The following message is from a haircare brand that embraces a lighthearted, casual brand voice in its messaging strategy. What makes its voice unique? What about its brand persona allows it (or doesn’t allow it) to use abbreviations? If your brand utilizes a more formal voice, this may be completely inappropriate. Depending on your brand persona and audience, sending a mass text using “LOL” or “OMG” can help to create a more friendly, casual relationship with your customers. The text abbreviations you send to friends or significant others may not be the same ones you’d use in marketing or professional communications. Using acronyms in your messaging strategy not only helps create a friendly relationship with your customers but also helps you stay within the character limit. Though most smartphones can now send and receive messages containing up to 1600 characters, best practices still dictate that senders keep as close to 160 characters per message as possible.

Abbreviations and acronyms became a part of messaging culture out of necessity, keeping texts, social media posts, and other forms of messaging from becoming too long and exceeding character limits. Messages are generally limited to 160 characters per SMS.

Text abbreviations are shortened versions of commonly used words to help save characters in text messages, whereas acronyms are used to shorten entire phrases. While we may not always use a text abbreviation in real life or face-to-face conversations, it has become a language of its own in instant messaging and social media.

Abbreviations for words on facebook