Are Your LinkedIn Posts Getting Cut Off? Find Out the Best Length
Our digital marketing experts realize that LinkedIn is the social platform many business professionals rely on to gather valuable industry information. For this reason, many companies post lengthy descriptions about their latest blog, case study, etc. Sharing your new research is great, but if the post is cut off before you get to the point, it will not persuade users to click back to your website. We believe it’s best for businesses to simply shorten their message and give users all the information up front, making it easier for people to click the link.
We decided to dig deeper to find the ideal LinkedIn post size so our posts don’t get cut off again.
Why are my LinkedIn posts getting cut off?
To keep feeds consistent and easy for users to scroll through, LinkedIn will cut off the text and insert an ellipsis if the social post takes up more than three lines of space. When this happens, users have to click “see more” to get the full message.
Why does the LinkedIn post length matter?
Businesses and their marketing teams take care in creating the perfect description to go along with the latest release on your LinkedIn feed. It needs to quickly tell the users what the content is about, how it relates to them and what they’ll gain if they click on the link. That can be a lot of information to fit into one post, which is why social media marketers spend time crafting the perfect, witty post with the hopes that none of the copy will be cut off. Inefficient LinkedIn post length means the call-to-action at the end of the post is most likely not visible, which means fewer visitors coming to your website.
Exploring The Possibilities of a Character Limit for LinkedIn Posts
Our Des Moines digital marketing specialists wanted to hone in on the ideal LinkedIn post size, so we started experimenting with specific character counts. We tested if there was a LinkedIn post character limit by taking a look at our past LinkedIn post lengths. Some of our posts were cut off, but others were not, so we thought we could easily find the right LinkedIn post size. Surprisingly, some of the posts that were NOT breaking off had more characters than the posts where the words were being cut off.
Examples of Cut Off LinkedIn Posts
In both examples, the LinkedIn post length is too long and the text was broken off with the ellipsis on the third line. You can see part of the call-to-action in our blog post was cut off with about 220 characters used before the “see more” appears. Although there’s no CTA in our team lunch photo, the last few words of the message are not visible, only showing 217 characters before the ellipsis.
Good LinkedIn Post Examples
Interestingly, both LinkedIn posts were not cut off, even though the character counts are higher! The first social post displayed 228 characters without the description being cut off, and the anniversary post was 221 characters long, which is just slightly more than the previous posts that were being cut off.
What exactly is the best LinkedIn post size?
Through this testing we discovered there is no specific character limit like Twitter has. Rather, LinkedIn cuts the description and adds an ellipses if it exceeds three lines. The letters or symbols in the text you use will determine how many characters will be displayed before they’re cut off.
Character Count Testing for the Best LinkedIn Post Length
We tested four different LinkedIn post sizes to find the ideal character count that won’t get cut off. What our social media experts didn’t expect was how similar each LinkedIn post length looked, despite all having different character counts. Although none of these social posts were cut off, we wouldn’t recommend trying to squeeze in 225 characters for every LinkedIn post. In fact, our team agrees, if you want to be safe and make sure your copy and call-to-action will not be cut off, keep your LinkedIn post length to 210 characters or less. It’s better to shorten your description and get all the information in front of your audience than take away from your CTA.
Stay On Top of Social Media Marketing Updates With Blue Compass
Always remember that it’s important to keep your business’ social presence looking professional, testing can help you determine what’s best for your social media. If you take the extra time to make sure your social copy and photo sizes are correct, you will set your organization apart.
If you have questions about specific social media platforms or want to know what your business can do to stand out on social media, reach out to the social media marketing professionals at Blue Compass! A few more social media blogs you can benefit from include:
Mallory Suntken
Mallory double majored, earning her B.S. in Marketing and Management from Iowa State University. She writes SEO-focused content pieces, creates effective digital marketing campaigns and executes social media and SEO campaigns to drive traffic back to clients' websites. Mallory is always eager to learn more about the latest trends in SEO and all things digital marketing and loves taking on new challenges. She has been featured in several blogs for her social media and content marketing expertise.