Chapter 4: Social Media is King
Captions are a critical aspect of any social media post, and how you phrase them should not be taken lightly. As we mentioned in previous modules, keeping a consistent brand image and tone throughout your captions over time is super important when trying to build up a recognizable brand on social media. Your captions should always be relevant to their respective posts, but be wary of dragging on for too long. People have short attention spans, and not paying attention to some key engagement boosting tips can have serious adverse effects on your post’s performance.
One of the most important things to keep in mind when caption writing is that Facebook and Instagram have a very limited amount of characters they are willing to show to a potential viewer of your post. If you’ve ever seen an Instagram post with a gray “See More” button that cuts off the caption after about two lines, then you get the point. People might only skim the first few words of your caption before scrolling on, so keeping captions short and engaging is an absolute necessity if you want your audience to get the most out of your posts. Adding in tasteful emojis is a great way to give your caption a more graphic and eye-grabbing feel, and will increase the chance of somebody actually reading what you’re trying to tell them. Take a look at the captions from MVMT (above) - none of them are cut off by a pesky “See More” button, allowing the viewer to get all of the relevant information without having to click, which would cause a massive fallout in retention. People like it when things are easy, and they don’t want to do any more work than they have to.
Another way to increase engagement on your posts is to tag accounts in your caption that your company is collaborating with (in that specific post), especially if the account is a popular influencer people will recognize. Anything that strikes a chord of familiarity with a follower will increase their chances of spending more time interacting with your post. A great example of this are the MVMT posts. In one post they tag Blackbear (@bear), a popular musician and influencer, and in another they tag a photographer who took the photo. People being able to relate to your posts is your best chance of getting them to engage. If you can find a way to be funny in your caption while staying on brand, your analytics will thank you for it. Don’t be afraid to be clever - people will appreciate references or jokes about things they understand. This is why memes have gone wild with the younger generation. Relatability is the best way to connect with your audience, and since people under 30 make up the vast majority of daily social media users, tailor your captions in a way that will appeal to them.
Using relevant hashtags in your captions is another great way to boost the organic reach of your posts. Since Instagram and Facebook both hide the rest of your captions after a few lines, you can use this to your advantage by stashing a bunch of hashtags in your caption beneath the “See More” cutoff line. Keep in mind that Instagram & Facebook only allow you to include up to 30 hashtags per post, so make sure the ones you choose are actually relevant to your image and main caption. Social platforms also hate it when you re-use a collection of hashtags over and over. In fact, if you’re caught doing this, Instagram and Facebook will shadowban your account, basically making it impossible for you to get any additional reach from including captions in your posts. Trust us, it’s not worth it. Instead, spend the extra couple minutes and come up with 15-25 unique hashtags for each of your posts, and make sure not to repeat any in a 1-2 week period. The only exception to this rule is if your company is trying to build a following around a specific hashtag, like #YourCompanyName, or a special deal you’re running at the moment. In the MVMT case study, you can see #JoinTheMVMT as a recurring hashtag in their posts. Something like this can be a great way to build an additional following around your posts, so feel free to include this in all of your captions. Just make sure it’s never more than 1 or 2 hashtags that are being repeated, since you really don’t want to end up on Instagram’s naughty list.