The ultimate guide to writing Perfect Instagram captions (Examples included)

Instagram being one of the most widely used platforms is a visual medium for sharing images & videos. However, you must know that just sharing an image or video only is not enough.

For your content to get noticed more, you need to add eye-catchy and relevant Instagram captions to it.

Most people ignore this thing, thereby decreasing their chance of getting more engagement. Those few lines of text below your image help in showcasing what the post is about and also reflect your brand’s personality.

When you are a brand or influencer, you get a huge potential audience to appeal to but you also need to post content regularly. Now, comes the question- what should you write? How long should the caption be? What captions would get the most audience engagement?

We will answer all these questions in this post but before that let us tell you why it is important to have a well-crafted caption for your Instagram post?

Why writing a caption is important?

Your Instagram caption matters because it speaks about your brand’s personality in a way that images alone can’t do. It is a direct way of communicating with your followers. You can share stories, tell about your brand, ask questions or even tell jokes there.

Having a caption to your posts increases the chance of being read and followed by the audience even if they are scrolling the feed quickly.

How? Suppose your caption is about any giveaway or questions for which the audience needs to like and follow your page. So, you see captions that let your audience engage with your brand.   

Now, you might wonder why is engagement important? Because of the Instagram algorithm. Instagram now no longer shows your posts in chronological order, instead, the posts having more likes, comments, or shares are shown first. The time of your posting also matters.

So, if you want your posts to be seen more, you need to enhance their engagement. But with so many brands being present on Instagram, what will help your brand or content stand out? The answer is the caption of your posts.

8 ways to write better Instagram captions

Your goal is to create a caption that will elevate your post’s engagement. To help you achieve this goal, we did a thorough analysis of the Instagram posts from top brands to determine what makes a high-performing Instagram caption.

Important Information first

Instagram is optimized for a mobile viewing experience. That is why it shows only the first 125 characters of your caption in the user’s feed and to see the rest of the caption, the user needs to tap on “More”. 

Remember that you are competing against a lot of brands for your user’s attention. So, you would have to catch your user’s attention with just those 25 characters before they scroll past your post for something more interesting.

Check the example below:

This post by Airbnb puts the important point at the top in the caption like the location of the place. Now anybody who loves beaches is sure to click “More” to know further about this place and the post. Chances are likely that the user will click on the website as well.  

Tell a story about your brand

It’s not hidden that users mostly prefer brands that are real, honest, and have a personalized social media experience. You can do the same for your brand by sharing any story, history, or fact about your business in the caption of your post. 

Now, a story does not mean writing something long. It can be of 2-3 lines also but need to be something with which the audience can connect.

Take this example to understand better: 

Check this post by Mahindra. Here you can see, the company has shared vital information about Mahindra in the form of a small story. The users get to know about Mahindra’s first vehicle through a two-liner caption only. 

The structure of your caption is important

As you already know that only 125 characters are visible before clicking “More” but that does not mean you can‘t write long captions for your post. Instagram allows a caption of 2200 characters for your posts and you can certainly make use of it.

However, you must understand the importance of the format of the caption. Users generally try to avoid long captions. So, for your captions to be read you should structure them in points or short paragraphs.

The following post can be a good reference to this:

As you can see in this post shared by LouisemKang. The caption is definitely long but the formatting has made it easier and interesting for the users to read. 

On the other hand, emojis are used to break the paragraphs into points, making it more eye-appealing. 

Ask questions to drive more engagement

We have decoded that to increase your reach on Instagram, your posts need to have high engagement. But just having interesting content is not enough, instead, you should write captions that constantly encourage your users to engage with the post without skipping them. 

For this, you can add questions, feedback, review, or anything that can drive the user’s attention and response. Just keep in mind that these questions need to be related to your brand as random questions won’t generate meaningful engagement. 

The different types of questions that you can ask are: 

• Feedback: First of all, find out which product or content your customer is interested in. Try to get input on the same. By doing this, you are not only just increasing engagement but are also gaining valuable insights into the opinions of your customers.

• Getting-to-know-you questions: Share a personal story about your brand and then ask users to share about their similar or related stories. This helps you to know your customers better and also shows the human side of your brand.
• Close-ended or binary questions: You can ask a Yes or No or MCQ questions with your audience. This is a great way to get high engagement as it requires minimal effort from your audience.

Have a look at this example:

In the above post, you can see how perfectly Mahindra has crafted the caption aiming for high engagement. Most of the users are sure to do the needful to win the gift.

Giveaways are another way for high engagement. 

Use emojis to show your emotions

Emojis have taken up the marketing strategy. Most of the brands make use of emojis in their captions to give it a personalized feel. You can add relevant emojis in the caption to show your fun side, thereby grabbing more attention from the users. 

Emojis can also be used as a long-text breaker.

Here have a look:

Emojis put life in the content and using it in your caption can increase the readability too.

People generally tend to go through such posts more. In this post, you can see the ice-cream and pastry emoji has been used to keep up with the sugary theme, thereby fulfilling its purpose.

The only thing that should be kept in mind is that you should not use random emojis here and there, instead try to match emojis with your caption and content. 

Add relevant hashtags

Hashtags are important more than you could imagine. Including relevant hashtags in your captions can boost your post’s performance by leaps and bounds. With hashtags, your posts can attract new people, thereby enhancing the chance of increasing your followers. 

Adding top-performing relevant hashtags in your posts can increase the chance of your visibility in your user’s feed.

Check the example below:

A post shared by TCS on the occasion of World meditation day. TCS just added a few hashtags but the top ones. People who are following these hashtags will get to see TCS’s post as well, thereby bringing in more audience.

Your aim should be to use hashtags having large followers to target a larger section of the audience.

@Mentions to increase reach

You must be knowing about Instagram influencers. These are the people or brands having a high number of followers. Tagging these people in your post or even mentioning their user ID in your caption can be of great advantage to you. 

When the tagged people would like or comment on your post, that post will be visible to their thousands of followers. Therefore, enhancing the visibility of your Instagram account.

This post by lego is a good example of the same:

By tagging Lamborghini in its post, Lego has enhanced the chances for user engagement and in case, Lamborghini decides to share the image, Lego’s followers are sure to scale up.

You too can do the similar thing by tagging some relevant influencer or brand having a large fan following into your posts. 

Add a Call-to-Action

The tips that we mentioned above are sure to increase the engagement of your posts. However, adding a CTA button gives a much clearer picture to your audience as to what they should do once they are done reading your posts.

And what better place to add a CTA button than the caption? For example, check the post by Airbnb: 

Here, you can see how nicely the caption has been curated guiding the audience to the Airbnb magazine. You can do something similar to this by adding your website’s link or any product’s link in your bio and asking your users to click on it. 

You can add the following things in your caption as call-to-action: 

• Tag us in your photos
• Like if you agree to this
• Comment down your opinion
• Visit (link to your website) to book your order today.

The idea behind CTA is to generate engagement for your business on or outside Instagram. 

Conclusion 

Your Instagram captions are a reflection of what your brand is about. They not only give a context of your brand’s personality but also are a great way for the audience to engage with your brand. 

Even a small caption can work as a wonder for your brand, boosting your post’s performance beyond what a photo or video can do on its own. No doubt, every business works differently on Instagram but once you identify what style works for your brand and your customers, you have a chance to win more audience for your business. 

And with our above-mentioned tips, we hope you would now be able to craft eye-catchy, high-performing captions for your Instagram posts. 

Have any question, doubt or suggestion, tell us in the comments section below.