Captions on Instagram play a crucial role in inviting users to interact and share content, as well as guiding their actions towards discovering and purchasing products or services.
What are captions on Instagram and how to make sure you write compelling captions that work? We tell you.
1. What are captions on Instagram?
Defining captions on Instagram is simple: it is the text that accompanies a photograph published on this social network.
Made up of text and emoticons, captions on Instagram are important as they can help tell more about the story of an image, adding context .
On the other hand, they encourage the interaction of the followers, which makes the algorithm of the social network give more relevance to the publication.
In addition, they are a tool to encourage users to take a specific action, such as following the “link in the biography” to access an external website.
2. Types of captions on Instagram
- Calls to action: these types of texts focus on inviting users to perform an action linked to the post, from leaving a comment to making a download or a purchase.
- Starting a conversation: Some captions on Instagram try to start a dialogue with the account’s followers, who respond via comments on that post.
- Content “behind the scenes”: it is about explaining an aspect of a business or personality that often remains “behind the scenes”. Through this type of text, it is about making a brand more accessible and close, accompanying it with an image that also shows an unknown facet of the business.
- Humour: Social media is a place many people go to be entertained. Including jokes with ironic texts or emojis can help, again, to create bonds and a community around a brand or personality.
3. How to make Instagram captions
Creating captions on Instagram is not an exact science. But, just as there are some tips for creating Reels , there are also some parameters that can explain why some texts work and others don’t.
Knowing how to make captions on Instagram goes through the following keys:
- Text length has doubled since 2016, according to a study published in Later. Thus, typically longer Instagram captions achieve better results.
- It is advisable to include the most important information at the beginning of the text , so that the attention of the users is captured.
- Ask for opinions and recommendations , showing users that you want to know about them and generating a community.
- Take advantage of some of your captions on Instagram to get traffic to your website, directing users through the characteristic “link in the biography”.
- Use hashtags and mention other Instagram accounts to encourage your content to be shared and discovered by new users.
- Enhance authenticity , showing the most human side of your brand and trying to generate connections from there. In this sense, it is not advisable to abuse purely commercial texts.
Writing suitable captions on Instagram thus becomes one of the important elements within a coherent social media strategy , capable not only of showing the products and services of a brand, but also of generating a community with users and potential customers that drives the growth of a business.
Also Read: This Will Be Instagram In 2022