Captions for Instagram posts are often underestimated, but they are an essential part of engaging followers in an account. This space of expression is made available, which is the key to bring more information on the photos, videos, and carousels that you could share because these are often not self-sufficient.
We must understand what motivates your sharing, and the caption is made for that. The words integrated into the first two lines are essential because they are the only ones displayed in the users’ news feed. To guide you, we will show you how some Top brands on Instagram use this space and how you could also use it consistently.
1) Various lengths
Should we propose a caption containing only a couple of words or share a lengthy description in the caption? This is a real question for Community Managers on Instagram. When in the first case, it will be a question of keeping a maximum of time the person on our content, which is well seen by the social network algorithm.
Is there a rule about the number of characters to insert in captions? There is no rule, but the posts with lengthy captions get more Instagram likes and comments by using this tool.
2) The key role of the first words
We must always place ourselves from the user’s point of view and, more precisely, how to use the news feed of Instagram.
Because of the only two lines displayed by default, it is essential to add the important keywords in the first two lines of your description. The most popular brands have understood this, ensuring that you can instantly understand the context and objective of the photo/video.
3) Emojis: not for all
There are actually two schools of thought regarding the use of emojis (emoticons) in post captions. When brands or businesses want to bring a more playful aspect to their posts, to show that the brand is “cool” and dynamic, the insertion of little snowmen and drawn objects is ubiquitous. The pricing positioning of the product ranges undoubtedly impacts the use or not of these emoticons.
5) Hashtags or not?
As you know, these keywords inserted at the end of the caption most often aim to increase the visibility of a post to make it known to new people potentially interested in the company’s products & services.
However, do popular accounts think they can do without it and offer a prettier caption to the eye?
Then the various cases arise:
- the hashtags inserted are brand hashtags
- the hashtags inserted aim to describe the post
- there is no hashtag
6) Captions that tell
Finally, the last interesting point rose during our observations of the captions of popular Instagram accounts; it is a good way to tell stories to arouse emotion among the reader.
It can seek to arouse desire, inspiration, smile, joy, courage, and many more.
In short, there is not really a perfect caption model, but I think that by taking inspiration from all that we saw during this article, you have all the cards to write beautiful ones for your account.
Hashtag strategy to increase the reach of a post on Instagram
Instagram started as a social media network to connect people worldwide and enable them to share their experiences via photos and videos. Thereafter, Instagram became so popular for its ability to access a huge audience simultaneously, and this potential attracted the attention of many digital marketers. Instagram currently has at least 50% of users who are followers of popular brands that market on Instagram, and this has not skipped the attention of those eager to get their message across. To make the best use of this specialty, aiming to increase your posts’ reach should do the trick. There are several ways of increasing the reach of a post, but among the most popular is the use of hashtags.
Tagging on Instagram is an efficient way of making your content more discoverable and increasing followers, and increasing brand awareness. Research has shown that using at least one hashtag for a post increased its likes by 70%and comments by 392%; this I clear evidence of the benefit of using Instagram tagging techniques to increase reach. To benefit from this feature, however, it is necessary to plan carefully and wisely before deciding the hashtags to be used.
- Research well
It would help if you did your research. Your target audience will have particular interests and specific ideas in mind when looking at things up, and to know your audience is the best way to go about this. Do your research and select the most relevant tags for your target audience. This strategy can help increase the reach of your post and ensure that the target audience receives it.
- Look for the hashtags leaders in your industry use.
Among the cleverest strategies of using Instagram, tagging is to go for the competitors. You could do this by following other leaders who share the same target audience and go through the hashtags they use. Using the same hashtags as your competitors, you can provide a good challenge to them since the audience looking up those hashtags will be receiving both posts. You can also go for daily hashtags for the posts.
- It is best to use between 5 and 30 hashtags.
There is no strict number of hashtags that can guarantee maximum engagement, but the optimal number for increasing engagement has been proven to be 11. No matter how many hashtags you use, what really matters is how well-researched and thought-out they are. The cleverer your planning, the better will be the engagement.
Hashtags can be of any of the three categories:
- Trending hashtags
- Hashtags specific to your industry
- General hashtags
All of these can help increase your posts’ reach, and if used wisely, hashtags can be a brilliant way of accessing a specific and wider audience. Hashtags can increase your posts’ discoverability and allow you to access the right audience at the right time. It is best to take benefit of this feature but to be effective, plan wisely.