Tips to Create Ideal Social Media Captions

With the world becoming increasingly digital and interconnected, social media continues to declare itself a key marketing player. Beyond just picture-sharing, it’s a powerful tool to share information, and can be a great way for consumers to engage with your brand. However, with all the competition online, it can be difficult for your posts to stand out, especially if you’re suffering from weak or uninteresting captions. Here are our top five tips to create successful social media captions to boost your online social presence.

Keep It Short and Sweet

Nobody on social media is looking to read a novel-length caption. Twitter has a 280-character limit; on Instagram, only your first two lines appear before you have to click to show the rest of the caption. When you write a caption, make sure you are making the most of your word count! Keep it short and to the point, and if you do need several sentences, consider breaking them up into small paragraph-like sections to make it easier on the eye than a solid block of text. Especially if you have a longer caption, write a first sentence powerful enough to interest your followers in the rest of what you have to say!

Write Something Worth Reading

Having calls to action in your social media posts can be a great way to encourage conversions and bring traffic to your business. However, social media is about being social, not just posting an endless stream of promotions. Keep your captions varied by using them to spread information, share some humor, tell a story, encourage conversation, or just put a smile on somebody’s face. Sharing a quote or asking a question shows that you’re interested in your followers as people, not just as consumers. Varying your social media captions keeps your account interesting and gives people a reason to follow and look forward to your posts.

Know Your Audience

One of the most important parts of writing a good caption on social media is familiarity with your target audience. With the popularity of social media, there are a lot of accounts vying for followers’ attention. Finding a way to cut through the white noise is essential to actually engaging your audience. Understanding the kind of posts your followers see from other accounts and what content your target audience enjoys ensures your account appeals to their interests and creates traffic. Varying your tone, word choice, imagery, pop culture references, and use of emojis, memes, and other trends can make a huge difference in how your account is perceived by your demographic.

Use Hashtags (Wisely)

Don’t forget to use hashtags in your captions! They help drive traffic to your posts and can make it easier for your account to be discovered by a wider audience. However, don’t go too far and overstuff your account with too many buzzword filled hashtags, as this can actually get you banned from showing up in hashtag search results.

Stay on Top of Trends

It can be tempting to reference the latest meme or use popular emojis in your captions, and this can definitely help boost your engagement! Being funny and staying current is a great way to encourage your followers to interact with your content and your brand. However, be careful that you are staying on top of trends and truly understand them before you use them. Nothing is more painful than missing the mark using an outdated meme or misusing an emoji, or worse—posting something with connotations you aren’t aware of. While you want to keep it fun, it’s important to do your research first to make sure you are sending the right message in the right way before you hit post.

Feeling social but not finding success online? Contact the team at Kraus Marketing for help with every aspect of your social media or for any of your marketing needs!