Believe it or not, captioning your Instagram or Facebook posts are very important, especially if you are working on expanding your brand. While some could argue that most people scroll past long captions or paragraphs, this is not always the case. There is a sweet spot in length when captioning your posts that attract your audience and make them want to read it in full.
Tips for Captioning Your Posts –
1) Grab Your Audiences Attention
When considering what to caption your specific post on social media, refer to your old English class in grade school. Do you remember your past teachers telling you the importance of grabbing your audience’s attention within the first few sentences of your paper? No? Well, my teacher highly stressed the importance of luring in your audience from the get-go. If you fail to catch your audience’s attention within the beginning, you will have a hard time getting them to stick around long enough to finish reading your paper. My teacher described it as leaving enough bait in the beginning to fully hook your audience. The way my classmates and I accomplished “hooking in our audience,” is by starting our papers with quotes, statistics, an interesting fact, or a question. You are probably wondering, what does my teacher from grade school have to do with captioning my Instagram post? Well, let me tell you! If you start your Instagram post with an attention grabbing first few sentences, you will have a higher chance of them reading the rest of your post. It is truly that easy. When thinking back to times I read certain brand’s Instagram captions, I remember it having an interesting fact that kept me hooked in desire to find out more. These types of captions always leave your audience wanting to finish what they started reading.
2) Get to the Point
Have you ever listened to someone tell a story and they will not stop rambling in the process? Well, let me tell you about the time my friend took her golden retriever for a walk. On the walk, she saw some pretty blue flowers and decided to pick them. While she was trying to pick them, her dog ended up eating them. My friend was disappointed but realized that there was a bee on one of the flowers that her dog ate. The bee ended up stinging the dog’s nose and it caused her dog to freak out. The dog started barking and rolling around in the grass chaotically. Notice how I am taking forever to get to the point of why my friend even went for the walk? Yeah, that is something you do not want to do within your captions. You will want to make sure that your caption has just enough details to keep your audience interested but not lose them in thought.
3) Provide Interesting Information
Have you ever started reading a caption by a brand you love, and they lose your attention from boredom? This is pretty common. When forming your captions for posts, it is important to provide interesting information that will make your audience desire to finish reading your post. It has been proven that understanding where your audience’s motivation lies, is where you will find what keeps their attention. Sky Girls states, “Simply understanding the societal issue you are seeking to address is not enough. You need deep understanding of your audience’s lives and what motivates them.”
4) Connect Your Brand to Current Pop Culture
Another aspect that brands do within their posts is relate their content with current social media trends. Many brands take the opportunity to use current pop culture trends or drama happening and apply it to their products. This allows their company to appear relatable and approachable to a wide audience. An example of this is Mindy McKnight’s brand, Hairitage, took a popular meme of Taylor Swift at a Chiefs football game and used it for a post for their products. This simple action of her captioning her post allowed her to lure in an audience while also explaining what their product and company are.