How to Write Better Instagram Captions (That get YOU more SALES, COMMENTS, AND SHARES!)
“In order to make people stop scrolling and actually engage with your post, you have to grab them in the first few seconds.”
What we will discuss:
What is the #1 mistake you’re making when writing captions?
How to Structure your captions for success
How to know if you created your caption correctly
Let’s begin…
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What is the #1 mistake you’re making when writing captions?
Not speaking to your ideal audience: If you are speaking to everyone you are speaking to know one. You need to be specific in who you want to engage with. Not knowing your audience can make or break how people engage with your posts. Do some research. To make things easier I encourage you to create 1 person in your mind you want to talk to, write about that person answering these 5 questions.
Who’s your ideal person you want as your client, customer, or member
What is it that they want to learn?
What are they struggling with?
What do they want to be inspired by?
What actions can they take now to help them
Keep these questions with you at all times when you are creating copy for anything in your business. Remember the #1 mistake you may be making is not speaking to your ideal audience. Be relatable, share lessons you’ve learned, mistakes you’ve made, and how they can overcome. Remember it’s ok to speak about yourself but make sure to bring it back to how it can relate to your ideal person.
How to Structure your captions for success
Now that we know our ideal person we can now move on to structuring your caption for success and engagement. Here’s the 3 E’s of Caption Success
Engage your readers
Establish Value
Explain the next step
So let’s break the 3 E’s down
Engage your readers
Create a dialogue between you and your ideal person as if you were talking to them one on one. The best captions make you feel like you are having a conversation with your best friend. For instance, in this popular post on my feed, I shared with my ideal audience how I rebranded 3 different times until I found the one I loved. Then before they scroll along I said swipe for a lesson about changing directions.
This resonated with my ideal audience because I know my ideal person is still trying to get a feel for their brand. They aren’t quite sure they are making the right choice. But I wanted to encourage and inspire them to keep going through my situation.
You are allowed 125 characters in the first sentence before seeing the more link. Your first sentence needs to tell who you are speaking to. Ask leading questions like:
Are you a….
Do you struggle with...
Have you ever felt...
Are you currently trying too...
Have you ever wondered if...
Want to know how to…
Use leading questions as if you were starting off a conversation with your ideal person in mind. So write the way you would naturally speak to a person in front of you.
Establish Value
So you’ve got them to click the more link. What’s next? In This section, you need to add value that corresponds to the leading question. How can you expand that question that is relatable to your audience? Keep it quick and to the point.
Here you need to make sure that this section isn’t just one long paragraph. People will click off immediately or skim it. So here’s how to improve your retention rate
This section needs to have
Give your value in 2-3 sentences with breaks in between
Keep it to the point and still about them
Hashtags in your paragraph need to be kept to a minimum (do you talk to your in hashtags)
Emojis should also be kept to a minimum to avoid distraction to your message
Explain the next step
Now the last part is your Call to Action. What’s the action you want people to take now that they got this information from you. Ask Call to Actions like…
In the comments let me know…
What’s the number one tip that you learned…
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So there you go the the “3 E”
Engage Audience
Establish Value
Explain the next step
Another way to remember is to Follow the leading question with an answer and leave them wanting more.
How to know if you created your caption correctly
Here are 4 questions to ask yourself before hitting the post.
Does the image, video, or graphic grab attention?
Does this caption engage the audience from the start?
Does this caption add value or a quick win?
Does this caption keep the audience interested?
Once you can check off 3-5 of these questions as a yes then you are on your way to better captions. Remember it's all about trial and error. You’ll have some that fall through the cracks and some that rise to the occasion. However, being able to track what’s bringing the engagement will help to make each caption better and better. To the point where the 3 E’s will come naturally and caption writing a lot faster.
“Now moving on to the last piece of the puzzle creating captions that gets your followers taking action”
Caption reels people in after the eye-catching posts where that be a video, quote, carousel, or a gorgeous photo of yourself. In order to make people stop scrolling and actually engage with your post, you have to grab them in the first sentence.
What do Next
If you want to know what type of content gets the best engagement head over to this quick tip video to help you get started. Then take one of those content pieces and create a better caption.
Then you need to create the content and Creating content shouldn’t waste all of your precious time. Create templates and have brand photos to instantly share to your social media. Just like the graphics I showed you from my members in this video, The She Bold Stock membership includes all you need to create content that is strategically on brand. Join the membership in the description below or get a sample of free images to start creating content today
Are you ready to make creating content easier?
Resources to create Content Faster
Resources help make creating easier! Remember you don’t have to do this alone. Outsource and find the right tools to make things easier on you. Now that you have everything laid out, it’s time to create. Whether that means sitting down and writing out the blog posts you outline, creating images for the Instagram post or creating 2-3 videos in one sit down, let your creativity flow!
Here are the tool that I use to batch create content for the week ahead!
Canva: It’s the most easy and simple online editor that I’ve ever worked with. Mind you, I’ve been doing this blogging game since 2012! Going with Canva Pro I’m able to have all of my brand identity elements with me to create faster.
Planoly: My social media manager plans all of my content here. It’s super easy to plan, schedule, and post. I love that the calendar features key dates to help you stay on top of content planning. You can also use the notes feature to jot down reminders, add your own key dates, and color code by categories! Plus they also give hashtag ideas!
She Bold Stock Photo Membership: High quality unique images is important to me. Inside the Membership we have over 3,000 unique images to choose from. Plus having social media templates like pinterest graphics that are designed to capture views is what makes this membership worth investing in. I also have a FB Live Training to share with you too!
Article Recap
There you have it, my fellow solopreneurs, you learned:
What is the #1 mistake you’re making when writing captions?
How to Structure your captions for success
How to know if you created your caption correctly
Ready to put these topics into practice and attract your ideal audience? Here’s a gift to get you started!
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