Writing Game Changing Instagram Captions

Writing great Instagram captions can really be harder than it seems. We’re not talking about your personal account captions either. We’re talking about captions for business accounts and brands. It takes a lot more than just slapping a few words together with a cute emoji.

To help you get started and create Instagram captions that are as great as your photos, we’ve put together this article with some solid tested, and proven tips.

A great Instagram caption will stop a scroller in their tracks. The longer someone spends reading your caption and engaging with your post, the better your post will rank with the Instagram algorithm, thus being shown in more people’s feeds.

There is power with correctly constructed captions. They can be used to encourage likes, comments, and even visits to your website. Captions are a huge opportunity to build stronger relationships with your audience.

Also, the micro-blogging trend is a great way to connect on a deeper level with your followers, which in turn can boost brand loyalty. Think of these as long-form captions, but not as long as a standard blog post.

The bottom line is that your Instagram captions cannot be an afterthought. Find the strategy that works for your audience and stay consistent with it.

So what does a good Instagram caption look like?

In its simplest form, a great Instagram caption is one that provides value, you or your brand’s personality, and inspires your followers to take action.

When you’ve spent time and effort perfecting Instagram images, writing captions can seem like added work you don’t have time for, especially if you’ve got a dose of writer’s block. But don’t let that stop you from writing an amazing Instagram caption. If you are struggling with writer’s block, check out our article on 7 Tips To Combat Writer’s Block.

Making the first part of your Instagram caption super-engaging and enticing is critical to increasing the amount of time people spend viewing your post.

The trick is to ensure that you deliver the attention-grabbing punch line before the caption is truncated (shortened). Doing so ensures the most important part of the caption is visible in someone’s feed without them having to click “more”.

You could spark your followers’ curiosity with a thought-provoking statement, stop them in their tracks with hard-hitting stats, or trigger an emotional response.

The simple act of including a call-to-action in your Instagram caption and inviting your audience to comment or like a post can go a long way when it comes to driving more engagement.

A good CTA can inspire your followers to engage with your business’s website, join an email list for a weekly newsletter, or shop online!

Here’s how to nail your CTAs in your Instagram posts.

If you want more engagement on your posts, all you have to do is ask!

Add a call-to-action to your Instagram captions like “double tap if you agree”. Another great call-to-action that will boost your post with the Instagram algorithm is to ask your followers to tag their friends in the comment section of your post.

This can be as simple as saying: “Tag 3 friends that need to hear this!”, or “Tag someone who owns one of these”.

You can also use call-to-actions to encourage your audience to visit your website or purchase a product.

If you have over 10,000 followers on Instagram, you can add direct links to your Instagram Stories and invite viewers to “swipe up”. Once they swipe up, they will be directed to the URL you specified.

If you don’t have 10,000+ followers, it can be a little trickier to direct your followers to your site from your post captions. One way around this is to encourage your followers to click the link in your bio, or even visit a specific URL.

Instagram only gives you one hyperlink in your bio, so if you’re looking to optimize on that, think about using a tool like LinkTree.

With LinkTree, you get a single link in your bio that redirects your viewers to a clickable landing page that links them to resources you specify. That could be your current blog post and several previous posts, a link to your website, and links to your social media channels.

This way your audience will always be able to find the link they’re looking for, and you won’t be burdened with having to constantly update the link in your bio.

Keeping your Instagram captions short and to the point is a great way to ensure your message gets read, but what about those longer micro-blog posts?

Adding line breaks to your Instagram captions will keep them easy to digest, even when you’ve got several points to make! I usually put a period with each line break just to add some visual appeal to it. Some brands will use an emoji with their line breaks to spice up the caption too. Speaking of emojis.

When you aren’t using emojis to draw attention to your call-to-action, you can use them to add personality to your Instagram caption.

You can insert multiple emojis at the beginning of your caption to catch the eye of your followers with a bit of color, so they want to click to read more, or you can replace whole words with an emoji.

Even just adding a single emoji somewhere within your Instagram caption will make your caption more inviting to your followers.

One of the biggest reasons people have trouble writing Instagram captions is because they try to do it on the fly, which never works. We did an article on batching Youtube content, but the concept is the same.

Instead of jumping from task to task, it’s much more efficient and productive to write your Instagram captions in one writing session.

So whether you block out an hour or two every Monday morning, or it’s your last task before the weekend, dedicate that time just to writing your captions.

Not only can hashtags help you gain more Instagram followers, but they’re a great way to connect with customers, find user-generated content, and build relationships and partnerships with influencers.

Hashtags help organize and categorize your Instagram content. They help the Instagram algorithm to know when to show your posts to viewers who have searched the hashtag or are browsing the Explore page.

You are limited to 30 hashtags per post, but the recommendation is to be around 20 to 25 per post. You want to rank for the smaller hashtags first because they are not as competitive. You also want to ensure that the hashtags are relevant to the photo used in your post.

At the same time, avoid using the same hashtags in each post, or your profile will get flagged as spam by the Instagram algorithm. This can be easily avoided by creating groups of hashtags. Those groups will be based on the categories or topics you post about. Here is the breakdown of how to build each of your hashtag groups. Each level below should contain 5 hashtags.

• Under 50,000
• Between 50,000 and 200,000
• Between 200,000 and 500,000
• Between 500,000 and 1,000,000
• Hyper Relevant to your photo. These are going to be smaller niche hashtags
• Mega Popular (over 1,000,000) These will be used for your stories

Once you have all your hashtag groups defined, save those as notes on your phone, so you can access them when posting from your mobile device.

The goal of building your hashtag groups and tracking the performance is to get into the top 9 posts of each hashtag you use.

Adding captions to your Instagram Stories is one of the most effective ways to capture your viewers’ attention, especially since stories are gaining in popularity over posts in the feed.

You can also use Instagram Storie’s captions to drive your followers to complete a specific action. This could be as simple as encouraging them to swipe up or click the link in your bio.

Not only do captions encourage more activity, but they’ll also make your stories more user-friendly for people with a hearing impairment.

Coming up with good Instagram captions might seem hard at first, but if you want to be successful on Instagram, it’s important to not let your Instagram captions become an afterthought. Use the above tips to write amazing captions and watch your performance skyrocket.

Whether you’re an eCommerce brand selling products or a blogger sharing content, writing good Instagram captions can be a game-changer for your Instagram engagement!