Word Count

Writers talk about word count but on social media, it’s characters that count.

Limiting characters is kinda Twitter’s thing so everyone knows about that, but did you know the character count is limited on Instagram too?

2,200 characters

I know this because many times I’ve had to rewrite, cut copy and get creative to meet this limit. 

Many people wonder why I even bother to write long captions. Aren’t people there for the photos?

This is true for the most part. I remember being flabbergasted when sitting behind a teenager waiting for a concert to start. She scrolled and double-tapped through her Instagram feed so fast, I wondered if she even saw the photos!

Studies have shown that the most engaging posts have captions under 125 characters – pretty much what you get before the “See More” button.

That’s great and all, but I’m not the type of person to speed scroll and double tap. I want to know about the photo. Actually, I could care less about the photo, just tell me your wise words. 

Thus, I write my long captions for those of you who want more than a photo. 

If I did what every study said would get me the most engagement, I may get more followers, but it would be for the wrong reasons.

I may get high engagement but when I ask them to go further, sign up for an email list or buy a product, they won’t be interested. 

The moral of this character-count story: You do you. It’s better for everyone that way.