You may already be posting stunning photos and videos on your company’s Instagram account, but if you don’t pay enough attention to your social media marketing texts, especially your Instagram captions, you might be missing out on a key opportunity.
What Makes a Good Instagram Caption?
Engaging captions can help boost engagement, which is crucial when it comes to the Instagram algorithm. Strong text in the caption forms a story and personality for your brand, helping your followers realize they need what you’re selling. Simply put: Instagram captions can enhance your social media success, which can improve your profits.
Instagram Captions and Campaign Goals
Before diving into writing Instagram captions, revisit the main goals of your Instagram strategy and let them guide you. Common overall goals include:
- Running a visibility campaign to increase your reach or overall brand awareness (which means increasing your reach and follower count, or driving traffic to your website for awareness purposes)
- Promoting a sale or launching a new product or collection
- Gathering user-generated content using branded Instagram hashtags
How to Write the Perfect Instagram Caption
1. Make the most of the first sentence: After a few lines of text, Instagram hides the rest of the caption behind a “more” link, so you should include the important details at the beginning. Only the first sentence will appear in the Instagram feed for users, so make sure it’s engaging or poses a question, and don’t place your call to action at the end.
2. Include a call to action or ask a question: Every post should have a clear goal and a specific call to action, and it’s the goal that determines the call to action. What do you want followers to do: visit your website? shop for a specific product? share the post with friends? shop at a discount? participate with a photo using your brand’s hashtag? Encouraging engagement is key to creating a sense of dialogue and conversation. This is also a way to work around the Instagram algorithm, which considers engagement a metric for serving your posts to followers. Encouraging interaction also increases the likelihood of your post appearing in other users’ feeds as a “recommended account” to follow.
3. Add value: “Give tips and tricks,” says Portnoy, “or any type of information to help educate or inform to increase the added value of your Instagram post.” Adding value in your Instagram comments will help the user and make the post more likely to be shared and referenced.
4. Write like you’re a human (not a robot): Authenticity matters the most. In your content and comments, put your real self out there and write as you speak. You may want to be strategic and intentional, but you also want to come across as natural and a friend to the user.
5. Draft the captions on a separate platform: You’re more likely to think strategically and without distraction if you write your captions on another platform. “I find that I have a clearer head if I step away from my phone when drafting Instagram captions for my business,” says Carter. “My favorite platform is Plann for desktop, so I can write several captions, go back and edit them, and schedule them for posting. This way, I’m not swallowed by notifications and comparisons. I write with a clear mind and marketing goals in mind.”
6. Use storytelling: Avoid being neutral, add personality and spice to your comments. “I try to add two to three sensory words or short stories that paint a picture,” says Carter. “So, describe the touch, taste, sound, sight, emotion, and feeling. Be specific. Don’t just say ‘Tex-Mex’. Say ‘salty corn chips dipped in guacamole which wash down with a tangy margarita’.
7. Use emojis and have fun: A sprinkle of emojis adds some extra flavor and livens up your comments. Relevant emojis can also be placed at the end of sentences or paragraphs as “footnotes” and visually break up long chains of text.
8.
Look at the length of the caption: Like most marketing strategies, an Instagram caption is about quality over quantity. It can be short and intriguing or contain long and more in-depth text.
9. Use hashtags: Hashtags on Instagram are a key way to make your posts searchable, so make sure to use them correctly. Hashtags work like keywords, as they have tracking and searching capabilities.
Great Examples of Instagram Captions
1. How to Use Short Instagram Captions: The Sill
A short and sweet Instagram caption is helpful when the image can express everything. These examples come from The Sill, a company that ships beautiful houseplants directly to your door. They use a picture showing how people decorate their homes with the houseplants they order.
2. How to Use Long Instagram Captions: Soko Glam
Long Instagram captions are useful for adding context to the image, such as educating or storytelling to engage readers more. These examples come from Soko Glam, a store specialized in Korean beauty products. Soko Glam could simply advertise the first product in the cleanser category, but that’s not their approach. Instead, they shared a use case of their product and how this cleanser addresses customer issues.
3. How to Use Bold Instagram Captions: Adam J. Kurtz
Bold and daring Instagram captions can sometimes be used when the tone matches your audience, brand, and products. Adam J. Kurtz is an artist and writer whose illustrative work features honesty and a bit of dark humor, so as you can imagine, his Instagram captions aim to push boundaries. However, he doesn’t add violence to his Instagram captions for the sake of writing them this way – it is consistent with his brand across all his products, even the slides in his public speeches.
4. How to Use Humorous Instagram Captions: A Shop of Things
Humorous Instagram captions are helpful if your product or service has humor naturally injected into it. This is definitely the case for A Shop of Things, a store filled with beautiful prints, funny embroidery, awesome buttons, and must-have badges. Anyone who lives in a big city knows that the sum of their rent doesn’t always equal the quality of their apartment, so A Shop of Things uses funny captions to match their humorous products thematically.
5. How to Use Seasonal Instagram Captions: Letterfolk and Vaute Couture
Writing a seasonal caption is a smart way to diversify your Instagram marketing by taking a break from your usual programming with something seasonal. Let’s look at some examples of seasonal Instagram captions. Summer Instagram captions: Letterfolk has a great talent for placing its products alongside pictures that capture the essence of everyday life. In this example, they leverage their knowledge that there’s always a friend eager for summer to end so they can enjoy the comfort of fall with sweaters, pumpkin-spiced coffee, and colorful trees.
Winter Instagram captions: In this example, Vaute Couture, a global clothing brand specializing in plant-based and animal-friendly designs, collaborates with famous vegan chef Chloe Coscarelli to showcase a winter coat at a time when people usually start investing in winter clothing. It’s worth noting how they aligned the brand mission and marketing messages with an influencer who shares the same vision and mission. This is the pinnacle of influencer marketing on Instagram.
6. How to Use Personal Instagram Captions: Verameat
If you’re a merchant like Verameat, a brand that makes jewelry, it may not always make sense to use professional photography to showcase custom-designed pieces. In this case, Verameat opted to use a personal photo to showcase their new Halloween-inspired jewelry collection.
Tips
Tips and Answers for Instagram Comments
Before you get back to being creative in the comments, take a look at these final points to help increase your brand exposure, attract your audience, and achieve your campaign goals.
How to Add Line Breaks in Instagram Comments
The easiest and fastest option to add line breaks in Instagram comments is by using symbols. Use line breaks specifically to keep hashtags under the “more” tag. Follow these steps to add a line break in an Instagram comment:
- Type your comment in the comment area on Instagram
- To add a line break, press the Enter or Return key
- Add one symbol on the next line. People usually use a dot (.) or a dash (-)
- Press Enter or Return again, then start writing the next paragraph
- To add more line breaks between paragraphs in your Instagram comment, repeat these steps until you have a complete Instagram post
What is the Allowed Length for Instagram Comments?
Instagram post comments can be up to 2200 characters long and can contain up to 30 hashtags. To write engaging Instagram comments, be sure to follow our best practices. To add more flair or more hashtags, use the comment option where you can add an additional 2200 characters and up to 30 extra hashtags.
Checklist for Posting Better Instagram Comments
Before you finalize your comments, look at the following questions (you may want to save this and keep it handy):
- Is your comment informative? Does it provide information or details about your product, promotional offer, or your company in general?
- Does your comment align with your brand? Can the user tell that it follows your company’s tone of voice and overall style?
- Does your comment encourage action? Is there a clear call to action at the end of the text telling users to do something?
- Is your comment visually appealing? Does it look good visually, or is it cluttered with text, emojis, and/or hashtags?
- Is your comment inspiring or adding value? Will the user get something out of the post? Whether it’s new information, an opportunity to enter a giveaway or sweepstakes, a chance to connect with other followers through commenting on the post, or a dose of inspiration, the comment should add something to the user’s life. Make an effort to be intentional with your posts and avoid posting just for the sake of posting. A user will unfollow you sooner if they feel your posts lack value instead of you not posting daily.
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Final Note: Attract and Repel
When it comes to branding, there’s a useful principle to keep in mind known as attract and repel, which the photographer and strategist Jasmine Star is famous for. Essentially, your brand identity will guide the rules and tone you use. And since you can’t be everything to everyone, it’s likely that your brand identity will attract the right customers and repel the wrong ones. Therefore, focus on the ideal customer and how to attract them. This will help you stay on target and guide your Instagram comments writing.
Frequently Asked Questions About Instagram Comments
What are good comments on Instagram?
Here are 6 great examples of effective Instagram comments:
- How to Use Short Instagram Comments: The Sill
- How to Use Long Instagram Comments: Soko Glam
- How to Use Bold Instagram Comments: Adam J. Kurtz
- How to Use Funny Instagram Comments: A Shop of Things
- How to Use Seasonal Instagram Comments: Letterfolk and Vaute Couture
- How to
Using Instagram Comments for Personal Photos: Verameat
How to Write Instagram Comments?
Write as if you are a human, make the most of the first line, add value, write as if you are speaking, craft the comments on a separate platform, use storytelling, use emojis and have fun, consider the length of the comment, use hashtags.
Do I Need to Write Comments on Instagram?
Engaging comments help shape your brand’s story and personality, making your followers realize they need what you are selling. Simply put: Instagram comments can help boost your company’s social media success, which can improve your profits.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/instagram-captions#write
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