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What’s the best tweet length?

Plus: What’s the best hashtag length, word length and reading grade level for Twitter?

Sure, Twitter has a relatively new 280-character limit. But just because Twitter doubled its 140-character limit doesn’t mean you should use all of those characters.

What’s the best tweet length?
Tweet this! What’s the most effective length of a tweet that Twitter users will retweet? The best character limit for a hashtag? The best character count for a word on Twitter? Image by Tero Vesalaine

So what’s the ideal length of a tweet? A hashtag? How else can you make your tweets more readable and engaging? Let’s look at the research:

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1. How long should tweets be?

So you’ve written your blog post, and now you want to get the word out on Twitter. How long should your tweet be? 190 characters? Longer than 140 characters?

Turns out medium length performs best.

Retweets increase with word count — to a point
Retweets increase with word count — to a point. You’ll get the most retweets if your tweets are between 70 and 110 characters, according to Track Social research. Chart by TrackSocial

Why?

  • Retweets increase with length. You’ll get more retweets if your tweets are 71 to 100 words, according to a Track Social study of 100 well-known brands popular on Twitter.
  • Engagement goes down with word count. Tweets shorter than 100 words get 17% higher engagement, according to research by Buddy Media.

The solution? Aim for about 100 characters.

100 characters on Twitter is the new black. Here’s what 100 characters looks like, including spaces.

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2. How long should Twitter hashtags be?

What about hashtags? We’ve all seen social media writers use 140 characters to 280 on hashtags. So how long is too long?

Let’s look at the research:

#Hashtags work
#Hashtags work … But don’t overuse them. Chart by Buffer
  • Use hashtags, according to research by Buffer Media. Tweets with hashtags get twice the engagement of tweets without them.
  • But don’t overuse them. Tweets with one or two hashtags get 21% higher engagement than those without, Buffer found. But engagement drops when you add more.
  • Make them short. Keep them to 6 characters or less, recommends Vanessa Doctor from Hashtags.org.

Get the best reading grade level & more for Twitter. >>>

How long should your content be?

How long should your blog post be? Your mobile headline? Online paragraphs? Sentences and words?

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