Writing Instagram captions is a really important, money-making skill, and it can play a real role in turning your audience into customers. So let’s skip the intro and walk through the steps of writing a caption that lands together.
What Are the Steps to Writing an Effective Instagram Caption?
Knowing the Business and Its Goal
The first step is getting to know the business and what its goal is for the post it published. For example, you can’t write a caption for an Instagram page selling expensive collector cars the same way you’d write one for a page selling girls’ clothing. The goal of each business and each post can also be different, meaning one post’s goal might be gaining followers while another’s is selling to your current followers. So the first thing to do is figure out who and what you’re writing the caption for, and what the goal of writing it actually is.
Knowing Your Audience and Predicting Their Behavior
After getting to know the business, it’s time to get to know the audience. Say you have two women’s clothing Instagram pages: one sells more formal, simple clothes aimed at women aged 30 to 60, and the other sells fun, trendy pieces targeting teenage girls aged 16 to 24. The way you phrase things, the tone, and how these audiences behave are all different, and each one needs its own kind of caption.
Checking Out the Competition
Looking at the captions of successful competitors can help you find patterns and get ideas. The important point is to make sure you check the captions of several posts from one competitor page and look for a pattern across them.
The Important Parts of an Instagram Caption
The First Line of the Caption
The first line of an Instagram caption is the most important part of the whole thing. Either way, this line has to be short and impactful. Here’s what you should keep in mind when writing it:
- Write it short enough that the whole first line is visible without anyone tapping “more”
- Don’t mix Persian and English so the text stays easy to read
- Always use a fitting emoji to draw attention to the caption text
- Depending on your goal, you can use a hook or a CTA in this line. If your goal is for the post to get seen or the caption to get read, this line can act as a hook, and if your goal is gaining followers, sales, and that kind of thing, this line can be a good spot for a CTA
The Caption Body
The rest of the caption shows up after someone taps “more,” and a lot of people never see this part at all unless you’ve given them a good reason to. Here, depending on your goal, you can give the audience more detail, or you can even leave this part empty with no explanation at all. The important thing is not to mistake this for a blog post; the text should be very short and broken into sections, and ideally use emojis too.
The Closing CTA
At the end of the caption, depending on your goals, you’ll sometimes use another CTA. For example, “Call for pricing,” or “Comment the number x for more info,” or “What do you think?” and so on. In this part you can use a fitting CTA for different goals, like sales, boosting engagement, or attracting people.
Hashtags
Hashtags should go at the end of your Instagram caption, and it’s better to use a limited number, somewhere between 6 and 12. These hashtags should fall into three categories:
- Hashtags related to the video’s topic: for example, if you posted something about workout moves suitable for office workers, the hashtags here could be #workout #exercisemoves #situps.
- Hashtags related to the video’s target audience: for example, in that same workout post I mentioned, you could use #employee #manager #officeworkout.
- Hashtags related to the desired results: for example, an office worker looking to exercise probably has results in mind like #physicalhealth #weightloss #sixpack and similar things.
Conclusion
To write a good caption, it’s best to first get to know the business and audience, check out the competition, and then, based on the post’s goal, write a short caption that at the very least includes a first line and hashtags.