Written by Ursula Hurn, Digital Organizer
Best known for her skill in digital organization, Ursula Hurn is the IG OrganiSZer® creator. Her online courses teach SME owners how to implement her system to maximize the value of the content they create for business promotion, through Instagram. She has over 30 years of digital experience, a wealth of knowledge and offers practical application.
With everyone being present on social media these days, it’s hard enough to make an impact without running into trouble with captions that are too long or struggling to fit your bio into the allocated number of characters for whichever platform you are choosing to use.
When you have a process and a system that helps you stick to these specific rules it makes life so much easier you take the guesswork out of posting. You eliminate the uncertainty of whether your caption is going to be cut off because you’ve run out of time to check the number of characters you’ve used.
It may not seem important to write long captions but if your followers are engaging with you, they want to hear what you have to say and if you shortchange them, they will leave and follow someone else who provides the value they are looking for.
I say, use all the characters you have at your disposal, don’t just fill space to fill space, provide value with every post and your credibility and trustworthiness will grow immeasurably.
It may sound like a silly thing to worry about, but it can be incredibly time consuming.
You’ve written your caption, you really love it, you go to post it, and you find it’s 300 characters too long! Back to the drawing board, chopping out words while still trying to make sense and get your message across. You’re running out of time and patience and eventually you just give up and leave it for tomorrow! Does this sound like you?
If you had been in the habit of checking the caption length once complete, before you go to posting, your flow wouldn’t have been interrupted and you’d have finished in much less time with no stress.
Related article: How to do a virtual 'Marie Kondo'
What are the character limits?
All the social media platforms have their own character limits but here are the ones for Instagram as that’s what I mainly use. I post to Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok and YouTube but I write initially for Instagram as its limitations are greatest.
Instagram has the following limits on character usage:
Username: 30
Name: 64
Bio: 150
Hashtags: 30
Caption: 2,200
The caption limits for Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube are way longer than that, in the region of 5,000, so if you write first for these platforms, posting to Instagram becomes problematic.
Here are the character counts for my bio information on Instagram:
Username: @ursulahurn (11) – this is also your IG Handle
Name: Digital OrganiSZer | Empowering Time-poor Entrepreneurs (55)
Bio: Too busy? Not a tech-savvy solopreneur? Canva giving you a headache and misfiling your social media content? I can help.
⬇️ Book a free call now. (145)
Five ways to limit bio length
You can’t extend the number of characters you use but you can be clever about it.
1. Don’t repeat words
If your name is in your Instagram handle, don’t repeat it in your bio and vice versa and the same goes for your business name. You don’t need to state them more than once.
2. Don’t use unnecessary punctuation
I am fond of using exclamation marks but don’t duplicate them or use unnecessary full stops, speech marks or any other kinds of punctuation. Only use what’s necessary.
3. Use abbreviations
Use abbreviations if you can, as long as they don’t confuse readers, or you’ve been training them as to the meaning. For instance, IG is now accepted as Instagram and FB is accepted as Facebook so when I use IG OrganiSZer® people understand what I am talking about.
4. Be succinct
Find single words or short phrases that describe your ideal client rather than using an explanation, for example ‘business owners who are short on time’ (37) = ‘time-poor entrepreneurs’ (23) Those 14 characters may be all you need to complete your bio.
5. Beware of emojis
In most instances, emojis count for two characters not just one but sometimes they can count for 3, so be careful with them in your bio, they waste precious characters. Useful ones are the down pointing arrow ⬇️ or hand 👇if you are wanting followers to do something like click the link in your bio.
Four hacks for caption length
With the 2,200-character caption limit, you also can’t exceed it, but you can be clever.
1. Using the comments
If you are wanting to write a long caption, you can use the first 2,200 and then put the rest of into the first comment. It might be a good idea to end the caption with something like ‘continued in first comment’ or similar. You need to be quick to add the rest in the comments. With many followers, they may post a comment before you get to posting your first comment, which will put the rest of your caption further down the list.
2. Hashtag placement
Instead of putting your hashtags into your caption, you could include them in the first comment. Instagram is not really a fan of this but if you are running short on characters, this is one way to get around it.
You also need to be quick about it though to make sure that you get your hashtags into the first comment before other comments are posted.
3. Number of hashtags used
The limit for hashtags is 30 but if you want to conserve caption characters consider using less. I typically use between 10 and 15 hashtags which works well for me.
Hashtag research on your preferred hashtags will ensure you pick ones that are not being used on millions of posts, the chance of your post being found through less-used hashtags is better. There are three range sizes that I would recommend using, those used on between 1K and 15k posts, those between 15k and 250k and those between 250k and 500k. Anything above 500K limits your likelihood of being found through hashtags.
Another tip on hashtags is, create your own for your own brand and put it on every post you post, that way all your content can be grouped together if someone searches on that hashtag.
4. Blogs
If you are wanting to write a post that well exceeds the 2,200-character limit I would suggest writing the original article as a blog on your website. Once you’ve published that, create an excerpt that you can use as a post. Make a comment at the top or the bottom of the post that guides the reader to your blog through a link in your bio.
The other way of doing that in one click, is to send the post to your stories, putting a link on there that goes straight to your website blog. That way, one click will get them to read your blog, and it sends more traffic to your website.
Character counting methods
There are several ways you can count caption characters before posting but there are a few pitfalls to watch out for.
1. MS Word
MS Word has a word counter which shows in the bottom toolbar of your document in the left corner next to the number of pages. It shows the number of words in your document but if you click on it a contextual window pops up that shows the character counts, both with and without spaces. IG counts spaces, so the larger number is the one to look at.
I have found that MS Word typically counts less characters than other counters, which is not ideal.
2. Online character counters
A Google search will provide several free sites text can be pasted in, and they will show you the character count. From the tests I have done, their answers also vary from what MS Word provides.
3. Excel and other spreadsheets
To date, I have found Excel the most reliable for count accuracy. I use the formula =LEN(cell) to calculate the number of characters and with my tests, it gives the most accurate count. I have pasted captions into Instagram after using Excel to count the characters and they have been exactly the same. Instagram tells you how many characters you have left, so you can figure it out by doing the math. This formula also works in Google Sheets and provides the same answers as Excel. I have not tested it in Mac Numbers, but I am assuming it would be the same.
So what next?
There are many simple tips and tricks like this one that can save time, energy and frustration when it comes to posting on social media. For more helpful tips like these, subscribe to my newsletter today and follow me on Instagram.
Read more from Ursula Hurn
Ursula Hurn, Digital Organizer
Ursula Hurn is an expert in digital organization and systems. Being a lover of people, she understands the frustration and time-wasting that digital disorganization causes, especially when business owners don't believe it's a skill they can learn! With a burning desire to help SMEs succeed, her student- and client-base is international and she believes everyone has the ability to get digitally organized. She is only as far as a Zoom call away.
