How to Write Great Captions on Instagram

There is no one surefire way to write awesome Instagram captions, essentially the specifics of your caption would depend on your niche and the kind of image you want to portray. However, there are a few tips that cut across brand specifics and archetypes. These tips would help you write killer Instagram captions regardless of niche or industry, Here’s how to create good Instagram captions:

• Be human: Have you ever wondered why it irritates us as humans when computers ask us to prove that we are human? Exactly! People despise being labeled as robots, and they despise it, even more, when others act like robots. When you put out content, you must be sincere and as real as possible. You want to come off as natural and friendly to your audience.
• The first sentence is the most important: you must place your humorous, attention-getting portion of your caption in the first line. It could also contain a question, a unique fact, or a statement that piques people’s interest. Because Instagram tends to shorten captions, you’ll want to make the most crucial part of your caption accessible to your audience’s feed without them having to click “read more” on the first line.
• Include a call to action (CTA): When it comes to driving more interaction, placing a call-to-action in your Instagram caption and urging your audience to comment or like a photo can be the difference. To encourage more comments on your Instagram post, include a call-to-action in the caption, such as “double tap if you agree,” or ask a personal question.
• Be helpful, add value: Provide tips and methods or any other type of material that will help educate or inform your followers. Incorporating useful information into your Instagram captions will benefit your audience and boost the likelihood of your post being shared and bookmarked.

Now that you know how to write good captions, the question about the length of the caption then pops up. As you probably know the attention span of humans is quite low, hence you have to decide on what length of caption is preferable for every post. 

Why Are Captions so Important on Instagram?

An Instagram caption is a written description or explanation that adds context to an Instagram photo. Emojis, hashtags, and tags can all be used in Instagram captions. While there are several reasons as to why it is necessary to write good Instagram captions, here are a few vital ones:

• A great Instagram caption will make a scroller stop in their tracks, and the more time someone spends reading and engaging with your post, the better it will rank in the Instagram algorithm.
• Captions are an effective strategy for including calls-to action, encouraging likes, comments, and even visits to your page. Your post can end up on the explore page if it has enough engagement.
• Good captions provide a fantastic opportunity to strengthen your interaction with your audience. 

A good Instagram caption provides context, adds personality, and inspires your followers to take action. Your Instagram caption informs your followers about who you are, what you stand for, and what your core values are. It could convey to your audience that you’re amusing and clever, or that you’re calm and introspective.

Short Captions or Long Captions?

When deciding between long or short-form captions, what is most important is whether or not your captions would drive engagements. While generally creative captions would drive engagements, the length of the captions tends to affect the level of engagement a whole lot more. When it comes to engagements, long-form captions have an edge, and here are a few reasons why:

• It tells your brand’s story: Long captions help brands develop a relationship with their fans and followers who take the time to read it. Whether you are sharing the brand’s purpose, revealing behind-the-scenes or how-it’s-made stories about your firm. This may be a fantastic opportunity for brands to tell stories that go beyond product information and build a far stronger brand affinity with their audience.
• Long captions drive more engagements: in comparison to short captions, longer captions draw more people to like, share and comment on your posts. According to a study conducted by Later on influencer captions, the more you post, the higher your engagement rate.

Short-form captions on the other hand take less time to write and read. They help you pass your message across easily. Short captions are generally better with posts that don’t need a lot of explanation or context, like videos since they are mostly self- explanatory. Short captions are also great with posts or pictures that contain texts. 

How to Get Better Engagement on Your Captions

According to a Later report, engagements on posts with long-form captions increased dramatically in 2019, rising from 5.4 percent (captions with 500-1,000 characters) to nearly 6 percent (captions with 1,000+ characters). Longer captions resulted in more saves, comments, likes, shares, and profile clicks, according to the study. Even posts with 500-1,000 characters received a 5.36 percent engagement rate on average.

Your captions should be crafted in a way that people are drawn to liking, commenting, sharing, and even saving your posts. Here are a few tips to help improve your engagement rates using good, savvy captions:

• Be authentic: On social media, it’s preferable to be genuine and relatable rather than perfect. Share material that goes beyond your sleek marketing effort to introduce your brand’s actual people and experiences. That could mean sharing behind-the-scenes footage in an Instagram story, writing a cheeky caption, or accepting responsibility for any mistakes.
• Use emojis: Emojis that are both funny and relevant can result in better engagement than captions that do not include any emojis. The proper emoji can be used to express emotions, and add color and a personal touch to your caption. We love to see it! 
• Make hashtags your best friends: hashtags improve the likelihood that people will locate your post based on its topic. Use suitable hashtags to join the conversation if your post is about a popular movie, trend, or book. Overall, it will broaden the reach of your posts, classify them, and raise your chances of gaining new followers. Only use relevant and popular hashtags to ensure that the proper people see your content.
• Engage your followers, Run polls: Which is better, this or that? Is it possible to say yes or no? Everyone enjoys taking part in these brief but entertaining surveys. Including polls in your captions may entice more people to interact with your content. You can poll your followers on anything. When you ask for your followers’ opinions, they feel valued. Polls also reveal the collective opinion of your followers on any given subject.
• Don’t be scared, share your opinion: If you want to start a conversation with your followers, write captions that describe your feelings. Your audience will respond if they see you speaking your opinion without fear. They will be able to relate to your message more if you express genuine feelings. Adding your personality to the captions would surely improve their appeal.

Some Awesome Instagram Captions to Inspire you

Just to show you what you should aspire to, here are 10 of our favorite Instagram captions:

1. againstthecompass

This caption is well structured and uses a long caption to genuinely educate followers about a specific destination with multiple examples to illustrate their point. Questions are posed and then answered within the caption to keep the reader engaged and make it feel like a real conversation. It also ends with a call to action.

2. Chris Pratt

Chris explains the situation in which the photo was taken. This allows viewers to see what went on behind the scenes. This is an excellent example of communicating your narrative, which is something that many brands strive to do.

3. Nicolemaclaugin

Now, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that this caption is clever and amusing on multiple levels. It doesn’t provide much context for the post, but it’s a caption that will compel people to engage the post. 

4. Innocent

This is a fantastic photo with a succinct caption to go with it. The description encourages you to look at the photo again and provides some background for why it was captured the way it was. There’s also a creative CTA attached, which is fantastic!

5. tildalindstam

It’s not easy to come up with a one-word caption. And as for the caption, “BaeGoals,” well, there’s not much else to say. You’re at the top of your game if you can incorporate a popular two-word meme into a food item.

6. aw

Although it is quite unlikely that her dog took those selfies on their own, this caption is quite clever. It’s even cooler because it uses a hashtag linked to dogs. Many people go online to look at lovely dog pictures, and with that hashtag, they’re sure to encounter this one as well.

7. armen.paul

This caption doesn’t appear to make sense at first glance; after all, it doesn’t appear to express anything about the image, does it? That, after all, is the whole idea of the caption: it’s designed to make you want to look at the photo again and again. It’s a short caption that initially perplexes you but then prompts you to take action by reminding you that his single will be released soon. A successful strategy if you ask me! 

8. okonomibakery

Long-form captions are perfect for a food brand to provide the ingredients and instructions for the recipes. More reels and videos are used on this page, which makes sense because visitors who are willing to spend time watching the video are also more likely to read the entire caption. 

9. Nationalparkservice

This long caption begins with a fantastic pun which makes it memorable. This pun alone has gotten a lot of attention from pun aficionados. The caption, on the other hand, is the highlight of this piece, and it’s written in such a way that anyone would want to read it all the way through.

10. theconsciouskid

This book review is a terrific advertisement because it includes snippets, name drops, reasons to read it, and even where to acquire it. It also makes a point of tagging the book’s author in case readers want to look him up. 

Wrap up

On Instagram, photos and videos have always come first, but the caption is typically what makes or breaks a post. Captions help your photos and videos stand out, and they’re terrific for getting your viewers to take action. As a brand, you should use the long caption format more frequently because it has been shown to increase interaction. It would also be a good idea to know what actually counts as good engagement while exploring unique ways to create social media virality. A culmination of these would ensure that your brand gets the visibility it desires.