11 Instagram Caption Tips To Help You Get More Engagement

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The Instagram algorithm

The Instagram algorithm changes every day. Sometimes several times per day.

It is no longer easy to get followers. It’s not easy to get engagement, nor to reach your followers. People that have clicked on the follow button, and have taken an active decision to see your content,  are no longer seeing your content. Only a fraction of your followers sees your posts.

Instagram, like all other social platforms, wants you and your followers to use the platform as much as possible. They want you to spend a lot of time on the platform.  And nowadays they also want you to spend a lot of money on the platform. You can still choose not to, but most probably have lower visibility. The more you pay the more your followers can see your feed.

There is still one authentic way where you don’t have to spend any money and that’s creating great content in captions and engaging with your followers.

Great engaging captions is what drives the engagement and what makes followers comment. The more comments you have the higher the ranking on the platform. People love longer captions and apparently, the longer captions have 10% more engagement than short ones.

We know how hard it can be to come up with ideas for posts and captions. We know how it is to have this “pressure” every day.

11 Instagram caption tips

That’s why we made a list with tips on how to write captions that create more engagement on your Instagram account. Hopefully, this will make it a bit easier for you:)

1. Know your audience. When you know exactly who your target customer is you know what to say, how to say and how to help them. You know what they need and want.
2. Hook your followers in. When you write captions you need to hook your followers in. Write something catchy and attention-grabbing in the opening line. Invite them to read further.
3. Tell them the story. Talk about what the picture is about. This is the “meat” of your caption so explain it properly. What are you trying to help people with, what is the actual matter, tell them the subject. It should be educational, or valuable, like a fashion tip. Build trust and don’t force it, think about it like having a conversation with a real human.
4. Close. Tell them why you wrote the post. What is the conclusion of your caption? Why did you share it? Why does it matter so much to you? Share how it helped you and how it can help them as well. 
5. Have a call to action. Tell people what to do. Do you want them to comment, or do you want them to go to the link in bio, or do you want them to share? Just tell them what to do to make them take action and engage.
6. Keep the conversation going. Stick around for 30-60min to answer to comments, like people’s comments and just authentically engage with your followers. They need to feel and see that you are there. Remember, this is a social platform, so be social. Hang out!
7. In everything you write and the way you engage, remember your brand’s tone of voice. You want it to feel again, authentic and on-brand. 
8. Use emojis in your captions. This makes the text more fun and the emojis can draw the reader further down the text. Play around with them.
9. Ditch the hard sell. Pls pls pls do NOT hard sell on social media. You will get tons of sales if you tell your story, if you educate and help your audience and if you just bring them along on your brand’s journey. Hard selling is the fastest way to lose followers…..
10. Make sure your copy is error-free. Gramarly is a fantastic tool!
11. Be yourself! Yes, it’s easy to look at everybody else, yes it’s easy to get inspired and to try to cut corners, but in the end, you are the person behind the brand, there is only one YOU, and there is only ONE brand, so be YOU!

Instagram is a visual platform, it’s true. But just like cake without the icing, you can’t rely on an image to COMPLETELY captivate your audience… as gorgeous as the image may be.

Some more caption tips

So here are a few quick tips to get your captions working for you!

Figure Out WHY Are You Posting:

Post with intention every time! Think about what you want to communicate to your audience. Sure it’s nice to post pretty flowers, but is there a reason this is relevant to your brand? What is the sentiment you’re trying to express?

Have A Call To Action (CTA):

What action do you want your audience to take? Do you want them to subscribe to your mailing list? Visit your website? Comment on your post? Each post should have a call-to-action (CTA). And no, you can’t just say ‘buy my product.’ The Instagram community will simply tune out.

Find Your Voice:

Your voice is a large part of your brand. Others WILL come along and develop a product similar to yours. That’s just a fact! But no one can copy your brand, if it is strong and genuine. Here’s how you do that…

Be yourself! If you are a loud personality, then be loud. If you are humorous, then be humorous. Just be the you that you always are and don’t do things out of character for shock value. Don’t make the mistake of trying to blend in either!

Think of your audience and rather than picture them as an unknown quantity, picture one person and speak to them. Make it personal and you’ll be surprised at the response.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]