Tips to Improve Your Instagram Captions
Although images, videos or reels are the protagonists of Instagram feed, captions are still the key to the success of your content. But, what are the perfect Instagram captions? Well, the truth is, it really depends on your account and what your goals are.
Many times the text that accompanies the post can influence likes, followers or who knows, maybe even a sale.
So, today we are going to give you tips and examples on how to write strong Instagram captions for your content!
Consider this Before Writing Instagram Captions…
Before writing a caption, it’s important to think about what you want to accomplish in your strategy. This could be increasing traffic to your website, raising awareness of a product, gaining trust from customers, etc.
Although some content might have a clearer goal than others, try to keep in mind what you’re trying to achieve.
After you’ve considered the content’s purpose, your caption should include a Call-to-Action that reflects this. Here’s a few common CTA’s examples:
- Subscribe Now!
- Do you want free shipping?
- Start your journey to success.
- Activate your 30-day free trial today!
- Don’t miss out on this opportunity.
- Join 500,000 other marketers and subscribe to our newsletter.
- Reserve your spot now.
- Sign up today!
- Learn more.
- Download our free template.
Unfortunately, a call to action alone won’t automatically mean a higher ROI, more followers or more sales. However, it is important to guide your followers in the right direction and CTA’s are impactful for grabbing the reader’s attention.
So with this in mind, we are now going to get to work with writing the copy!
How to Write Strong Instagram Captions
If you have your content planned out, but keep getting stuck with the captions, you’re not alone. The copy of content can be tricky.
Although there isn’t a “one size fits all” way to write Instagram captions, we are going to offer a few tips and important elements to acknowledge when posting your content.
The first sentence is the most important
With an average user attention span of just 8 seconds, we need to be strategic about how we catch our audience’s eye. So, the first sentence is going to be essential not only to gain more attention, but also convert users into customers.
Make sure to include the most important details in the first sentence. If not, it is likely that your message can get lost in translation. As you probably already know, if your caption is longer than two sentences, it will hide the rest of your text beneath a “more” button.
Stay true to your brand
This is true with any content you post on behalf of your brand, but make sure you’re staying authentic to your brand. That doesn’t mean you need to stick to the same five phrases, but ensure you’re reflecting your mission and vision.
Users are more likely to follow and trust brands that have strong identities. Think about this. What brands do a good job of staying true to their brand identity? You can probably name some off the top of your head.
Think about what you admire from these brands, and keep this in mind when going to write your captions. Don’t know what your brand identity is? Read this article below and build your brand identity today!
Tips to enhance your personal brand on social media
Keep the length in mind
Instagram captions have a maximum of 2,200 characters, however that doesn’t mean you need to take up all of that space for each post. Try mixing up the lengths to avoid falling into the same patterns.
Generally, the shorter the better. With shorter captions, you are more likely to capture readers attention.
However, if you do end up having a longer caption, it’s not the end of the world. In fact, it can be useful if you need to announce a new product, add a quote or explain something in depth. Just make sure you’re aware of the length of your captions.
Be strategic about hashtags
Hashtags are a simple way to increase exposure and reach new audiences. However, how do you know which hashtags to use? And how many? Don’t panic, we are here to help.
Instagram allows for a maximum of 30 hashtags. Once again, you don’t need to use all of these and in fact, the more, the better, doesn’t always apply to hashtags. If you already have branded hashtags, use those to increase awareness and traffic towards your page.
We also recommend using Metricool’s Hashtag Tracker, so you can gain insights about the best hashtags to use for your account.
Also, inside Metricool’s planning feature, when scheduling your content, you will see a hashtag counter, that shows your hashtag count so you know how many hashtags are in your captions. Also, when you start typing hashtags inside the planner, a drop down menu will appear with popular hashtags related to that keyword.
What value can you add?
As a brand or business, we always have to think about our clients first. Therefore, how can you add value to your content and be helpful to viewers?
Offer tips and tricks, educate users on a topic, supply resources, etc. These options add value to your content and also express that you are there to help. This will also increase trust among customers and when they next have a question, your brand will come into mind of where they can ask.
It doesn’t always have to be serious
Nobody wants to listen to someone talk about the same topic, the same way that nobody wants to engage with robotic content on social media. Users want to be able to relate and connect with content.
A great way to achieve this, is breaking the conventionality of representing a “business” and start having more fun with it. Repost a meme, tell a joke, add a pun, quote employees. Most importantly, just be human.
Examples of Good Instagram Captions
Now that you know some of the important aspects of a caption, let’s see some examples of great captions that have lasting impact.
Obviously these aren’t the extent of great captions, but use these as models next time you go to write your Instagram captions!
Short Instagram captions
Short, sweet and supportive! In this post, the image and caption are in harmony, all while staying true to their brand.
Sometimes you don’t need a lot of words to create big hype.
Funny Instagram captions
Meme’s are a perfect way to create a light-hearted tone in your content. McDonald’s was not only able to sell their product, but incite laughter by adding joking content.
What’s your favorite chicken color?
Seasonal Instagram captions
Girlfriend Collective did a great job with this caption in not only being timely in the fall season, but adding a product tag for users to shop directly from Instagram.
C’mon, don’t lie. You know you love seeing Starbucks announce their holiday drinks. Think they did this by accident?
Clever Instagram captions
How punny! Think outside of the box, the donut box that is.
I Maslow you a question.
Hopefully you’re now all equipped to write the perfect Instagram captions for your brand or business, and to excel on the social network. Have any questions? Leave us a comment below.
Not sure what your Instagram strategy should look like? We will leave you an article below, outlining how to market on this platform.
