How to Write Engaging Instagram Captions

If you aren’t familiar with Instagram, you might think that the key to capturing your followers’ attention is the images you post. Photo-shopped to perfection, bright, eye-popping titles arranged in an intricate puzzle-like theme. Yes, you are right; visuals (imagery, videos) play an essential role in stopping someone from casually scrolling through theirs. But what makes your audience leave a comment on your post is how you write your Instagram caption. So, how do you craft the most engaging Instagram caption? What triggers people to leave a comment, share, or save your post? And what is the best length for a caption? In this post, I will show you how to write captions that can compete with the likes of top brands like Starbucks, ABH, and influencers like Jenna Kutcher and Victoria Lipovetsky. But before we jump into the tips, let’s talk about the Instagram algorithm.

Advantage of buy Instagram followers you must know

What is Instagram engagement?

Engagement is an important performance indicator marketers use to determine whether an Instagram account

is successful. Why? Because the Instagram algorithm prioritizes engagement. The number of people who see your content depends on the number of people that engage with your post. More engagement, more chances for your future posts to be discovered by new people.

The engagement rate is calculated by looking at your total post interactions and dividing that by your total number of followers. Multiply that figure by 100% to get a percentage. For For example, if your post has 41 likes, 12 comments, one share, six saves, and 1000 followers, your engagement rate is 6%.The quickest way to get your engagement rate is to use an  app, as they automatically calculate each post’s engagement rate for you.

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Engagement rate (ER) formula:

ER = Total post interactions / total no. of followers *

100% Total post interactions: likes, comments, shares, saves

Low: <1%

Average: 1% to 3%

High: 3% – 6%

Very High: > 6%

Why are Instagram captions important?

1. Captions
2.      complete your post. Images
3.      alone couldn’t express your brand personality. Your captions complement
4.      the visuals and help you tell your story in a unique voice.
5. Captions
6.      open new doors for engagement with your audience. You can ask questions, get to know your
7.      audience, describe your product features, or share personal stories.
8. Captions
9.      help grow your engagement rate. Better engagement, a higher chance for your
10.      future posts to be seen by more people.

Now that you understand the importance of captions in boosting engagement, we can dive into the caption writing tips.

How to write engaging Instagram captions

Grab attention with the first line Write the essential information in your first line before it gets truncated. Put your keywords here and use this space to build a desire for people to click on the “…” to read more. A well-written headline should catch people’s attention and convince them to read your caption. Here are some examples:

she keeps the first line simple and gets straight to the point. By summarizing the “essence” of the position, they let their followers know exactly what to expect – a blue and yellow eyeshadow look tutorial. Simple and effective.

She teases the audience with the first line. By using words like “my Instagram secret”, she sparks curiosity and one will only learn the secret after reading the full text.

1. Use emotion to connect with your followers.

Now that you’ve got your reader’s attention, you need to connect with them emotionally. Studies have shown that people engage with social posts that are relatable. A great way is to use storytelling.

She is notorious for using emotional stories to connect with her audience. She writes her captions as she would speak to a friend, using a lot of “I” and “mine” and “our” that make her readers feel as if they’re part of her story.

Stories of transformation, overcoming challenges, and growing are some of her most engaging captions. Emotional captions are engaging because our brain reacts better to reports than facts.

2. Ask questions to encourage engagement.

Asking your audience questions or directing them to leave a comment is one of the fun ways to get more people to interact with your Instagram posts.

Fashion influencers ask their followers to choose their favourite outfits from 1 to 6 images. This is an elementary and effective tactic to get more comments: people are more likely to type a single number or an emoji “1” instead of leaving a long word.

You can ask for a personalized answer if you want to know your audience better. Hubspot builds engagement by including the “we want to know from you”. This makes it more personal, and people feel their opinion counts.

Some other ideas:

• Ask for feedback on your product/service
• Simple “yes or no” / “a or b”
•      polls
• Choose your favourite option 1, 2, 3 or 4
• Get your customer to share their opinion
• Tag a friend challenge
• Ask your followers to guess a fact about
•      yourself/your business
• Leave a comment for a chance to get featured

1. Include relevant hashtags for 12.6% more
2. engagement

Your caption would not be complete without a set of relevant hashtags. According to research, posts with at least one hashtag get 12.6% more engagement. If you aren’t sure what hashtags to use, use the The Instagram search tool, and type your industry. From there, you’ll see several recommended hashtags. Pick those that fit with your branding and voice. Another way is to use a word or to get ideas, which you can then put into the Instagram search tool to find even more.

1. Steal a writing technique from the pros Want to know how to write Instagram captions like a marketing pro You can use the Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA)formula as a guide. Why is this effective? Because it has a simple structure that has been proven to work on social media.

Let’s look at a

Attention:

Vanessa starts her post with a question that grabs her followers’ attention “why sales calls are unsuccessful”. If you were a coach, you’d probably have this issue.

Interest: Next, she builds

interest by touching on the negative impacts arising from this issue. For example, if your calls are unsuccessful, you’ll also have to deal with a, b,and c effects. A bit of drama in this section should create a climax for the next step.

Desire:

This is where you come in with your solution that can solve the problems highlighted in your previous section. Vanessa introduces her BGA program as the ultimate solution. You could also show social proof before and after transformations or any unique product features. Action: Finally, end your caption with a call to action. This is very important because you need to direct your reader to take the next step (measure). You can ask your followers to click on the link in your bio (like Vanessa did in this post), leave a comment, buy a product, or join your Facebook group.

1. Don’t forget your call-to-action (CTA)It’s not enough to have a caption that is so well written and oozes value if you forget to end it with an engagement CTA.If someone likes your content, you’d think that they’llnaturally leave a comment. Sometimes, your followers need a little”push”. Other times, they don’t know if you want them to leave a comment.

So, to avoid having a person guess whether you’re open to receiving a comment, ask your followers directly to either leave a comment, share, tag, or save your post for later. I would want to keep it and come back to it later.

Tip:

Ask your followers to save or share your post! The some saves and shares add up to your engagement too.

1. Longer or shorter captions? Did you know that Instagram allows you to use up to 2,200 characters? That’s roughly about 200 words. But will writing more extended captions get you more engagement? The answer lies in the algorithm. More extended  Instagram captions take more time to read, and thus, people spend more time on your post. And the longer time you get people to spend on your post, the better your post performs. It’s no wonder that since 2019 brands have started writing more extended captions, using complete sentences instead of short quotes. In this post, they make full use of the character limit to share a mini-blog post. Some even continued their caption in the comments. But how do you know when to stop? According to a study by Later.com and Fohr, the longer the caption, the better the engagement rate. Captions between 500 – 1000characters had the highest engagement. That’s about 65 – 75 words.
2. Format your Instagram captions with line breaks Instagram captions is a visual platform, and writing a solid block of unformatted text isn’t exactly aesthetically pleasing, not to mention it makes reading a headache. Use line breaks and emojis to format your captions into individual paragraphs that are easy to read. Writing your hashtags in the first comment will make your caption look neat and less spammy.