If your Instagram content is excellent and you’re not getting the results you want, it’s your captions. And we’re going to show you exactly how to fix it. When it comes to your captions on Instagram, it’s clear that the shorter posts deliver more benefits. According to Sprout Social, the ideal caption length on Instagram is between 135 and 150 characters. This is short, close to the original 140 count level of a tweet, and you should, therefore, aim for brevity with your captions.
The fact that short Instagram captions are better isn’t overwhelmingly surprising, especially considering that Instagram was always a visual-first platform. People come to see not to read, and that’s an important distinction, and given that you can’t format words well on Instagram posts, without it looking like big chunks of text, it’s easy to see why users don’t want to read a mini-novel and instead keep scrolling.
Keeping it short sounds easy until you consider precisely what your caption is to accomplish. Your caption, after all, not only has to grab a user’s attention and establish context but also has a few other jobs to tackle too. It is responsible for using hashtags and locations for optimizing the posts for search, which maximizes reach. Your caption also needs to include a call to action encouraging users to perform your desired action, such as liking the posts, writing a comment, or clicking on the URL on your profile.
Consider short Instagram captions as an advantage, short simple sentences are easier to write, well compared to their longer complicated and often time-consuming counterparts. Also, shorter captions are more easily digested by the user, meaning they’re more memorable and impactful and users are more likely to read the entire caption and get to your important call-to-action. It’s about doing what you need to do to keep people engaged. If you’re worried about how to include all your hashtags in such a small caption we’ve got some good news for you. Write your 135 to 150 character caption then add a few spaces after your text before including your hashtags.
Alternatively, you can add your hashtags to the first comment of your post, following this approach ensures it uses to distinguish your caption from the block of hashtags without sacrificing the rich benefits that hashtags deliver. While writing short engaging captions that still offer value can seem difficult, there are a few great tricks we have for you. These include using a hook or big bold statement in the first 10 words to spike the interests of users and make them click more, asking your audience questions to encourage them to leave a comment.
Using emojis to show your playful and human qualities, referring people to destinations off Instagram like your website, requesting they click on the link in your bio for more information, asking users to observe something in your photo or video and utilizing active language / passive language. While aiming for sure, an Instagram caption is a good goal overall. It shouldn’t be an ironclad rule that you apply to every single post.
