The Word-Count Myth: Post Length Barely Matters

There is a permanent argument on LinkedIn about post length. One camp swears by short. The other swears by long. Both quote their own wins as evidence. They are both wrong, and the data is almost funny about how clearly it says so.

We have a word count on every post in the Index, so I banded them and pulled the average engagement for each band. If length mattered, you would see a slope. Under 100 words: 1,359. 100 to 199: 1,397. 200 to 299: 1,248. 300 plus: 1,355. That is not a slope. That is a flat line with a rounding error on top.

You are optimising the wrong variable

Every hour spent agonising over whether to cut a post down or pad it out was spent on a variable that does not move the outcome. Both camps have real wins to point to because length was never the thing making them great. The idea was doing the work. Length just came along for the ride.

What actually moves the number

If length is flat, what is not? Format (image posts average 2.5x text, see The Format Tax). Intent (Inspire out-earns Teach two to one, see Inspire Is Underpriced). And development, not length: the top posts are the ones where a single idea is fully developed. A 90-word post that lands one idea beats a 300-word post that elaborates without getting anywhere.

What it looks like in the wild

Here is a genuinely short post from the Index that did big numbers, embedded live. One complete idea, nothing padded.

What to do with this

Stop counting characters. Write until the idea is fully expressed, then cut everything that is not the idea. The right length is however long that takes. Redirect the effort you were spending on length toward format and intent, the two levers that actually move engagement.