Monday, November 2, 2015

Instagram Caption Ideas for Creative Marketers

Instagram Caption Ideas for Creative Marketers

Instagram has quickly formed into one of the most optimal social media networks for businesses to illustrate their story through photos. With several filters and photo editing tools at their disposal, brands are spending a lot of time and money to bring out their inner Ansel Adams. Even though Instagram is all about images and video, many marketers completely overlook their Instagram captions.

Coming up with fresh and creative Instagram caption ideas is no easy task. Much like the time you spend making each photo and video look its best, you shouldn’t forgo spending enough time to write the best caption to match the image.

Keeping Users’ Attention Is No Walk in the Park

With more than 400 million monthly users sifting through dozens of images each day, you have real potential to engage audiences with your brand. In fact, Instagram is one of the few social networks where users are completely engrossed with your ad because each image takes up the entire screen of a smartphone.

topshop instagram on iphone

At the same time, do you know if you’re keeping the attention of each person who zooms through his or her Instagram feed? This is important because the average user spends roughly 21 minutes on the app each day.

That’s a lot of scrolling per person. While your images have to be engaging to make viewers spend time on your post, your Instagram caption might be the sole reason to conversion.

Images certainly say a lot about your brand, but we all know how critical it is to incorporate great content in your advertisements. On Instagram, you can use up to 2,200 characters, which equates to about 400 words. This is truly a valuable space to use to give users a little further explanation after they first see your content.

It’s All About Context

You might be thinking “OK, I get it, Instagram is the place to be, but how do I engage users with my Instagram captions?” A lot of people spend a good chunk of time thinking about the perfect Instagram caption before hitting the publish button. Luckily, there are some great steps to follow to bring out your inner poet when writing your caption.

#DisneyAndVans new holiday collection at vans.com/disney

A photo posted by vans (@vans) on

Even the best images out there on Instagram could benefit from a little context. Without the hashtag “DisneyAndVans,” you have no clue why the dalmatian is used in this photo. That’s why your text space is crucial. You have to provide some context to your images to drive home your brand. But this isn’t an easy feat. For starters, links do not work within Instagram captions and can only be used in Instagram bios. This means your content has to do a lot of heavy lifting to get users to your website, store or bio page.

Do You Know Your Audience?

Instagram is certainly known for its younger-generation following, but marketers are discovering just how far they can reach with rise of ads on the social platform. A 2014 BI Intelligence report explained that one of the first ever advertisements on Instagram from Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream reached out to 9.8 million users in the US in eight days.

Additionally, the key demographic was 18 to 35 year olds. For more information on Instagram demographics, head over to our social media demographics post. Depending on your product, users might want to see a day in the life of a worker or get a behind the scenes look at how your product is made.

The great thing about Instagram is you can add a helpful caption or explanation to give context into your day-to-day operations. When it comes to your Instagram caption, you have to walk a fine line with engaging your audience. You need to ask questions like:

  • Will my audience like emojis?
  • Are hashtags useful with my campaign?
  • Do my followers enjoy in-depth context?
  • Am I clearly explaining things with just a few words
  • Do my captions incite a conversation or response?
  • Would my followers easily pick up pop culture references

More likely than not, you’ll have a pretty good idea of the answers by measuring the level of engagement from your audience data. Using a social media management tool like Sprout Social can give you in-depth analytics for your Instagram to show you things like number of comments and likes, engagement by date and top influencers.

Put Time Into Each Post

Users often feel pressured to post their photos to Instagram moments after they take it, but as a business, timing is essential. The last thing you want to do is rush your Instagram marketing because users will see right through it in your caption.

Hastily posted photos are more prone to be irrelevant and your captions are likelier to include errors or be off topic from your brand. You want to make sure your captions get just as much love and care as your Facebook posts and Tweets. Just because Instagram is a photo-sharing network doesn’t mean you can speed up the caption writing process.

Take a step back and think about what the caption will do for the specific photo and your overall brand. Spending a little extra time on your caption will help ensure the right words are used.

Keep It Short & Sweet

Most users don’t want to read a novel to understand the picture or your product. Remember, users are likely spending a few seconds on each picture before scrolling to the next. This means your text has to have value.

Even though you have space for roughly 400 words in your Instagram caption, you should rarely if ever get to the level. In fact, a report from Jeff Bullas found Facebook posts received 66% higher traffic when using 80 characters or less and 86% higher engagement with 40 character posts.

So you say you want a revolution… #biltwell #biltwellgringo #biltwellgringos

A video posted by Biltwell (@biltwell) on

Brevity can be your best friend when you’re thinking of Instagram caption ideas. Your image or video should be telling the story while your caption is providing context. Finding a middle ground between showing and telling with your Instagram posts could be the key to converting users.

Get Creative

While being short and sweet is effective, don’t let conciseness override your creativity. A good tip is to never state the obvious in your Instagram caption. When your image is extremely easy to understand, don’t just use your caption as an explanation, but a way to make the picture or video more engaging.

Formality tends to not translate so well on Instagram, which is why you have to be open, conversational and creative with each caption. Some businesses like to stat facts about the company in the caption, but that doesn’t mean you have to be cut and dry with your text.

Go solar and light up the night with the infinite power of the sun. A photo posted by SolarCity (@solarcity) on

Look for your creative writers who can get the point across without boring your viewers. Your caption and photo go hand in hand, so why limit the creativity in your text?

Show Off Your Awesome Staff

More likely than not, you have some pretty talented people working around you. Even though Instagram pictures of your staff are not really promoting your brand, it does help humanize your company.

On top of that, your Instagram captions can work wonders with staff pictures. In this example, the restaurant Longman & Eagle draws a good amount of engagement by showing a picture of its full staff. However, the image is not what necessarily makes the post great, but instead, the context of the caption, which shows Longman received a Michelin Guide Star for the sixth straight year.

You’re not just giving a shout out to your company, but also showing the praise and awards with your brand. Without a well-crafted caption, your staff recognition photos could be easily skipped in users’ feeds.

Limit Your Hashtags & Emojis

It’s best to keep your Instagram captions simple and refrain from using multiple hashtags or emojis. Most social media marketers will recommend using a max of two hashtags per post. When you start to hashtag every word in your caption, your post can seem like spam.

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