Better by the Gram: Good Captions
Make sure your captions are good quality and engaging. I know that sounds like common sense, but it’s not. Hell, I ignore it frequently for a quick image and a short couple of words just to say where I was and I do mine, largely, as a memory book. I travel for work extensively. In fact, part of the definition of my regular job is travel and I want to be able to look back like old people do in a photo album and remember the time and place I was and I want to just share my experiences through my own eyes. Those posts get the least engagement online. Ironically, when I see my friends in person, those tend to be the posts they mention and ask about, so there is a level of in-person social currency I receive from those posts where I will get asked about it, largely because I didn’t write a lot. The purpose here is to engage with audiences of your brand.
*Start off with an idea you want to portray.
*Your first sentence should be something that is a pattern interruption for the viewer. You need to give them a reason to pause their scrolling to read what you have to say. I often start a post or a blog piece with something that has absolutely nothing to do with the photo. For instance, I have started off mentioning New Orleans while the photo I used was clearly taken in Las Vegas. Then I will draw from that pattern interrupt to bring it full circle to the photo at hand.
*Make sure the caption used offers some form of value to the reader.
*End the posting with a call to action of some sort. It can be “like, share, and follow” or “go to the following link.” It doesn’t matter what you ask people to do, they will be more likely to do it than if you didn’t ask them to do anything. In fact, they will, many times, finish readying and be confused as to why they read it in the first place. Out of curiosity, I tried two posts discussing social media probably two years back. On the second d post I asked people to save it if they got any value from reading it and sure as shit, I had three people save it compared to the other post which had zero saves and an equal number of likes. The first post, without a clear call to action, left people asking “so what?” They wasted their time reading it because I didn’t ask them to engage farther. This is actually quite genius. It’s like when a door-to-door salesman comes knocking and he sees your mildly receptive, he will ask for a glass of water. The water is a small ask, but it conditions the perspective buyer to say “yes” to a request by the salesman and more difficult to say no. Some of the best are politicians and a politician is selling themselves. They start off with asking of the person has a minute. Then they may ask for a glass of water. Next they ask if they can hand the person business card or a handout. The asks get bigger and bigger till they ask for a vote, a donation, a yard sign location, or all three of those things individually. The next time a politician comes to your door, pay attention to what they ask that you don’t even realize you’re being agreeable to. Emulate that in your social media postings. Ask and ye shall receive!
When writing a caption natively in Instagram, you cannot just hit the “return” button and skip a line on the app. Write your caption in your phone’s note pad and copy and paste it to the Instagram post. This will help with spelling and grammatical errors as well. Yes, for all the errors I make, they would be far worse if I wrote them directly in the post.
