A picture is worth a thousand words, right? But most of the time, your pictures still need a little caption.
Instagram recently switched up its algorithms to show pictures in order of interest (rather than the old fashioned time-line), so it has never been more important to make sure to create a successful post – and with that comes the ‘Instagram caption’.
The photo-sharing app allows captions to be up to 2,200 characters in length and can include up to 30 hashtags. But that does not mean you need to use all of these – in fact, when it comes to Instagram, less is often more.
It is important to show off your brand’s personality, and add a little context to your posts by adding a caption. Think about your brand voice and what message you want to get across to your audience with your post. Generally, a light-hearted and friendly tone works best – and an emoji (or three) only adds to this.
Depending on the post, quotes can often be a great way to tell your story. If you do go for a longer caption, it is important to be aware that captions cut off and require users to click Hashtags are a must for increasing your post engagement. A study by Simply Measured showed that Instagram posts with at least one hashtag have a 12.6% average of more engagement, than those without the ###. Similarly, tagging relevant people in your posts opens up the opportunity for those users and their followers to engage with you post too. If you don’t like seeing these bits in your caption then don’t worry – a nifty trick is to either put these in afterwards in a comment yourself, or and a few well-spaced out . . . . . before adding them in, so they won’t be noticeable to users when they scroll past your post. A final tip for your captions is to encouraging users to ‘tag a friend’ or ‘comment below, naturally drives up your engagement. Questions in captions also invite users to actively engage with your posts. Have a play around with captions and see what works best for you. It’s not too complicated a task, simply follow our advice and you’ll be getting those all important likes and comments in no time. 😉 
