Unlike other social platforms, Instagram was founded on visual content. The platform was made to showcase pictures and videos, but the right caption will enhance any post and attract engagement.
 
Engagement is crucial to maximizing the reach of your content. Instagram’s algorithm places posts with the most likes and comments near the top of your followers’ feeds.
 
The content

The first thing to consider is the message that you want to get across. A caption needs to be impactful whilst remaining short and clear.

If you have a sale that ends soon, then let it be known and mention the end date for placing orders.

If you want to increase interactions with your account, ask a question or prompt a discussion.

If you want to showcase yourself and your knowledge, add some facts or statistics that are relevant.
 
Figures can be much punchier than a simple explanation, so don’t be afraid to use them to really get your point across.

Think about what you want to gain from your social content and make it easy for your audience to do what you’re asking of them.

The main thing is to get straight to the point, no babble or lead up to the key message. Make the important information visible as soon as the viewer looks at the text.

You must also take spelling, punctuation and grammar into account. Having any mistakes or typos in a caption looks unprofessional and sloppy.

Language is more casual online, so using slang or abbreviations usually isn’t frowned upon (depending on your target audience) but basic spelling and grammar must still be correct.

If your brand identity is more casual and fun, then type in that tone.

You want to present your brand with a human voice, so personality must be taken into consideration.

Lastly, be natural!

Overly formal writing can look strange and inhuman, remind your audience that you are real people working for a real company.

Even if it’s subconsciously, it makes them feel more connected to you and makes your brand more likeable.

The length

If you use social media for marketing, you’ll know the struggle when it comes to truncation.

Truncation is when your caption is shortened by the ‘… more’ button.

This is a problem because it’s hiding what could be valuable information.

Unless your caption is short enough, truncation is unavoidable.

This is why it’s important to keep captions short but impactful, you need to get your message across in just a couple sentences without the need to click on anything to get all of the information.

Depending on the device, you have as few as 125 characters before your Instagram caption will truncate.
 
If you have a lot of information to get across, this might be too short but it’s a good aim to have for day-to-day posts.

According to Sprout Social, posts on Instagram with 140-150 characters had the highest amounts of engagement.
 
The total limit for an Instagram caption is 2,200 characters but unless you’re writing an essay for your audience, you should be fine.

If you want to check your post length before uploading, Sprout Social offers a social media character counter which allows you to check the characters of your post and advises you if it’s too long or short.