Instagram Hacks: Caption Crafting

Week #3: Caption-Crafting

So it’s 2019, and we don’t WRITE our captions, we *craft* them. Leave it to Millennials to turn writing into “crafting” and having no time to eat breakfast into “intermittent fasting.” You’re welcome for both of those things, but I digress–here we are at our third blog post in our series on Instagram Hacks!

We’ll dive into best tips and tricks to use while you’re crafting those captions that will help drive engagement, and ultimately conversions. We’re also giving you a “35 Days of Content Creation” Guide to help plan your content and write crafty captions–yeah, we know, we’re basically Oprah.

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There are a lot of topics, themes and angles to consider when writing your captions, but there are 3 overarching principles you should consider no matter what you write. In this post, we’re going to go over using your brand’s Insta-Voice, the importance of CTA’s, and the best caption formatting practices. Now let’s learn some best practices for writing–oops–I mean *CRAFTING* some captions.

But, a Picture’s Worth 1000 Words?

To address the elephant in the blog post, you may be all “I thought Instagram was about the photos–do captions even matter?”

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A *well-crafted* caption can drive engagement, and we all know from our first blog post in the series how important engagement is in growing your audience. Your caption is another valuable opportunity to connect with your followers. Having a weak caption leaves your post with only a 50% chance of being liked, as the photo is doing all the heavy lifting. Pair your photo with a great caption and you’re doubling the odds of your audience making a connection with your brand.

Less Bill Gates, More Steve Jobs

It’s important to use a tone on Instagram that’s both true to your brand voice and also fits the platform. People have come to expect a different tone based on the specific social media platform they’re consuming your content from, even from the same brand. While serious and informative content is successful on LinkedIn, it won’t work for your Instagram audience. Being too stuffy and sale-sy on Instagram will get you unfollowed quickly, as the Instagram audience is looking to connect with their fave brands and businesses in a personal, authentic way. They don’t want to be sold to, they want a peek inside who you are.

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You shouldn’t change your brand voice completely, but think of Instagram as a place to show a more candid, lighthearted side. Always stay true to who your brand is, but do it in a way that a human would write, not a robot. 

You know what a robot would never do? Use emojis 🤖. Giving your captions a healthy sprinkle of relevant emojis is a great way to add personality and fun to your captions. They can also serve the functional purpose of breaking up captions into digestible, easy-to-consume sections, as well as draw attention to important callouts like LINK IN BIO. Because #aesthetics.

Check out the examples below–which allows you to absorb the information faster? The one with the emojis! They help organize the text, callout important things you may otherwise miss, and are generally more friendly on the eyes because it breaks up that non-inviting plain chunk of text.

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Remember, we want a “healthy sprinkle” of relevant emojis, not a “gluttonous hurricane” of random ones. 🤑🌩💧🌪🌀🔥💯. Be sure to read our previous blog focusing on hashtags to learn best practices for how to incorporate and format hashtags into your captions. 

CTA shouldn’t be MIA

Having a lighthearted Instagram tone is important but we don’t want to be laissez-faire about what we’re saying in our captions–they should all have a purpose and intention. Yes, we don’t want to seem pushy or salesy but we *do* want our audience to do something. Including a CTA in your post is a great way to accomplish that. CTA’s also help get you higher engagement, which boosts your ranking in the Instagram algorithm, pushing your post to more people’s feeds. Win-win.

The CTA should always feel like a natural extension of the rest of the caption, it shouldn’t feel forced, but rather serve to create a more natural sense of action or dialogue. Here are some of our favorite CTAs to use:

• Visit our website [to learn more]. 
• Shop now!
• Caption this! 
• Enter a contest/giveaway.
• Tag a Friend [who you’d do this with].
• Visit our link in bio.
• This or That? [Which one would you want?]
• Share this post to your story [for a chance to win].
• Drop a comment/emoji. 
• Ask them a simple question they can answer. [How’s your FriYAY?] 
• Use a branded hashtag [Share your fave Lolla moments by tagging them with #LollaTix]

What a Frontloader

Instagram doesn’t want to clutter up everyone’s feed with a bunch of long captions, although they have a super-generous 2,200 character max for you to literally write a novel (or at least a short story). To solve for this, Instagram collapses the rest of the caption beyond the first 2 lines of copy behind a “...more” symbol. Only the first two lines of text will be visible in the user’s feed as they scroll, so make sure you frontload your caption with the important details or attention-grabbing hook that will entice them to expand the full caption rather than scroll right past it. 

If you want people to enter a giveaway, don’t casually mention it towards the end of your caption, because chances are people won’t ever see it–people who would otherwise enter! Instead, start your caption with “🔥GIVEAWAY🔥" to catch people’s attention (peep that prime emoji use, y’all).

Want them to read your new blog post? Open with that so, even if they don’t read your whole caption about what the post is about, they immediately know that you have a new blog to check out before getting into the details of its topic. “New post up on our blog! 👀! We had so much fun digging into this topic, etc...”

Frontloading isn’t only for CTA’s. Keep in mind you want to frontload your captions with the main takeaway you want your audience to see, whether that be an informative “New products launching at midnight,” or a story-hook like “You’re never gonna believe what happened yesterday...” Frontloading captions helps ensure your audience is reading what you’re trying to tell them. It’s more likely that you’ll capture their attention enough for them to expand the rest of your caption and read on, rather than scroll right past it.

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Recap, Shall We?

Is Instagram primarily for sharing image-based content? Yes. Do we want to use captions to enhance the photos we’re sharing and grow our audience? Double yes. Don’t let the caption part of your post be a lazy blank space–maximize it to get the most out of your post and connect with your audience! 

We know it’s sometimes challenging to generate new ideas or know what to say in your caption or post. To help you out, we made a list of 35 ideas for content you can use as a thought generator! We’ll send it right to your inbox–just provide us your name and email below so we know where to send it! Then, check out our Instagram and see how many of the prompts you recognize in our own feed.

***************(Caption Crafting Calendar overhead image)

No matter what kind of caption you end up writing, remember these 3 overarching principles that can relate to any caption–use a consistent Insta-appropriate brand voice, try to include some kind of CTA or purpose behind the post, and frontload with the important deets before the break! Happy caption-crafting!

Still feeling a bit lost in this Instaworld? We have an award-winning creative team and top-notch marketing department who would love to up your game. Let’s grab a coffee! We can’t get you the Colonel’s secret recipe, but we’re gonna do what we can in this series to give you the secret sauce to Instagram’s algorithm!

You're Ready to Craft!

Download our “35 Days of Content Creation” Guide.