What makes a good caption

To make your call-to-actions even more effective, let your followers know what they stand to gain by doing it. Adding a simple reason for why your followers should follow your call-to-action will encourage them to do so, which will help you achieve your goals!

To combat this, you can use a custom font to jazz up your captions and draw more attention to your call-to-action. All you have to do is paste your call-to-action into a custom font tool, like IGfonts. You can also use eye-catching emojis, capital letters, or symbols to make your call-to-actions extra visible! This simple spacing hack is great for breaking up hefty captions, that could be a serious turn-off for your followers.

Previously, you had to add individual symbols, like stars or dashes, each on a new line of text, to create line breaks in your captions. Aside from the obvious tips on using proper grammar and spelling, one of the most important parts of any good Instagram caption is a consistent, and on-brand, voice. Your Instagram captions should mirror your brand personality, and they should sound and feel like the rest of your marketing channels.

A quick tip is to read your captions out loud and or dictate your caption to your phone using your voice notes. Take for example everlane , who keep their captions centered around their products, transparency, and sustainability.

You can even assign a regular time slot to share posts related to a specific theme. Not sure how to pick your themes, or need some extra help drafting your captions? We have free Instagram caption templates to get those creative juices flowing! 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 if you just add an emoji at the end of your Instagram caption, it will make your caption more inviting to your followers — and why not?

Everyone loves an emoji! A common practice among influencers is to include a hashtag like spon, sponsored, ad, paid, or partnership in the captions of their sponsored Instagram posts. If you want to disclose sponsored Instagram posts using a general hashtag, the only FTC-compliant ones are sponsored or ad. The disclosure hashtag has to be easily noticed and understood by users. If you want to get organized with captions, you can plan your Instagram posts ahead of time with Later!

With the calendar view and Visual Planner , you can craft and edit all of your captions in one go:. Ready to start crafting your captions and save time with Instagram? Hashtags help organize and categorize photos and video content, which means that Instagram knows when to show your post to viewers who have searched the hashtag, or are browsing the Explore page.

The narrower the scope of the hashtag, the more engaged the users are. The words that accompany your graphics are a key component of building a brand on the network, and especially forming a connection with fans and followers. That said, most captions are nowhere near that long or stuffed with that many hashtags. No matter the length, the important thing is for your Instagram captions to grab attention and be easy to read and follow. Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a lifestyle photographer used to grow from 0 to , followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.

Short Instagram captions are the way to go if you want followers to see your whole caption without having to tap More. This example from Vancouver-based pizza shop Grano proves that sometimes, two words are just enough:. Want to go even shorter than short? Try a one-word caption. You may want to boost these captions with an appropriate emoji. Funny Instagram captions might not work for every brand, but when the time is right, a little humor can be just the thing to inject some life into your Instagram feed.

As the weather starts to improve, Instagram comes alive with flowers and sunshine. Here are some captions to add some pizazz to le printemps. Perhaps the most Insta-worthy season, summer offers plenty of great photo ops—and the captions to match. Here are some great options for fall. From sunny summer days to moody winter storms, beaches provide loads of material for Instagram content. Not your birthday?

You could also celebrate the anniversary date of a product or business. If your significant other tends to share your Instagram space, check these Instagram captions for couples. The better you know your audience, the easier it is to tailor your Instagram marketing strategy to their needs and expectations. Instagram demographics tell us that the largest group of users is 25 to 34 years old, and that women very slightly outnumber me on the network.

You might be able to accomplish this with a video, but that means your followers have to actually watch the video. Even someone quickly scrolling through their feed can skim a caption! Captions also give you the ability to engage with your audience. You can ask questions, spark debates, and offer chances to win prizes if people like and follow your page.

As of , users no longer see posts on their feed in chronological order. Instead, content is prioritized based on engagement and interest, as well as the actual time when the content is posted.

Basically, more engagement means your current and future posts are more likely to be seen. With so many brands using Instagram, your company needs to stand out. The best way to do this is to personalize your business through interesting, relevant content and engaging captions. Your goal: create a caption that will elevate your post and increase engagement and reach while still representing your brand. To help you achieve this goal, we looked through the latest research and combed through Instagram posts from top companies to determine what makes a high-performing Instagram caption.

Use them to increase your post reach and engagement, ensuring that your brand has more visibility—and therefore, more potential customers! This post from LEGO includes every one of these tips. Image source. Using just one or two can go a long way toward making your posts more engaging.

Instagram is optimized for a mobile viewing experience. To see the rest of the caption, the user has to click more. You want to catch their interest quickly before they scroll past to look at a more interesting post. In the example above, the reader learns the location and a positive attribute of this Airbnb option without having to click more. Anyone interested in staying close to Chicago can expand the post to learn more, but the most important details are there for even the most passive Instagram viewer to see.

By placing the photo credit first, instead of at the end, National Geographic hides the most critical and interesting information. There is little in the initial part of the caption to entice readers to learn more or engage with the post. You can build authenticity with your Instagram captions by telling a story about your brand that connects with readers.

This might be anything from a brief history of the company or product to a personal story about an employee. This establishes the product line as a holiday tradition, rather than just another toy.

Another example of this is GoPro. Like many brands, they use their Instagram posts to promote a lifestyle instead of just a product:. The photo draws in the reader, but the caption encourages engagement and gives more personality to the brand. GoPro encourages this further by asking users to share their own sunset pictures, which increases the possibility of engagement and positions the brand as a lifestyle instead of just a camera.

Since Instagram allows up to 2, characters in a caption, you could use around words on average! When constructing a longer caption, formatting is key. A huge block of text is difficult to read, especially on mobile where the print is smaller.

Just to give you an idea, the post below uses 2, characters. This post is written and formatted like a full article, not like an Instagram caption. In the process, some information and phrases are repeated e. Instead of posting blocks of plain text, the user could have written an eye-catching initial caption and then a short description of the podcast and a reason the reader should listen.