How to Create Killer Instagram Captions

When it comes to Instagram, captions are just as important as the visual content you post - quite often because they can be what give your visual content, context. Having strong and engaging captions is important for a number of reasons - including driving engagement and conversation, creating a more three dimensional image to your own personal brand, adding context to images, showing off your unique personality, and highlighting your niche and expertise. In today's blog we're going to talk about how to write the perfect caption to drive instagram engagement!

Caption Rules

1) Mini-blogs

One of the best ways I've ever been told to think about captions, is to treat then as though they are mini-blogs. A big part of being gaining traction and influence on Instagram, is creating interest in your life and opinions - so why not put them here!

2) Get Personal

Getting personal in your captions shows that behind your account, is a human, and not just images on a screen. Talk about the topics that you care about, whether it be body positivity, feminism, mental wellbeing, your community - voice it! Not only will you seem more approachable and real, but you may also find your post will be very helpful to someone who can relate to what you're talking about.

3) Encourage Engagement

Perhaps one of the most important things you can do when writing a caption is to encourage engagement. Engagement means people actually 'engaging' with your context - i.e. commenting, liking, saving and sharing, which as we learnt before - put you in a favourable light when it come's to Instagram's tricky algorithm! There are plenty of ways of doing this - but they all involve one thing, a call to action! This is when you encourage the person reading to take one of these engagement actions on your post. Examples of engagement encouraging text could be....

tag a friend who needs to see this' (encourages comments/sharing)

'like if you agree' (encourages likes)

'send this to a friend and don't say anything (encourages sharing)

'drop an emoji below if you agree' (encourages comments)

and perhaps the best of all....... ASK A QUESTION (great for creating conversation and engagment in your comments section!)

4) Tell a Story

Story telling is a fine art - but I believe it's something we all have in us! Create a story-like structure to your captions by building up suspense and having a clear and coherent ending!

5) Have a good hashtag strategy!

Our final tip for you captions is to use hashtags. Make sure you use a range of hashtags, and research the best hashtags for your niche and account! Use a combination of 'big' (popular, well known) hashtags, niche (specific to your niche/industry/sector) hashtags, brand hashtags (if including a brand), and location or event hashtags is relevant! We will talk more about hashtags in another posts, so stay tunes for that!

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