11 Apr How to Write Engaging Instagram and Facebook Captions
We have all been there. You are attending an event or you have some great photos stored on your phone and you open up Instagram or Facebook only to feel a brick wall hit when you started writing a caption.
Whatever you do, don’t just slap an emoji on in place of a caption and leave the post. It’s 2018 and we’re diving deeper this year with captions so that we can drive engagement.
If you feel that writer’s block coming on, I have a few tips for you to break through. I always resort to putting my captions through a quick caption quiz to take them from “meh” to informative and engaging!
Take this recent photo we posted on our social media pages for example:
This is a picture that I took in my city of a beautiful mural that I wanted to use to promote an upcoming Lattes and Laptops Social Media workshop for the Pensacola area. (P.S. We only have 4 seats available for this workshop, so sign up!)
I could have taken this picture and said, “Can’t wait for our event in Pensacola” under it and while it may have looked nice visually, it would not have offered the Germono Advertising Company followers any additional information about why this picture was posted on our account. Only people who have been closely following our page might pick up that this photo with the word “Pensacola” in it signifies that we have an event coming up there in a month.
In order to make the caption for this photo engaging, it needed to pass my quick caption quiz:
- Is my caption helping my audience learn something?
- Is my caption engaging, does it invite them to participate in the conversation?
- Would this be interesting to my followers?
- Is this something my followers would like to share on their own pages?
If a caption can pass 3 out of the 4 items from this quiz, then I’m ready to hit publish.
Here is what the Germono team came up with for the “Pensacola photo.”
Good morning from Pensacola!
We are running around today to prep for our workshop in 3 weeks.
We’re thinking of putting together some prizes from local shops, stores, and restaurants…what goodies should we add?
Link to that workshop is here: http://bit.ly/
Does this caption pass the quiz? Let’s find out.
- Is it helping our audience learn something? YES. Our audience is made aware that we are having a social media workshop in Pensacola and we will be offering prizes for our attendees.
- Is it engaging and inviting our followers into the conversation? YES. We are asking what they would recommend from the area as gifts/goodies therefore giving the audience the opportunity to engage with us.
- Is this interesting to our followers? YES. The picture is bright and it stands out in a newsfeed but more importantly the “meat” of the caption is that we are inviting them to attend our workshop and we have included a link to register for tickets.
- Is this something they would share on their own pages? YES. It is a fun way to share an announcement about the event. Everyone loves an artistic city mural! It also invites their followers to join in the conversation as well.
When I am writing an Instagram or Facebook caption for our clients, I ask myself these questions so that I can help our clients earn the most return for a post. Don’t let your pictures and content go to waste with boring captions.
If you feel stuck or simply don’t feel like you have the time to write engaging social media captions, reach out to us via email at info@germono.com and we can discuss your social media needs even further!
We look forward to seeing all of those engaging social media captions the next time we jump onto our feeds!
