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How to Create a Killer 5-Minute Presentation
Developing and delivering a five-minute presentation seems an easy enough task at first — until you realize the condensed format actually requires significantly more efficiency, focus, and attention to detail than longer presentation types.
When there’s less time to get your point across, every second counts more, and there’s no time for improvisation. While short presentations can be unexpectedly challenging to create, when done correctly, they can be more impactful than longer presentations.
Five minutes is just enough time for you to present a compelling narrative about one topic, without any filler or fluff. The time limit forces you to pack as much valuable information as possible into your presentation while maintaining a coherent structure.
The shorter format also encourages audiences to pay more attention.
But how can you ensure your short presentation accomplishes everything it needs to within just five short minutes? We’ve put together an (appropriately condensed) guide on five-minute presentations to help you get started.
To calculate your own personal speaking speed (words per minute, or WPM):
Make an audio recording of yourself speaking for one minute.
Use a free transcription service to generate a text version of your speech.
The number of words you spoke in that minute is your personal WPM.
When constructing a longer presentation, you might be more concerned about transitions and keeping the audience engaged with more extensive narrative elements.
In a short presentation, everything you say should directly tie back to your central premise and further advance your main point. Keeping a tight scope and using your words carefully ensures your time isn’t wasted, and the audience leaves with a clear, singular takeaway.
How many slides are in a 5-minute presentation
Generally speaking, you’ll want to stick to just five or six slides for a five-minute presentation, but there’s no set limit on how many yours will require. Depending on your subject matter, you may have up to twenty slides and spend about 10 or 15 seconds on each
More important than your slide count is what each slide contains. It’s a good rule of thumb to keep your slides simple and focused on visuals (instead of text) for a presentation of any length. This becomes especially important when you’re dealing with a condensed presentation window
Trying to cram in as much information as possible within a short timeframe can be tempting. Resist the urge. Instead, focus on simple, clean visuals that (once again) all tie back to your central premise.
You can also us these free presentation templates to arrange your slides in a way that makes the most sense for your delivery and the content of your presentation.
5-Minute Presentation Outline
If you’re looking for a starting point for your five-minute presentation, we’ve created a basic outline below that you can use to organize your initial thoughts in the planning stage.
You can devote one slide to each section or multiple slides if you want to break them down further.
Feel free to depart from the structure depending on the content or format of your presentation. Just remember not to give your audience too much to chew on. The key here is — you guessed it — tying every slide back to one central idea.
1. Cover Slide (What)
Your cover slide needs to answer the question that’s on everyone’s mind: What’s in it for me?
“The most common mistake that people make when creating a short presentation is not establishing the who, what, when, where, why right away,” said professional pitch deck creator Malcolm Lewis.
“People will mentally check out within 10 seconds.” The job of your cover slide is to establish context immediately. Your first slide should serve as an introduction to the topic of your presentation, and it should be captivating.
Specificity is your friend. Avoid general introductions, for example, “How to refine your craft.” It’s unclear what this presentation is about and who it concerns. A clear title helps your audience understand the focus and prevents you from going too broad with your topic.
2. Thesis Slide (What, Continued)
Common convention might state to briefly introduce yourself at the beginning of your presentation, but you should actually jump directly into your thesis.
Why? You have the greatest amount of attention at the beginning of your presentation.
This slide should answer the question: If listeners only remember ONE thing from my presentation, what do I want it to be?
Writing a thesis benefits both your audience and you. Establishing a one-sentence summary of your presentation forces you to articulate and focus your message, which will help you craft the rest of your slides that support this point.
To write your thesis, “start at the end and ask yourself what you want to accomplish in 5 minutes,” said leadership communications coach Nausheen I. Chen. “Keep it super simple: the fewer the goals of the presentation, the higher the chance of you achieving them.”
In Nausheen’s five-minute presentation, she explicitly states the most important takeaway for viewers at the beginning of her presentation:
3. Problem Slide (Why)
Most presentations can be boiled down to a problem you’ve identified, solved, or are in the process of solving. You’ve identified what listeners should care about in the thesis statement, and now your problem slide should tell them why.
Don’t be afraid to frame your problem in a negative light. Audience members will be more motivated to listen if you steer them away from a problem, rather than helping them achieve a better outcome. Think of this as “pain over gain.”
Here’s an example of a short presentation on the benefits of quitting caffeine:
Gain — you could ultimately have more energy by quitting caffeine.
Pain — your caffeine intake is hurting your energy levels, not helping.
After you’ve identified the problem, deliver on the solution.
4. Solution/Analysis Slide (How)
Now that your problem has been introduced, tell your audience what they need to know about this topic. In shorter presentation formats, you’ll want to focus less on the details and more on the big-picture items.
Ask yourself: What does your audience need to know about this topic? Anything that falls into the “nice to know” category can be cut and delivered to stakeholders in a follow-up email after the meeting.
5. About You — Optional (Who)
Does your five-minute presentation need an “about me” slide? Only if it reinforces your thesis and gives authority to your words.
For example, a short presentation about cancer screenings would be more credible if a doctor was the presenter. However, given the brevity of your presentation, you can find a creative way to lend that same authority to what you’re saying without shortening your message.
It might be possible to achieve the same authority by a doctor wearing a white coat for a presentation in real-life and adding the “Dr.” prefix to their name on Zoom.
6. Conclusion (What’s Next)
The conclusion slide allows you to coherently end your presentation and summarize the important takeaway points for your audience. Don’t skimp on your conclusion just because it’s a short presentation — it’s the last thing your audience will hear from you.
On this slide, include contact information so interested audience members can follow up. Then, end with a zinger. Reinforce the points you presented and ultimately make your presentation more memorable.
5-Minute Presentation Example
While we weren’t in the room when these presentations were originally given — and therefore can’t confirm with 100% certainty that they ran for only five minutes.
However, these decks clock in at under 15 slides and use a simple format to convey a problem and solution.
1. LinkedIn Tip
2. Email Marketing Trend
3. The Marketing Plan
How to Create a 5-Minute Presentation Your Audience Will Love
Here are some best practices to follow when crafting a short presentation.
1. Make it about your audience.
A presentation may feel like it’s about you, but it’s actually about your audience.
“To know how to create a real transformation in a short amount of time, you need to know who you are speaking to and have a sense of what they know and don’t know,” said Learning Experience Designer Lyssa Leigh Jackson.
Lyssa encourages presenters to clearly define what your audience will walk away knowing and feeling.
2. Don’t make vague or generalized points.
It’s easy to become overambitious or overwhelmed by the information you want to present. Choosing a single idea to focus on gives you clarity when designing your speech and allows you to cut extraneous details. It also provides a narrative structure that your audience can more easily grasp
One of the most frequently made mistake with short presentations is being vague. Malcolm Lewis advises you to combat that by leveraging data: “Get specific with examples and numbers. Be as precise as possible.”
This presentation slide from Lyssa Leigh Jackson explicitly writes data and also visualizes it with the funnel graphic:
3. Research, fact-check, and do it twice.
Your presentation is your chance to shine — but the shorter format also means that each point you make will be more visible, memorable, and, consequently, more vulnerable to scrutiny
Take the time to thoroughly research the subject of your presentation and ensure every point you make is:
Technically accurate
Tailored for your audience.
Jargon-free and easy to understand
With a strong command of your subject matter, your delivery will also be more confident and convincing.
4. Appeal to how people learn best: stories.
A story can give meaning to your presentation and elevate it to more than just facts, figures, and flashy slides. Building your presentation around a simple, easy-to-understand narrative makes your content more digestible.
Your presentation will only last for a few minutes, but the story you tell needs to stick around in your audiences’ minds for longer — an stories naturally help humans understand and retain information more easily.
Be warned that an anecdotal story must be condensed and well-outlined, or you risk using up your precious 300 seconds with a run-on story. You can manage this in your practice sessions.
5. Don’t skip that practice session.
“Short presentation” doesn’t translate into “spontaneous presentation.” From CEOs to interns, everyone will benefit from practicing their short presentations in advance, no matter how confident they are.
Practicing your presentation will help you:
Practicing your talking points.
Ensuring the correct length of presentation.
Overall confidence in presentation style.
Film a run-through of your presentation on your phone and watch it back to help you self-critique.
Try to deliver much (or all) of your presentation by heart. Your delivery will be more natural, allowing you to develop a stronger connection with your audience. And once nerves hit, you’ll have the muscle memory to fall back on and carry you through the presentation.
If you need to speed through your slides to squeeze everything into a five-minute window, you’re likely trying to do too much. Consider cutting your slides and talking points so you don’t risk getting caught off.
6. Relax, and don’t rush.
In addition to working out timing issues, practicing will also help you feel less nervous in the moment and maintain your normal WPM.
It’s natural to speak more quickly when you’re public speaking, but prepare enough to feel relaxed throughout your presentation so that you don’t speed through your talking points.
Staying focused on your presentation (and not getting distracted by nerves) will improve your delivery and give you more confidence, even if you’re anxious about public speaking.
7. Expect your presentation to be shared.
Every presentation should be created with the expectation that it will be viewed on its own.
It’s standard practice to follow up presentations with an email that includes an attached slide deck. That email might very well be viewed by someone who missed your initial meeting, or forwarded to someone new altogether.
For this reason, don’t put sensitive or private information on the slides. Make sure that each slide presents enough information for viewers to understand the big bullet points of your short presentation.
This positive trend means your work can live beyond the initial presentation. Consider sharing the link yourself on your LinkedIn profile to highlight your work.
5-Minute Presentation Sample
These five-minute presentation samples all explore different presentation settings and narratives that will help inspire you as you create your own presentation.
1. Speak as a Leader Bootcamp Welcome.
This five-minute presentation by Nausheen I. Chen perfectly balances minimalism with informative text. The design uses background color to help create contrast within the presentation, and the final call-to-action is unique and actionable.
What we like:This slide deck is for a more interactive presentation, providing clear objectives and structure for the audience to follow along and feel comfortable. The value they can expect from the presentation is communicated and delivered
2. Digital Finest Pitch Deck
This high-contrast five-minute presentation design by Gabe Marusca uses color to tell a story and bold text to engage the audience.
Where some presenters would’ve put an “about me” slide at the end, Gabe kept the spotlight directly on the viewer by showcasing client success testimonials.
What we like:This slide deck follows the classic problem–solution–results storyline. His conclusion slide summarizes the main point and provides a clear takeaway for audiences
3. Women in the Workplace Briefing
This presentation grabs viewers’ attention immediately with powerful statistics and continues to articulate talking points with data.
While the presentation likely didn’t discuss every graph and data point in-depth, it paints a persuasive picture. This creates a highly valuable resource even when viewed independently of the presentation.
What we like: This data-driven slide deck illuminates problems women face in the workplace, with only two slides proposing solutions at the end. If the goal of your presentation is to wake your audience up to a problem that’s in their hands to fix, follow this example to drive your point home
4. Legacy Speaker Tour
This colorful presentation by Jasmin Haley uses bold text and engaging imagery to introduce a 1-day workshop.
The inspiring message and colorful design reflect the energy of a live workshop, and the minimal text complements the bold imagery on each slide.
What we like:This is an excellent example of an image-focused presentation. If you want the focus to be on you as the speaker, with the images amplifying your message, find fitting images to accompany you point by point.
You Know Your Audience Best
When creating your five-minute presentation, think about your audience and craft it to appeal to them. The information you decide to highlight and how you frame it will vastly differ depending on who your presentation is meant for.
It’s natural to be nervous going into your presentation, especially if you don’t like public speaking or fear it, but with enough consideration and practice, you’ll be a master of whatever subject you hope to present.
12 AI Tools to Help You Grow Your Blog
OK, you get it. Artificial intelligence is kind of a big deal. It’s a huge buzzword in the marketing community, with people talking daily about how it’ll change the world. And you can’t throw a rock without hitting a company with AI in the name these days.
But what about real-world uses for AI? How can marketers begin to use AI to solve actual problems they have? All the speculation and theory are interesting. But at the end of the day, marketers have KPIs and business goals to meet.
Turns out, there are AI tools that can help you get more readers in several different ways, starting now. Today, we’ll cover which tools can help you grow your blog. But first, let’s explore the benefits of using AI.
The Benefits of Using AI to Grow Your Blog
You want to get more people to read your blog posts. More people reading means more opportunities to convert those readers into prospects.
More prospects mean more opportunities to sell. More sales equal happier executives — which in turn means a happier marketing team.
AI can help you grow your readership so you can keep the engine running. We’ll explore how below.
1. Write better posts.
Better posts equal more engaged readers. Period. But it’s not always easy to improve your writing. AI is here to help.
AI tools can help you check for common spelling and grammar mistakes. Additionally, these tools can help you convey the right tone. The result is writing that captures attention.
2. Blog about what people want to read.
You can write the world’s best post, but it doesn’t matter if it’s on a topic your audience doesn’t care about. How do you find compelling and popular blog topics?
There are a few AI-powered tools that can help with this, too. AI content assistants can help suggests topics and brainstorm outlines for posts. Further, you can use AI-powered SEO tools to help you find opportunities where you can rank highly on search engines.
3. Engage readers more.
Your existing readers may love your content. But how often are they consuming more than one post per session? Are they served fresh content before they leave your site? Most importantly, are they served additional content they actually care about?
Personalization is key to engaging readers and keeping them coming back for more. It’s a scalable way to make sure every blog reader stays on-site longer.
4. Find more readers for your blog.
Aside from creating great content, how do you find more readers? One way is by going to where they congregate online. AI tools can help you pinpoint potential clients and provide you with information about their online gathering spaces.
From there, you can make sure your blog appears in the right places to gain traction.
5. Scale your blog and create more posts.
The more content you can publish, the more eyeballs you’ll get on your blog. This requires you to scale blogging, which can be a challenge. The initial draft of a blog is typically time-consuming. Just the research phase can take around four hours for most writers.
Generative AI can create both outlines for your blog post and the text itself. This allows you to focus your internal writers on more complex stories or on editing the AI’s output.
6. Optimize your content.
HubSpot’s SEO tool uses AI to suggest search optimizations for your blog content, giving you site recommendations ranked by priority and impact. Hubspot’s SEO Marketing Software does the heavy lifting of SEO research for you by giving you content topics that Google users regularly search for.
By optimizing your blog, you can potentially move onto Google’s first page for any given set of keywords.
7. Create royalty-free blog images.
No blog is complete without at least one image. However, stock images blur together, and you may not have the artistic ability (or time) to make beautiful images from scratch. With AI, all you need to do is write a prompt. From there, the algorithm can design the image for you.
Now that we’ve explored how AI can help you level up your blog, let’s discuss the specific tools that can help you grow.
12 Essential AI Tools for Bloggers
1. Content Assistant From HubSpot
HubSpot’s content assistant tools can help write copy fast. The assistant uses generative AI to help write the text for blog posts, landing pages, newsletters, and more.
Not ready to have AI do all the writing? The content assistant tool can also generate blog post ideas and outlines for your work. You can still write the bulk of your text yourself, but you’ll always have a clear plan to follow.
Remember: Artificial Intelligence can’t fully replace the entire job of a content writer, but by creating the first draft, your writers can focus their energy on other projects such as web content, SEO, internal needs such as sales collateral or product needs, and more.
Price: Free.
Best for: Writing blog posts.
What we love: Your blog post needs to target the right keywords to gain traction. Content assistant can help you optimize your text for SEO so you can build your audience.
2. ChatGPT
Tools like ChatGPT can help you with the content-writing aspect of a blog. This AI tool uses natural language processing (NLP) to help craft new written content from scratch. You can ask the interface to gather research for your writing or generate the text itself.
However, make sure you’re aware of ChatGPT’s limitations. For example, its AI references content published in and before 2021. If you’re writing about something current, this tool will be out-of-date.
Price: ChatGPT is currently free. Plus plans start at $20 per month.
Best for: Writing blog posts.
Pro tip: ChatGPT requires very specific instructions. You’ll need to practice writing the best prompts to make the most of this tool.
3. ChatSpot
Let’s say you’re publishing a report or blog post that requires data from your CRM. ChatSpot is here to help. This tool integrates with your HubSpot CRM, so you can gather and interact with your data entirely with chat-based commands.
ChatSpot also provides a long-form content-writing feature that can generate draft blog posts to streamline your content creation process.
Price: Free.
Best for: Writing and researching blog posts.
What we love: If asked the right questions, ChatSpot can help you research the blog post topics you want to cover.
4. Uberflip
Uberflip uses AI to streamline the content creation process and enhance the reader experience. The tool catalogs the topics you’ve written about. Then, it recommends content to visitors based on what they’ve already read on your site.
By leveraging Uberflip’s personalization feature, you can tailor your blog content to different audience segments, ensuring that each reader receives content that meets their needs.
Price: Pricing is available upon request.
Best for: Promoting blog posts.
What we love: Uberflip can help you create a centralized content library that showcases all your blog posts. This ensures that readers can easily navigate across your content.
5. Crayon
Crayon uses AI to give you intelligence on what competitors are doing online. The tool analyzes over 100 different types of data online from seven million sources. It tracks changes to competitor websites over time and uses AI to display the most meaningful insights from competitor activity.
These insights reveal much about a company’s messaging and content strategy. That gives smart marketers lots of material for their own blogging.
You might also combine Crayon with HubSpot’s Content Strategy tool. The Content Strategy tool uses AI to help marketers discover new content ideas. You’ll get suggestions on topic clusters to pursue. You can also determine which opportunities are worth spending time writing about.
Price: Pricing is available upon request.
Best for: Monitoring competitors.
What we love: You can determine what topics matter most to audiences and where gaps exist to fill with your own content.
6. Pathmatics
Pathmatics uses AI to show you digital advertising information for hundreds of brands. You can see how much a brand has spent on ads and which campaigns its run.
Most importantly, you can see where the brand advertisers are. This information can tell you where audiences like yours hang out online.
For instance, you could use Pathmatics to see where your competitors advertise most. From there, pick top industry sites that align with your blogging. Voila! You have some good ideas on who to pitch for your guest posting strategy.
Price: Pricing is available upon request.
Best for: Monitoring competitors.
What we love: With Pathmatics, you can see side-by-side competitor comparisons and channel views.
7. BrightEdge
BrightEdge’s suite of AI-first products makes content production a lot easier. On one hand, the company’s solution automates production tasks. Say goodbye to tedious things like adding header tags, cross-linking, and optimization.
On the other, BrightEdge will tell you which types of content may perform well for your brand. That saves you a ton of time and increases confidence in the ROI of blogging efforts. BrightEdge can also recommend ways to rank your content and keep readers engaged.
Price: Pricing is available upon request.
Best for: Building your strategy.
What we love: BrightEdge can help you find gaps in your content library, so you can cover all your bases and become a one-stop-shop for readers.
8. Surfer
You can leverage tools like Surfer to get a comprehensive content score, so you can easily determine how optimized any given piece of content is. This AI tool can also generate catchy H1s and H2s, giving your content writers a general structure to go off of.
Surfer also gives you a plagiarism checker. Google will penalize any content that it identifies as being stolen from other websites.
Even if you don’t use the other features of Surfer, this is a great Chrome extension for ensuring you don’t accidentally copy anyone’s writing.
Price: Pricing is available upon request.
Best for: Optimizing content.
What we love: Surfer analyzes your competitor’s content and suggests improvements to make your content more relevant. With Surfer’s help, you can find target keywords, meta tags, and more.
9. Acrolinx
If you’re an enterprise looking to scale your blogging, Acrolinx is worth a look. Acrolinx has AI read and analyze your content. Then, AI uses what it learns to make sure everyone follows brand standards and guidelines.
No matter how many writers you have across the world, they’ll stay on the same page. All posts are on-brand and follow your style criteria exactly. That frees up a lot of time normally spent tweaking, formatting, and editing for consistency.
Price: Pricing is available upon request.
Best for: Editing content.
What we love: Acrolinx does the tedious task of enforcing style consistency so you can spend more time on high-quality blogging.
10. Grammarly
Grammarly is a tool that uses AI to recommend better writing. It can tell you your grammar mistakes and how to fix them. It can also offer powerful recommendations to improve your tone and style.
For an individual blog writer, it’s a critical tool to stay at the top of your game. For teams, it can transform the quality and effectiveness of your entire blog.
Price: A free version is available. Paid plans start at $12 a month.
Best for: Editing content.
What we love: Grammarly offers tone suggestions so you can make sure your writing matches your intended message.
11. Fotor
Using an AI image tool like Fotor can help you save money on stock images while generating exactly what you want for your blog. Fotor can create art in different styles such as 3D, realistic, oil painting, cartoon, illustration, photography, and more.
New users can get up to ten pictures a day, making Fotor free to use on a small scale.
Price: Paid plans start at $4.99 monthly.
Best for: Image generation.
What we love: Fotor’s AI algorithm can analyze the user’s design history and offer suggestions, helping users make design choices that match their style and preferences.
12. Night Cafe
Night Cafe’s AI can analyze vast amounts of image data to understand object placement, colors, and other visual elements. This understanding enables its AI to generate new images based on this existing data.
Night Cafe uses a credit system for image generation, meaning you can participate in the online community to get credits or purchase them.
Price: A 100-credit-a-month plan costs $4.79.
Best for: Image generation.
Pro tip: Don’t forget to add valuable image alt text to any image you add to your blog, so your blog can be fully optimized.
Getting Started
AI in marketing is growing fast. Leveraging new tools can help you increase your blog output, find the right audience, and optimize content for search.
Fail to make the most of the opportunity, and your site will fall behind. So start experimenting with AI tools to see what works best for your team.
The Ideal Length for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn Posts
When it comes to writing text for your blog and social media posts, many marketers wonder, “But what’s the character limit?”
It’s never a simple question — sometimes, it’s answered by parameters established by certain channels. And on other occasions, it’s more a question of what’s ideal.
For example, you probably know the character limit for a tweet is 140, but did you know that the ideal length is actually less than that? (Hold tight — we’ll explain why.)
While we’ve written before about optimizing your actual content, we thought it would be helpful to gather the numbers of character limits — both enforced and ideal — for different online channels, all in one place.
Below, you’ll find a more detailed guide to character limits and ideal character counts for posts on your blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, SnapChat, and YouTube.
The Length & Character Count for Everything on the Internet
1. Blog Posts
Source: Medium
Quick reference:
Post length: 1,400 – 2,100 words
Title: Under 60 characters
Meta Description: Under 155 characters
Featured Resource: 6 Free Blog Post Templates
Post Body
When it comes to the length of blog posts, there are a few different items to consider. For example:
According to Medium, posts with an average read time of seven minutes captured the most attention. Though the data on this is from 2013, this number is still widely cited.
The average reading speed of native English-speaking adults remains commonly cited as 200-300 words per minute, based on the results of several studies.
At that reading rate, the ideal post length is 1,400 to 2,100 words.
That aligns with research previously conducted by Capsicum Mediaworks, which indicated that, on average, the top 10 results for most Google searches are between 2,000 and 2,500 words.
Source: Capsicum Mediaworks
But that’s just the post body — let’s have a look at the other areas of text that comprise a full blog post.
Title
The length of your title depends on your goals, and where it will appear.
Let’s start with SEO. Do you want this post to rank really well in search? It turns out, that often has to do with the dimensions of each entry on a search engine results page (SERP).
For Google, titles of search results are usually contained at a length of 600 pixels — which Moz measures as being able to display the first 50-60 characters of a title tag.
So, if you don’t want your title to get cut off in the search results, it might be best to keep it under 60 characters.
But when in doubt, you can double-check the length of your meta description and title tags with this handy tool from HigherVisibility, or you can use Moz’s title tag preview tool.
For Moz’s title tag tool, type in your headline and the tool will show you how it would appear in Google results.
Then, there’s optimizing your title for social sharing. On Twitter, for example, consider that each tweet has a limit of 280 characters — however, if you include an image, that doesn’t count toward the limit.
But consider that even the average shortened URL takes up about 23 characters — that leaves you with about 257 characters left for the title and any accompanying text.
In our own analysis at HubSpot, we found that headlines between 8–12 words in length got the most Twitter shares on average, while headlines with either 12 or 14 words got the most Facebook Likes.
Meta Description
A meta description refers to the HTML attribute that explains the contents of a given webpage. It’s the short description you see on a SERP to “preview” what the page is about.
Moz notes that Google seems to cut off most meta descriptions — sometimes called snippets — after roughly two lines of text. However, there’s some conjecture that, like title tags, it’s actually based on pixel count.
In any case, it amounts to about 160 characters, though this particular outlet recommends keeping it at 155.
Again, you can double-check the length of your meta description and title tags with this handy tool from HigherVisibility.
2. Facebook
Quick reference:
Status updates: 63,206-character maximum | Ideal length is 40 characters
Video: 120-minute maximum | Ideal length is two minutes
Facebook’s character limit on status updates is 63,206. However, that’s far from ideal, says former HubSpot Social Media Marketing Manager Chelsea Hunersen.
“The social gurus will throw around the number 40 characters,” she says. “That data seems to be backed up by BuzzSumo’s ranking of HubSpot’s own Facebook Page.“
But why 40, specifically?
“Ideally,” Hunersen says, “you’ll want to use the copy in a status update to provide context for whatever you’re linking to.”
That said, she notes, the copy of the status update itself isn’t as important as the copy in the meta title or meta description that gets pulled in when you insert a link into your post. That’s right — social media posts have their own meta data too.
“Often, people look at the image of the article and then directly down at the meta title and meta description for context clues,” she explains. “A lot of people don’t realize you can change those.”
Even on Facebook, it’s still best to keep your meta title to fewer than 60 characters, and to 155 for meta descriptions.
There are some resources available to those familiar with coding that let you play around with social media metadata character counts, like these templates. But unless you’re a developer, we recommend keeping it short and sweet.
Video
While Facebook allows a maximum of 240 minutes for most videos (excluding Stories and Reels), we wouldn’t advise posting anything that long, unless you’re doing a special, social-media-only screening of a full-length film.
Facebook recommends keeping videos short to about 15 seconds so viewers are more likely to watch to the end.
3. Twitter
Quick reference:
Tweets: 280-character maximum
Does not include images, videos, or polls
Ideal length is 240-259 characters
Hashtags: No more than two
Videos: Maximum length is two minutes and 20 seconds
Featured Resource: How to Use Twitter for Business
Marketers everywhere rejoiced when Twitter finally eased up on its character count parameters, and such media as images, videos, and polls, as well as quoted tweets, ceased counting toward its 140-character limit.
Still, the “Quote Tweet” feature remains available, providing even greater character-saving measures. That happens when you press the rotating arrow icon to retweet a post, and then add a comment in the text box provided. You’ve still got 280 characters all to yourself to comment.
Ideal Length Overall
Twitter differs from other platforms in the sense that longer tweets tend to perform better and get the most engagement.
According to SEO expert Kurt Gessler, tweets with 240-259 characters tend to get the most likes.
The same goes for hashtags. Twitter recommends keeping your hashtags short, easy to remember, and easy to spell. The platform also suggests sticking to only one or two hashtags at the most.
Videos
You can post a video on Twitter by importing a video or recording it using the Twitter app. In any case, the maximum video length is two minutes and 20 seconds if you’re not subscribed to Twitter Blue.
Twitter Blue subscribers can upload videos of up to 60 minutes when posting from the website, and subscribers on the app can post videos of up to 10 minutes.
4. LinkedIn
Profiles
Here’s a handy list of some of LinkedIn’s most important profile character maximums :
Professional headline: 120
Summary: 2,000
Position title: 100
Position description: 2,000 (200 character minimum) Foote also notes that, “if you select to also post on Twitter from LinkedIn, only the first 140 characters will show on your Twitter post.”
Featured Resource: How to Use LinkedIn for Business & Marketing
Original Content
With LinkedIn’s publishing platform, users can now compose and share original written content with their networks, or publicly. Of course, that comes with its own character counts, according to Foote:
Post headline: 100
Post body: 40,000
5. Instagram
Quick reference:
Bio: 150
Hashtags: Up to 30
Captions: Ideal length is under 125 characters
Since Instagram is, first and foremost, a platform for sharing photos and videos, the primary focus is typically your visual content. However, it’s always helpful to provide some context, and let users know what they’re looking at.
Given that, here are some helpful character counts for the text you include with your visual content:
While Instagram doesn’t seem to specify a maximum total number of caption characters, it does note that, within users’ feeds, the caption is cut off after the first three lines. For that reason, it’s advised to limit captions to 125 characters.
However, don’t leave out important information just for the sake of keeping your entire caption visible. Instead, frontload it with crucial details and calls-to-action, leaving any hashtags, @mentions, or extraneous information for the end.
As for Instagram Stories, there doesn’t seem to be a ton of detail on character limits there, either. However, because the text overlays the visual content — which is the focus — don’t obscure too much of the photo or video with a caption.
Here’s a quick example of a short Instagram bio from my colleague.
6. Snapchat
Quick reference:
Character limit: 80 per post
Speaking of not obscuring visual content — that brings us to Snapchat.
Instagram Stories was, many believe, an effort to emulate the features of Snapchat, to create an opportunity for users to share quickly-disappearing photos and videos.
And again, because the focus here is on the visual, you’ll want to prevent distracting viewers from it with too much text.
According to Teen Vogue, Snapchat’s character limit is 80 per post, which is more than double its previous 31-character limit.
And, if you’re looking for more guidance, just look to this particular app’s name, and remember the “snap” element of it — a word that implies brevity — and try not to ramble. Here’s a great example of how SXSW uses its captions efficiently:
7. YouTube
Featured Resource: YouTube for Business – A 30-Day Roadmap
Here we have yet another network that’s focused on visual content, leading some to incorrectly assume that accompanying text — like titles and descriptions — don’t matter as much.
That’s not entirely false — as a video-hosting platform, YouTube should primarily be used to showcase a brand’s quality videos. However, like any other visual content, it needs context. People need to know what they’re watching, who it’s from, and why it matters.
Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t appear to provide any specific parameters over its character counts — except for your channel description, which according to the official help site is limited to 1,000 characters.
But other than that, it seems that the only guideline available is the alert display that lets you know, “Your [title or description] is too long,” if you’ve entered too much text in either of those fields.
In this case, we would advise taking the same approach as adding text to support your visuals on Instagram and Snapchat.
Like the former, a video’s description is cut off after the first line or two, so frontload the most important descriptors and CTAs, leaving extra details for the end.
Show Your Character
As you set out to determine the length of your text, regardless of the platform, remember to do so with the user in mind.
Many of these channel-mandated character limits are established for that reason — to keep audiences from getting bored or overwhelmed.
Like anything else in marketing, however, it’s never an exact science, despite the best data. We encourage you to follow these guidelines, but don’t be afraid to experiment if they don’t always work.
Test different amounts of text within your various channels, and keep track of how each post performs.
From there, you can make decisions about which types of content, as well as its accompanying titles and descriptions, are the most well-received from your audience.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2016 and was updated in December 2019 for accuracy and comprehensiveness.