As of 2019, more than a billion people use Instagram each month. Its continuous growth is expected to continue and as a business owner, it’s hard to ignore the big reach of Instagram.

The quality of your Instagram photos is very important in order to gain followers and build a stronger brand and not only are these photos and videos important to your brand, but they’re also visible to potential customers if written with good captions. 

Creating good Instagram captions can be hard. Yes, I know. That’s why we’ve compiled some of the top tips to help you make great Instagram captions. 

1- Make the most of the first sentence 

After three to four lines, Instagram shortens your caption to fit in with the flow of the user’s feed. It doesn’t mean that you should keep your caption super short, just load it with the most important content and leave out any unnecessary text. Therefore, make sure that the first sentence is compelling. 

2- Include a CTA 

One of the best and easiest ways to increase shares of your Instagram post is by having a call-to-action in the caption. This strategy works by asking people to act by clicking on a specific action verb.

Each post should have a specific goal and intention. Encourage people to act by clicking on the call to action. What do you want your audience to do? Visit your website? Buy your products? Enter a giveaway?

The key is to encourage engagement, which will help create a sense of dialogue and discussion. This strategy will also help you measure how engaged your followers are. It can also help you get noticed by the algorithm, which uses engagement as a metric.

3-  Use emojis 

Use emojis and have fun with them, use them to add some flavor to your text and animate your captions. They can also serve as bookends and break up long sentences.

Emojis are also a great way to direct readers to take action. However, make sure that they are consistent with your overall message and tone.

If you are working on brand identity and looking to have Instagram caption writing outsourced, then determine a set of emojis that will work seamlessly with both your brand and tone.

4- Use hashtags

Hashtags are a key component to making your posts more searchable. They can also be used to identify specific phrases or terms.

Sometimes, brands group some of the hashtags at the end of a caption to keep it looking clean. They also occasionally add lines of space to separate them from the description.

To know which hashtags to use, mix them up by industry, community, or product.

For instance, create a branded hashtag for your brand and then mix it up with other relevant hashtags. Furthermore, unless the phrase is preceded by a hashtag, don’t list it until the very end of the caption. Instead, list the most important parts of your caption first, so that the people who most want to see it can easily find it.

Also, don’t forget to take notes of the various hashtags that your competitors and influencers are using.  

5- When in doubt, keep it brief 

Depending on the audience that you’re targeting, your caption should be longer than a few words. For instance, if you’re a food company, your recipes should be front-loaded with all the important information that’s needed to make them work seamlessly.

However, if you’re not sure what type of caption you want to use, keep it short. Some of the best ones are short and straight-up funny. One of the easiest ways to get noticed is by having short jokes on Instagram.