics, paragraphs with larger fonts and less characters per line give readers an easier, quicker route through the text.
