Instagram Caption Writing Formula

Mar 2, 2019

Creating new and exciting captions can be a real challenge. Sometimes it takes hours to think of a couple of sentences that will best describe the image and be interesting to your followers. So that you don’t go insane with all these thoughts, we have made up a caption writing formula that can save up your time, efforts and plenty of nerves! InstaBF, the IG and IGTV provider you can always rely on, promises that you will significantly raise your engagement rate (up to 130%) with it. Here are the major points that build up our formula:

• Content Planning Essential
• The Focus of the Post
• The Storytelling Technique
• Involvement of the Reader
• Use of Line Breaks and Bullet Points

Let’s get down to each individually:

Content Planning Essentials

Before you pass to writing the caption, you need to make sure the content you have chosen is well curated, researched and strategized. You should be focused on such aspects as:

• image selection
• captions
• hashtags
• scheduling

The Focus of the Post

It’s strange but there are multiple Instagrammers who include the best part of their captions in the end. Don’t they think that few viewers will read that far down?! Don’t follow such wrong behavior. Instead, cut to the chase. The focus of a caption should appear in the beginning, just establish clearly what you’re talking about so that a viewer gets an image whether it interests him or not. Such a start of a caption will not only take out a tonne of guesswork for your clients but also act as a headline in a newspaper! By the way, it might be easier to add the focus phrase/word at the beginning once the rest is ready.

The Storytelling Techniques

Irrespective of your Instagram account style, remember that everyone connects with a story. Include agency-related or personal stories or those which might be opinionated. Once you remove yourself from a caption, that will become a habit and affect all the further captions. Sharing your personality through your captions won’t make you less professional in the eyes of your followers, as people love to connect with people and see personalities behind brands. Accordingly, create such captions, in which you will have your unique story interwoven into your business.  

Involvement of the Reader

Meredith Hill once said, “When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one”. And that’s true. This can be very applicable for caption writing. People desire to be included and spoken to even in captions, hence do never avoid addressing directly to your viewers. Don’t omit such pronouns as “you”, ask questions and request feedback from your target audience, thus building engagement. Even the most successful brands on Instagram involve their viewers in their captions, and never lose from that.

Use of Line Breaks and Bullet Points

Bullet lists and line breaks make it easier to navigate through a text. And taking into account that a caption can be as long as up to 2000 symbols, this can be definitely handy. What are the benefits of a bullet list?

• they make the content easier to read and comprehend
• they draw the eye of a reader to different areas of the content thus making it easier for him to find what he needs
• they cater to the skim-readers among us
• they make the content more structured and appealing to the eye

According to the statistics, over 75% of readers don’t read but simply skim over the content. Hence, follow this recommendation and get a higher chance of engagement.

Instagram Captions: Short or Long

Aug 3, 2018

Preparing a post for your Instagram account is nearly always an exciting process, isn’t it? You devote your time, your ingenuity and expect all your efforts awarded with plenty of likes and comments. This will raise your Instagram engagement and perhaps your brand awareness (in case you own a business account). However, before you post the photo or video you plan, don’t you ponder whether to write a short caption or a long one? So which will be more beneficial and promote the increase of your account engagement? InstaBF is going to find this out right now, together with you. But before that, let us tell you that another quick and easy way of boosting your engagement is applying to our service. We shall provide you with as many Instagram and IGTV likes, comments, views and new followers as you would like. All our accounts are HQ real-looking ones. And all this at quite an affordable price, check it out yourself!

The Best Length of Instagram Captions

InstaBF made a survey to find out the opinion of multiple users of Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram. Summing up the results, we came to the conclusion that short captions are more preferable for users than long ones. Why? In fact, there are several reasons we can explain for such an attitude. Here are them:

• Long captions stress out eyes and bore quickly;
• Short captions are best depending on the user posting it;
• Though a good opening paragraph of a long Gram caption will work well, short captions turn to be more interesting and funny;
• Plenty of users don’t even read the captions, hence there’s no need to write long captions.

What Can Define a Caption as Short?

Are captions composed of a couple of words considered short? Or perhaps it can extend up to a couple of sentences? After asking these questions to plenty of Gram users, we go the following answer “A caption is short if it’s up to one paragraph in length”. This paragraph can have up to four or five sentences. Agree that this tendency also makes it more convenient to schedule posts in advance.

InstaBF Observations

InstaBF, as a leading Instagram provider, has its own observations that we’d like to share with you. In our opinion, there are several solid reasons why people prefer short captions to long ones these days. Here are them:

• Today time is the most precious resource, hence the quicker we can scroll the Instagram feed the better.
• A huge number of people these days wear glasses. This fact makes them squint when reading and they involuntarily don’t finish too long captions.
• Instagram is, first of all, a visual platform and people prefer to spend time enjoying awesome pictures or videos rather than reading what’s there written under them.

So, you see there’s no need to spend your precious time thinking of long captions. Instead, pass on to shorter ones and watch your analytics. The latter will show you how efficient they are for your account. Everyone has a specific audience, and if for a hundred accounts it’s more expedient to use short captions, your followers may expect long captions from you. And don’t forget to include a link to your website or blog (if you have one)!