Instagram is an ever-changing social media platform. New trends pop up every day, promoted by fresh influencers and businesses that have come up with a creative marketing strategy. All this means that creating engaging Instagram posts is not something to be taken lightly, and it’s definitely something that you need to work for. Start with the quality of your visuals to the ideal length of your Instagram content; everything you do when you post on this platform will determine your success there. The hard work only begins with making a nice image or a video. The thing that follows is that most people fail to do well, which is the Instagram caption.
You cannot avoid writing an image caption on the Instagram platform. Think of it this way. The caption is the voice of the visual content. That being said, here are some excellent ideas for creating an engaging caption for your Instagram posts.
Experiment and Improvise
Your caption will probably not be ideal with the first try. Creating content never is. Do you remember your school days when you had to start a paper’s introduction and everything you wrote didn’t fit? Back in school, you could have opened some websites like GradesFixer, got the inspiration for your essay paper, or even asked someone to do it for you. But now, it’s your job to impress in much less than pages of content.
There’s no reason to feel dread over this. You need to take it slow and not rush the process. Brainstorm some ideas, check out other Instagram profiles with similar visuals, search for some Instagram caption hacks, and only then pick the one that seems most appealing to you. As soon as you start posting the captions, you’ll learn which ideas work best and which don’t resonate with the followers. After a while, you can use this experience to create captions faster and more effectively.
Additionally, if you are trying to share something trendy, you can use AiSchedul to find the related posts and captions to share on your Instagram account!
AiSchedul is a professional Instagram management tool that will let you find trending posts on each day using its professional calendar, repost content, or, if you want, view them to get some ideas from the posts and captions. Also, if you have a post related to a hashtag, search it on AiSchedul reposter to view all the captions related to the intended hashtag and get ideas to write your own Instagram caption. So, try it for free and get some caption ideas!
Start with the Important Stuff Only
An Instagram caption can only count 2200 characters. This gives you a lot of space to write a caption, but how willing will followers be to read through it all? Even if it is great and some of them decide to stick around to read it all, most will go through two or three lines and move onto the next post. People are busy, and basically, that is how they use this platform.
This is why, if you have an important message to share, you need to do it right away. Don’t introduce it vaguely or leave it for the end of the post. It’s the beginning of the caption that will pique the follower’s interest, not the end of a 2200 character post.
For example, in the following post by @nike, you can see that the first lines of the caption only give some general information about the post and the following lines talk about the details of the post:
https://www.instagram.com/tv/B9KI0D2HHe7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Add a CTA to Your Instagram Caption
Your Instagram posts probably have some purpose that you want to achieve. Think of what kind of action you expect from your followers when they see your post. Based on this, add a call-to-action to your caption.
The call to action needs to prompt people to take action. Make it to the point so that they know exactly what you expect from them. Use statements like: ‘share your story in comments’ or ‘double tap on the post if you think I’m right. If you don’t want to be so blunt and direct, you could ask a question to encourage people to leave a comment or take action. Add a clickable URL that will take them to your website. Invite people to enter a contest or ask them to tag their friends.
It all comes down to your post’s goal. Once you have this, you can work on creating an engaging CTA to insert in the caption.
As an example, in the following post by @patagonia you can see a CTA that invites people to check out the link in bio and read the intended article:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-zvtmznatn/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Use Short Paragraphs
As I said, most people aren’t willing to spend more than seconds per post on Instagram. They want to see it all, so they’ll check the news feed, see the beginning of the captions, the post itself, and move on.
If you want to make your caption readable and easy to skim, you need to use short paragraphs and simple language. You might even want to add some extra spacing to make it simpler to read.
That’s what you can see on @underarmour posts. They always add enters and spaces to ease reading an Instagram caption:
https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-w_OPfg_AB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Insert Emojis in Your Instagram Caption
Emojis have remained as popular as they were initially, so you should definitely add some to your Instagram captions. Please don’t go overboard with it, but use eloquent emojis that add some personality to your captions. Use them to introduce your content, replace words with interesting emojis, etc.
This is what @ Katy Perry always does! Using some cute and related emojis, she makes her captions catchy:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-xrZ5XnAEi/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Final Thoughts on Engaging Instagram Caption
There are plenty of things that make an Instagram post an engaging one. This is a free platform, which means that everyone is expected to use their creativity when posting something. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. These are some excellent and proven effective methods for caption writing, but you shouldn’t limit yourself to only this. If you feel that you need help with proofreading and editing your Instagram captions, it’s always a good idea to turn to professional writing services like TrustMyPaper to come up with flawless and error-free write-ups.
Author’s Bio
Joshua Robinson is a social media marketing expert. He handles content that’s being published on social media platforms and the images and captions that come with it. Because of his high popularity on social media networks, it’s safe to say that Joshua is also a very successful influencer.