The best picture you have is ready to be uploaded to Instagram. Now all that’s missing is the best Instagram caption you’ve written for your followers. Really good captions and descriptions for Instagram posts are important for engagement and your reach. The best tips, ideas, and comments are available for you in this guide.
What Are Instagram Captions?
An Instagram caption or description is a text-based addition to your post on Instagram to tell the story behind the picture or video. Captions usually consist of text, emojis, @ mentions, and hashtags.
The image description is an important supplementary part of your complete Instagram post.
Good for You
The caption gives you many opportunities to improve your post and get a much higher engagement rate and reach.
Even Better for You
Lots of Instagrammers out there haven’t even understood that. That’s why users spend a lot of time taking pictures and then simply “clap” a few lines of text in the caption because they can’t think of anything better.
An Instagram post’s success depends on 60% on the picture and 40% on the picture’s descriptive text.
The Best Tips for Good Instagram Captions
Writing a good Instagram caption is a breeze. But I took a few tips from my bag of tricks that turn a simply good image caption into an optimal image text.
You just have to implement and tick off your next post like a checklist:
Mind the Length of Your Instagram Captions
Our first tip is quite simple and will help you become more relevant for Instagram and possibly avoid a shadowban.
Many Instagram users do not know that the text length plays a very important role in your image or video caption.
Mainstream Opinion
Social media texts always have to be short and crisp. Nobody wants to read long texts.
The Reality
Long image texts perform much better than very short texts, especially on Instagram.
The Instagram algorithm is always about understanding what your text and your picture are about. So it tries to assign a specific topic to your post to:
- be able to better display your contribution in the search.
- be able to recommend your contribution to other users on the Explore Page.
Logically, it gets this knowledge from the description of your picture or video. And the longer your description is, the better you can explain to your followers and the Instagram algorithm what your topic is.
Easy right?
Pro-Tip
Incidentally, Instagram picks and pushes high-quality content much more than boring or low-quality content.
If your caption contains a lot of text and few hashtags, Instagram assumes a higher quality.
If the number of characters in your hashtags is larger than the characters in your image description, it is of very poor quality. So you get less reach from Instagram.
Questions to Your Followers in Captions are Very Important!
Asking questions is the easiest way to get people to comment on your post.
And that’s exactly what you want on a social network.
Always try to get a dialogue going and build a bridge for your followers.
By the Way
The old Sigmund Freud already knew that people like to prove themselves. People are always there when it comes to putting their skills to the test. If you ask a question, your followers have exactly this opportunity.
So a question is almost mandatory in a good Instagram caption. And if you want to do it really, really well, put the question right at the beginning of your text.
Put Your Most Important Sentences at the Beginning of the Captions
The first three lines of your Instagram caption are the most important.
After three lines, Instagram automatically shortens your post and hides everything outside of these lines behind a “More” button.
In addition, people are always on the move a bit online, like rabbits on coke. Your attention span is super low. At first, you only scan the content roughly and only read the text when it sounds interesting.
Therefore, you should work on the first 2 to 3 lines of your caption as thoroughly as you would on the birthday card for your mother.
Storytelling: Make Your Instagram Caption a Story
Storytelling is the process of telling a little story in order to convey an idea or to sell a product.
You don’t actively sell products on Instagram, but you do sell your picture, your video, and yourself as an Instagrammer.
Pro-Tip
Instagram posts that tell a story about the picture get about 45% better results and get more likes and comments.
Take a Shout Out About an @ -Mention in Your Instagram Post
If you are already a little connected on Instagram and know other users, so-called @ mentions are an excellent way to let your account grow properly. With an @ -mention (@username), you link another user in your post, which could also increase your reach.
You should only choose this variant if it really makes sense. @ -Mentions don’t make sense if it’s all about promoting your own popularity.
Collect Different Ideas for Your Instagram Captions
Always look at other successful Instagrammers in your niche for their captions as examples and imply different caption ideas for your future posts.
Use Emojis in the Instagram Caption
Emojis are a great way to improve your Instagram post. Whenever possible, you should always include a few emojis in your posts. With the incredible amount of emojis available, you’ll always find something suitable for your image description. Sometimes a post text can even be replaced entirely by emojis and thus tell a little story.
Extra: Use Hashtags in Your Captions in Moderation
Using hashtags in your Instagram posts can bring you up to 12.6% more engagement. Sounds great, but there’s a good reason why you shouldn’t pop billions of hashtags into your posts. First, Instagram only allows the use of up to 30 hashtags per post. Second, you will want your readers to read and like your caption. That won’t happen if it’s just hashtags that make your text illegible.
Extra: Avoid Shadowban
The Instagram search is mostly done via hashtags. People are currently entering popular hashtags in the search box and looking for posts about them. Very smart people now come up with the idea of simply pushing the most popular hashtags into their Instagram image description and thus getting a lot of reach; that could also work if the shadowban didn’t exist.
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If you keep using the same large hashtag set repeatedly and without reference to your post’s content, you are likely to fall into what is known as shadowban. Shadowbanning is when Instagram stops showing your posts when looking for certain hashtags. This is comparable to excluding your website from the Google index and is similar to a catastrophe. The big difference is that you won’t notice. While on Google pages just disappear completely from the index, your posts still appear in the Instagram search for you. However, all other users will no longer find your posts there.
The ideal number of hashtags that you can use in your posts is between 5 and up to 10. Don’t use more hashtags. More hashtags won’t really help you and increase the risk of being shadowed.
Separate the Hashtags From the Instagram Captions
Hashtags are fine, but they can mess up your post text. Just try writing 5 to 10 hashtags directly in your post text. More of them don’t look good and makes the text much harder to read.
In this case, many Instagrammers like to use a trick to separate the text from the hashtags.
The Idea
You write your post text without hashtags or with only one or two hashtags and publish your post. Immediately after the publication, you write a comment under your post in which you place all hashtags that are relevant for your Instagram post.
Other users will perfectly discover your contribution via the hashtags, but it looks very clean and legible.
Extra: Writing, Reading, Shortening, Shortening
We always use one technique when writing posts and captions: “write, read, trim, trim.”
First, you write your Instagram caption without thinking about its length. Just bring in all of the factors in the story that you want to tell.
Then you read the text one or more times and start shortening it as much as possible. If you repeat steps 2 and 3 a few times, you will have post text that is absolutely to the point.
Just a Reminder
It’s not about keeping your text as short as possible. The point is that you get down to business without a lot of oomph.
Bored less, gets read better, and makes you want to comment and like.
Maybe you’re also interested in the topic “How to Write a Social Media Proposal“.
To Conclude Instagram Captions
Finding good Instagram captions might seem difficult, but if you want to be successful on Instagram, it’s important not to let your Instagram captions become an afterthought.
Whether you’re an e-commerce brand selling products or a blogger sharing content, writing great Instagram captions can boost your Instagram engagement a lot!
2 Comments
Very interesting tips to write Instagram captions. I will surely try out these tips to make captions on Instagram.
Thank you
Just when I needed help to write Instagram captions… Thanks a lot!