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Exploring Valuable Caption Creation

A caption that adds value is as meaningful as a photo that tells a story. Captions are no longer optional unless you are a celebrity or influencer like Kim Kardashian. A killer caption can make a good post a great post, and take a great post and take it viral! So JIC you were stuck in 2012 and were unaware of the current state of social, here is an update: Captions Matter!

A great caption speaks right to your audience. It is easy to read, easy to understand, and it grabs the attention of the audience while adding value. Does that seem like a tall order for a few words? Isn't it easier to leave the caption blank and hope for the best? I hate to break it to you, ladies and gentlemen, but social media marketing is no longer easy. The prettiest picture doesn't automatically win, even on Instagram. Social Media Marketing is a full-contact sport, so put on your helmet and get writing! When you craft the perfect caption for your social media posts, you can add value to your followers and convert followers to clients, which makes the bumps and bruises all worthwhile.

So how do you write great captions for your posts? Try some of the suggestions below.

The Structure of Captions That Add Value

There are many different ways to structure your caption, and it can vary depending on your niche and what kind of content you are delivering. However, here are some overarching tips on the best structure to utilize for captions.

Valuable Captions Have the Important Words First

Having the most important words first seems obvious. But many of us lose sight of this. We forget how short attention spans are (8 seconds) and that we are scrolling social media feeds at breakneck speeds. If you have any chance of capturing the attention of your audience, you better do it fast. Include your keywords of the caption in the first couple of lines. Just like with any writing, I recommend the Say What You Are Going to Say, Say It, and Say that You Said It Strategy. Don't be afraid to be bold, funny, or a bit controversial in your first statement. Make sure it captures the attention of your audience and is brand appropriate

The Body of Your Valuable Caption

The body of your “valuable caption” is the say it part. You teased what valuable information you are going to provide in the first couple of lines, and now you are delivering that value. This value includes things like answers to questions, tools, and tricks to make life easier, a story, a question and answer session, and the list go on. Make sure that you connect the caption to the image or video that you are using. The body of the post should also include your Calls to Action, and questions are essential parts of an engaging and valuable caption. Both CTAs and questions encourage your audience to begin a conversation with you. You can be creative in the types of questions and the way that you ask them.

Hashtags and @Mentions At the End

Hashtags and @mentions are essential parts of social media, but they are not (or they shouldn't be) the critical part of your message. Don't clutter your caption with mentions and hashtags, which only makes things hard to read. Write a clear and valuable caption and then add these elements at the end of your post or include them as your first comment. It does not matter where your hashtags are, think of them as a card catalog of topics on Instagram. They help you get discovered no matter where in the post they are included so don't prioritize them.

Give Your Captions Room to Breath

A solid block of text is daunting, and your audience is less likely to engage with something intimidating. Create space in your captions by breaking it up with emojis, paragraph breaks, and lists. And on Instagram, do you know the easy way to create your line breaks? It's so easy you will love it.

• Type out your caption
• When you come to the end of the sentence that you want to be the last in that block of text, type the ending punctuation mark, and don't hit the space bar.
• With no space after the punctuation hit the return/enter key twice
• Start typing the next block of text.
• Yeah, it is that easy

General Tips for Creating Captions that Add Value

Always Know What You Want the Post to Accomplish

Everything you add to your social media should have a purpose, goal, or reason for being there. Make sure that you create captions with that purpose or intent in mind. What is it that you want the audience to do after they read your caption? Decide on the desired response, and then put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Try asking yourself the following questions while crafting your caption:

1. Does your audience care about this post topic?
2. If I saw this in my feed, how would I react?
3. Am I encouraging conversation, or am I just being preachy?
4. Is this interesting, thought-provoking, providing a solution or entertaining?
5. What impact will this have on my brand?

Write a caption that will get you to react in the way you want your audience to react. Write a caption that your audience would care about that would encourage then to react and engage in a conversation. Make sure it is exciting or thought-provoking and will have a positive impact on your brand. Remember, it is okay to experiment with different strategies until you find what works with your audience.

Always Encourage Some Form of Engagement

Back to basics here, social media is all about being social. You ARE NOT SELLING! Social media is about talking to people and trying to get them to participate in a conversation with you, not you talking at them. You want to engage your followers in a conversation. Entice your audience to respond by asking open-ended questions in your captions. You get better engagement with open questions, so be creative. Another way to get them to engage is to include a call to action in your caption.

Tell A Story in Your Caption

Your caption is a great place to tell a story. Stories are naturally engaging. Humans have been telling stories since the days of cave markings. Stories help build a connection between you and your audience. Stories bring emotion into your social media; they highlight your personality and allow you to build deeper, real relationships with your audience. Share stories and anecdotes of success, positive experiences, and how you created success in your business. However, don't forget to share the stories of struggle, moments on the journey when you thought the failure was imminent, and the days when you felt down and out. These stories of struggle are sometimes even more potent than the success stories because they show you are human and encourage and inspire those who are struggling now.

Add Value to Your Caption By Being the Best You There Is

If you have built your brand on the right foundation, then your brand is already based on what YOU do, not what others do. It is also reflective of what you want your business to be known for and your personality. So you should not hesitate to be you in your captions. Being you is engaging because there is nobody else out there that is you. Branding is the art of differentiation, so use what you have that nobody else does. It is okay to be quirky, funny, unique, or weird. That is what is going to help you engage people. You build an audience of loyal and support your brand because they like what you have to offer.

Keep the Value Easy

Make sure that the value you are offering is easy to see and that it is bite sized and digestable to the average audience member. This varies for every industry but don't over stimulate and don't talk down to them or over their heads.

Before You Post Anything

You have written your captions, and you are ready to schedule them to post. You proofread the caption, you made sure that they make sense, they are brand-appropriate, and they contribute to the story you are telling with your photo. That's it; they are ready to go!

STOP!

I urge you to ask yourself one more thing before you post anything on social media. Before you post anything ask yourself these two questions,

“Does this post have value, will it add value to my intended audience?”

This Caption Certainly Adds Value to My Intended Audience

If the answer to these two questions is, Yes, this post has value, and yes, it will add value to the intended audience, then you are good to post it. Throughout the social media planning process, especially when crafting your captions, you should ask yourself and your team these questions along with some others like: How will this serve my audience? What value will my intended audience be able to take away from your caption? Is it teaching them a lesson they want to learn, or is it answering a question they have asked? Sometimes the caption is expanding on a story that your audience has expressed interest in learning more about.

This Caption Adds No Value or Value But Not for My Intended Audience

A post you create may not add value, or it may add value but not for your intended audience. If the answer is no for either of these questions, it doesn't get added to your calendar. Asking if a post adds value is a tremendous final check to ensure that you are always delivering something that your audience will benefit from, which will increase overall engagement.

Tips On How To Level Up Your Caption Game

If you have mastered the basics of creating valuable captions and you are adding value to your audience with every post, then you may be ready for some advanced techniques! Keep in mind that as you begin to add in some of these advanced techniques that the basics of creating valuable captions still apply. There are many other advanced techniques; here are just a few favorite ways to level up your caption writing skills.

Pay Close Attention to Your Brand Voice

The first advanced move requires you to take your brand voice into consideration in all of your captions and posts. Begin writing all of your social media in the appropriate brand language. Make sure that you have a clear and defined brand voice, and all messaging is in that brand voice, not just your branded posts. Paying attention to your brand voice in things like the profiles, comments, response to comments, affiliate posts, and even advertising. Making sure that your brand voice is present in all communications creates a more unified, more believable brand. Success here may involve creating a formal style and brand book as well as including an approval process on all posts, updates, and responses to comments.

Try Mini Blog Format Caption

Deliver more value in a more extended mini-blog format caption. A Mini Blog Format Caption includes titles and sections that go over a specific topic and provides a few keys and bite-size takeaways. Indeed, longer posts are trickier and may not get as many readers, but those who do invest the time are faithful supporters of your business, goals, and posts. Some people may not even engage with the post immediately, but instead, save it and revisit it later. Use the mini-blog format as a way to introduce broader topics or themes to your social media as well as a way to be more engaging for audience members who are already interacting with your brand. Pro Tip: Highlight the key points of your longer-form caption by creating a story update that features the text.

Begin Utilizing CTAs to Drive Followers to Your Website

Instagram may disappear tomorrow. Facebook may require businesses to spend hundreds of dollars to gain visibility. Twitter may implode. We do not know what will happen with the social media platforms we rely on today, so it is essential to use these platforms to build our real audience, and audience we can contact even if the social world goes belly up. If Instagram goes away tomorrow, how many of your followers would you be able to connect with if we don't have the app? Use CTA to drive your social media followers to your website where you can capture their contact information and other useful tidbits. Make them engaged followers on and off social media and secure your long term stability with this strategy.

Focus on 3-5 Themes

What is working on your social media, what is missing. As you focus on delivering valuable posts with valuable captions, you will gain a better understanding of what works and what doesn't. Utilize this information to determine the 3-5 best themes for your brand to focus on with your social media and then build your content calendars, only utilizing posts that fall into those 3-5 themes. Narrowing down the topics used allows you to focus on those areas, and develop your zone of genius around them. This will make content creation, including caption creation more manageable, and will allow you to solidify what you do well and build on those successes. It also gives your audience a clear idea of who you are and why you matter.

Tools to Help You Write Valuable Captions

Grammarly Is My Jam

Want to be a better writer? Eliminate unnecessary words and be more concise? Grammarly Premium is worth its weight in gold as it catches a considerable percentage of grammar and spelling errors as well as advanced mistakes. The premium version includes critical grammar and spelling checks, conciseness check, readability check, vocabulary enhancement, genre-specific writing check, tone check, and plagiarism check. A free version is also an excellent tool for catching all the critical spelling and grammar errors.

The Hemingway App 

The Hemingway App says it will make your writing “bold and clear.” It works by analyzing text and highlighting places where your content is sloppy or indulgent! It helps you eliminate superfluous and ornamental words and phrases. I like this one because it helps you clearly engage with your captions.

Cliché Finder

If you are anything like me, you may tend to lean towards cliches as a safe space. But when you consider the fact that cliches are cliches because they have virtually lost all their meaning, you realize they are not going to help you create real, impactful captions. This is where a tool like a cliche finder is so useful, you enter some text into the app, and hit the submit button. Cliches in your writing appear in red.

Understanding the Value of Creating Valuable Captions

Providing value in captions is the first step in getting your audience to want to get to know more. You have a few words to capture them and highlight the value you have to offer right from the first contact. Make the most of every caption and try the tips and tricks provided and see how they work for your business. We took a fairly deep dive into how to write valuable captions, but we could probably go even deeper on captions. We hope that you can build your social media presence with a solid foundation with the tips we provided. Captions are a crucial part of content creation and social media management. They should be a part of your content calendar planning and can help you tell your story on social media. Customized content and captions are also vital aspects of what we do differently here at JRH Graphics. And even though we covered a lot here, a deeper dive is certainly possible, so please let us know what you would like to hear more on, have us explore more deeply, or explain differently! Please take a second to leave notes in the comments below.