The need to have several social profiles, and to update them consistently and regularly, has substantially disoriented many brands, which have found themselves in the position of having to entrust someone with the management – or creation, from scratch – of their online communication.
For many companies, even today, the creation and maintenance of social channels represent a sort of nuisance, an activity to be carried out in an almost forced manner, as if it were a sort of imposition from the outside. There are so many brands that mismanage their profiles that even nowadays, in 2022, one sees company pages that have been idle for months, completely devoid of updates and of any graphic or narrative coherence, as if they had been abandoned to themselves.
This happens mainly because many brands manage these pages unwillingly, often entrusting their care to unqualified employees, friends, or relatives who are promised a refund for their efforts, with many thanks for having accepted this onerous task (in their opinion).
A thorny issue
Everything to do with social media, for many brands, is complex, and problematic, so much so that it causes tensions and heated confrontations during company meetings. Even when the decision is finally made to start their own communication channels on social, company executives almost always have to deal with the practical details of their management, such as the number or frequency of posts, their content, and the tone to be used, and many more.
Usually, executives start to get their hands in their hair when they hear about the need to devise a social media strategy, with the aim of giving them a certain content consistency that also improves the brand image. One of the most common issues one finds oneself discussing, in the initial stages of managing one or more social pages, is that concerning posts and the length of their textual parts, the copy, a really thorny issue that has made quite a few heads fall in the last fifteen years, even among the most trained and qualified employees.
Crucial questions
One of the first questions consultants are asked when asking for advice – or more concrete help – on managing social pages, is precisely this: how long should posts be? The funniest aspect in these cases is that the managers who ask these questions almost always have an absorbed, extremely serious expression as if they expect a clear-cut, definitive answer to a question that is ultimately ill-posed.
In fact, one should not ask oneself how long one’s posts should be, but ask oneself what should be the most appropriate length for a post that has to achieve a certain objective. If the post serves to tell the story of the company and is an integral part of a storytelling strategy, then it can also be a long post (but not too long), whereas if you only need to publish a copy to add to a product photo, the text can also be short, concise, with one or at most two sentences in total.
The length of texts to be published online is an extremely complex issue to deal with, especially when it comes to content to be published on social media. The main rule to keep in mind, in any case, is that there can be no precise rules for a type of content, that of writing, which is totally out of control, and which could reach the heights of success or sink into the abyss of oblivion within a very short time.
If on social networks, in most cases, brevity is rewarded by more shares and more appreciation, on websites and blogs there is still a tendency to prefer the long text, leaving room for in-depth studies and complete and exhaustive treatment of a given topic.
One genre of text that should continue to be of a certain length is that of reviews: online gambling specialists, for example, devote a great deal of attention and a good amount of space to long and in-depth reviews of the casino games they offer on their sites, with the aim of offering their users (especially the less experienced ones) a complete overview of the different games, how to use them and the possibility of taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the best no casino deposit bonuses. In this case, the length of the text represents a clear attempt to propose to their public a complete and qualitatively high offer, from every point of view (including that of content).
The written word is far from dead: in long or short form, it will continue to innervate the pages of the web for a long time to come.