A caption is a powerful thing! It provides context, can create engagement and most importantly it can add value to the reader! As a business owner and marketer, you need to provide context to what you are sharing online!
So follow these 7 strategies on how to write engaging social media captions!
- Have a strong first sentence – The first sentence people read on facebook or Instagram is the showstopper, it is what draws them in! The first three lines need to hook the reader so they press that ‘more’ button! You want them to take action to engage with the content and this first line is what can evoke that. Use shock that might wake people up a bit, or you could say the opposite of what you actually mean! For example, “Squats are going to kill you!” People will question it and get their attention, then you back that up with more context! You could also use a ‘Did you know?’ question with a statistic included. This is a great way to attract the scrollers and gives them something new to learn!
- Tell a story – Everyone loves stories! There are too many people saying, ‘you should do this, you should do that…’ but if you tell a story people can connect with you. People crave to hear stories, they provide a context and a shared experience. They help us to understand something at a deeper level. When you hear someone’s story you understand a lot more about them because they are talking from the heart. Telling a story is not hard because it’s something you already know! Share your client’s story, your story experiences anything you have lived and scrollers will feel more connected and interested.
- Use emojis – This might be a bit trivial and a bit fun but emojis make a huge difference, especially when the world is using emojis and you’re not! They can help to make a story more emotive and if you don’t have the words, emojis are a really good placement of words! They help to break up a whole lot of text which is great for long captions and makes it easier to read and connect to.
- Infuse your personality into the post – Social media is a casual platform so it is okay to use more casual language to be more relatable. If you could choose any personality word to represent your business? Here at COM, we are really vibrant! Online we want to showcase this by using fun language and a positive tone! Act as though you are simply talking to your clients or potential audience! What is the personality of your business? People can tell if you are being fake! So make sure you are being honest and authentic to your business and yourself!
- Ask questions – This is where engagement comes into play, if you want people to engage (commenting and liking your posts) you need to ask people questions! Sometimes you assume people know what to do and wait for people to comment, but you haven’t asked them to do anything. You need to tell when what to do, the easier the question the more comments you will get! Easy questions to ask include this or that caption e.g. ‘Do you prefer squats or deadlifts?’ This is easy for people to quickly engage. You could ask true or false questions or fill in the blank questions, these are fun ways to engage your audience. Remember to KEEP IT SIMPLE! The more you can get people to like/comment the more you can get people to see your posts because that’s how the algorithm works, so make sure you’ asking easy questions they can respond too!
- Have a clear call to action – You want to make sure you aren’t selling but know how to invite people to do something. So think of sales as an invitation, that way you can be more authentic with your approach. It’s not saying ‘GO AND DO THIS’ it’s saying ‘If this resonated with you, then you can do x or y.’ You could even ask a question and direct it to a call to action or include this: DM if this resonates with you and we can chat about the next steps! It is very simple to get your customers to do something, but it is how you do it that will pave the way to success!
- Ask yourself ‘So What?’ – Before you post you need to ask ‘so what’, as in, does this actually mean anything to your followers? Is it going to provide real value? It is a good idea to write a caption and walk away from it and then come back to read it again with a fresh mind and ask yourself ‘so what’, will it add value?
If your followers are scrolling through their newsfeed is this going to add value to their life or day? If you’re filtering through that question it could cause you to rewrite some things and that is a good thing but don’t let it stop you from posting. Just think about what is important to your followers and what will add value to them.
Follow these 7 steps to write an incredibly engaging post that will add value to your followers!
