People love Instagram. From filters and fanatical influencers to an endless ocean of puppies and food blogs, Instagram is the perfect place to see and be seen. In fact, so many users interact with brands on Instagram than on any other online social media platform, including Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook.
At the same time, content overload is a very real danger for ecommerce businesses. To be successful, we need to make sure our content is going to the right people at the right time with the right message. Furthermore, learning to craft a great caption is a good place to start.
A well-written Instagram caption can be a powerful thing. Good captions drive comments, and more comments mean more audience from Instagram’s algorithm. The more your followers engage with your caption and your post, the more Instagram will promote your post to its users and increase the chances to sell on Instagram.
Look at our Instagram caption tips to learn how to write short, perfect, and informative Instagram captions that connect with your followers.
Things to remember before you begin:
- Captions are constrained to 2,200 characters
- You can include up to 30 hashtags
- Text previews are edited to the first two lines in the Instagram application.
Include a Call-to-Action
A great caption doesn’t simply drive your followers — it encourages them to do something. Your call-to-action (CTA) is your closing appeal. It prompts your followers to engage with your store in a meaningful way by driving traffic to your website to learn, participate, or shop.
Action verbs like “tap,” “tell,” “use,” and “share” are the key here. For instance, “Find out the top 10 best tips for product packaging in our blog — link in bio.”
Place the Most Important Information First
As we mentioned earlier, the app crops the caption to the first two lines. That means you have less space to catch your followers’ attention.
No user scrolling their feed is willing to tap “More” on a post they find boring or non-informative.
To ensure your Instagram captions present a reader with the most significant information first. If your online store has some extraordinary offers, let “sale” be the first word your followers see under the picture.
Also, it’s a good idea to give your caption a title (even in capitals), so that you catch your followers’ attention right away.
Format Your Captions
Since most Instagram users scroll through their feeds on their mobile phones, reading captions can turn out to be very a chore with the app’s spaceless line formatting and tiny text.
For some users, it’s simpler to skip reading a caption altogether than attempting to decipher Instagram’s meandering, spaceless content blocks.
To make your captions more readable, try using emojis and numbers to add bullets and paragraphs to your text.
To add line spacing to your text, try tools like CaptionMaker, or write your copy in the Notes app first and then copy it to Instagram.
Encourage Followers to Write Comments
To keep the interaction going, start discussions or ask questions to your audience. Ask your followers to tag their friends in comments (“tag a friend who would like this,” “tag a friend who’s always late”) or to choose one of the variants.
For instance, which product is the best blessing for a mom, which product from the gallery do they like the most, or which product packaging idea do they like. Ask for feedback — and utilize it later in a post with user reviews. Share the latest industry news and let your followers give their opinions on it.
After all, Instagram is still a social platform, even though it focuses on the visual part of posts.
Use Location Tags
79% post’s engagement is increase due to Location tags. Geotags make it possible for potential local customers to find your business, which in turn leads to an increase in revenue.
Rather than writing in a caption where the picture was taken, utilize a tag and talk about other significant things. Do you deliver to the tagged location? How long does it take? Do you have a showroom? A phone number to elaborate on the details?
Use Hashtags
Even one hashtag increases engagement by 12.6%. However, don’t expect that if you use all 30 hashtags, it’ll boost interactions imminently.
The optimal number of hashtags is 11+.
If you feel like long queues of hashtags make your Instagram captions look fishy, then you can write them in a comment.
Don’t forget about branded ones — they are unique to a company or a marketing campaign. They enable people to find brands and encourage them to share their views. So definitely come up with one: it can be the name of your company, a tagline, or even something creative like a play on words.
Do you find it tough to write captions for Instagram? Or maybe you have any go-to tips you would like to share? Please feel free to share your thoughts with us on our social media channels.
