How many characters do you have in an Instagram caption before the MORE button shows?


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Instagram, the photo-sharing app owned by Facebook, is a network organizations and people should pay attention to. Its user-base has been growing and personally I love how it encourages people to share photos – authentic ones, I hope. And you can’t even include links in photo posts so it’s less about clicking and more about in-network participation.

Some people, however, write lengthy captions under their photos. That’s okay to a degree, as long as that part of the story adds to the photo part of the story. Jennstrends.com reported that captions are capped at 2,200 characters. That should be more than enough.

But here’s another thing to consider: Instagram captions cut off in the main feed in under 140 characters – so less than a tweet. People can still read the rest of the caption after clicking MORE, but as we know, everytime people have to take an action, we lose some.

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Visit my archive of Instagram-related posts here.

Here’s a visual representation how that looks and also in comparison to a tweet:


Facebook Page posts have a similar thing going on. Basically, you have slightly less than a tweet to draw people in to read more.

Here’s some good feedback from an Instagram connection:


Of course, only write more when it’s actually necessary. Personally, I try to tell the Instagram version of stories through the picture and some – not much – added context through a short caption. I do add up to 5-10 hashtags from time to time and they sometimes end up after the MORE. That’s okay since they are helping people searching hashtags find related content.

Most of my Instagram posts are personal and professional stories. Feel free to connect by clicking the image below:



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