How to Write the Perfect Insta Caption
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but by adding that extra flare with your captions, you can make your post mean a million. When we look around us, all great speakers, writers, and brands are storytellers. Why would this be any different on social media? While people get caught up with the bells and whistles of a caption, we’re here to teach you how to land a punch every single time as caption trends come and go.
If you’ve ever fumbled trying to draft the perfect caption, don’t worry. This blog is the one for you. From us to you, here is the Instagram Caption boiled down to the core:
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU GET STARTED
The beauty of social media is the chance they give you to connect with your followers on a more personal level without even meeting them. Instead of just TV ads or posters that speak to them in the past, platforms like Instagram and Facebook let brands speak with their following. This is what we call engagement.
It’s no secret that social media algorithms favour accounts with high engagement; it’s the drug that keeps people hooked onto their platform. That’s why Twitter doubled their character limit from 140 to 280, Youtube added their community feature (and stories!), and Snapchat created their Discovery tab. For them to survive, they need YOU to engage, and so the better you are at doing that, the more supportive they’ll be of your content!
There are lots of tips and tricks out there that share some common practices you can integrate into your captions, but we’re going to dig a little deeper and talk about the three objectives that your caption should always aim to do: delight, share, and move.
DELIGHT. MAKE MY DAY!
There’s nothing your following wants more than for you to make their day–they believe in your content enough to follow you, so make sure you’re giving them what they want to see! So many sales opportunities are missed because buyers and sellers just don’t know each other. Our top tip to creating connections with your buyers is to understand who they are and delight them by addressing their needs.
Don’t know who you’re appealing to? A quick and easy way to figure out who your current content is attracting is through the Insights page if you’re running a business account. The stats will let you know where your audience lives, their age group, and their gender.
Use the top stats of your Insights and create a brand voice out of that. By this, we challenge you to ask yourself: If your brand was a person, what would they be like and how would they talk? How would they engage with children, women, or men? If your answer is the same for all of them, then you’ve got to dig deeper. Know who your audience is, use the same language they use, and cater your conversation to what they want to hear.
If writing isn’t your strength, don’t worry. Our top tip is to focus your efforts in writing the first 20 characters, because those are what will determine if scrollers will stop and read the rest of your post.
SHARE. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!
Now that you’ve got your voice together, let’s move on to content. It’s super tempting to constantly promote our products and services on social media, but we’re going to give remind you of the cold, hard truth: no one likes direct sales. Don’t make Instagram a stressor for your following!
Instead, turn it into an opportunity where you can share something valuable to your followers. If you’re selling a product, tell them where you source your goods! Focus on a story that you’ve experienced while running this business! Let us know why you even got into this biz in the first place. Educate your followers about who you are and what you do. Followers will learn to know, like, and trust you and they’ll go from followers to fans.
Here are a couple topics you could cover in an Instagram post:
How will your product benefit your followers?
What are some other ways we can use your product?
How will your product change their lifestyle for the better?
You’re the expert of your own product, and Instagram is the place to share it.
MOVE. CREATE A CALL TO ACTION.
Calls to action are so important. While we all love a good and sassy caption, your post is much more powerful if you include your audience. The entire point of social media is to engage, engage, engage! Giving followers a chance to interact with you will help you create a community around your brand.
Since Black Friday just passed, you’ve probably seen a lot of promo codes being tossed around online...but calls to action aren’t just limited to telling people to buy your stuff. It can be as simple as telling others to comment what their favourite movie is to liking your post! Just make sure the action makes sense with your post.
For instance, if you’re sharing a workout tutorial, you could tell your community to save the post so they can try it out later at the gym. Or if you’re sharing a blog post, a simple “link in bio” line will do just fine. Although you’re not necessarily selling your product, you’re selling your brand, and we’d like to argue that’s just as important as the sales themselves.
Once you’ve got these basics down, you can try decorating your caption with other goodies with emojis, different fonts, hashtags, and all that jazz. Be sure to let us know what else you’d like to learn from us!