@IScreamSocialMedia

The iScream Social Media Blog

3 Tips for Maximizing Social Media Engagement Through Writing Better Captions

Educational Newsletters

Maximizing Social Media Engagement Through Writing Better Captions: 3 Tips

While images are the center of attention on Instagram, we argue that captions are also of significant importance. In our experience successfully growing and monetizing social media accounts for clients, we’ve found captivating captions give the reader a better sense of your brand and can result in more leads for your business. Follow these 3 tips to create an effective caption for your next social media posts (or contact us and we’ll do the work for you.)

1. Find Your Business’s Voice to Create Brand Identity

It’s crucial to not only find your voice (or as we refer to it, your avatar) but also stick to it. If you are a small business, it’s ideal that your avatar feels personal and sounds like you to build rapport and connect with your audience. Choosing the tone you want your feeds to have (educational, professional, funny, snarky, etc.) is equally as important. For example, the most successful medical practice feeds we manage use the voice of the doctor and we spend time understanding their personality to get it just right. Our sister company, YellowTelescope, has a funny and light-hearted yet informative avatar. The Instagram video posts below took a witty approach to promoting our attendance at the annual ASPS conference. Head over to IG for a good laugh.

Funny Instagram Post

2. #Hashtags

Have you used hashtags in your everyday vernacular? #Friyay anyone? Hashtags do serve a purpose beyond sounding cool (or uncool). Did you know that posts with at least one hashtag have 70% more likes and 392% more comments? Hashtags are proven to increase engagement (more likes, views, & comments on your posts) and they also help you get noticed. Many people now use Instagram as a search engine and can follow hashtags as well as actual entities. If someone is looking for a medspa in Atlanta, they may choose to follow #medspaatl and will start to see posts with this hashtag in their feed. How do you find highly-searched hashtags in your industry? Simply follow thought leaders within your specialty and discover common hashtags they use to get in front of a similar demographic.

Because hashtags help you with being found, use as many as apply to your post. When promoting our own iScream Social Media services in the above post, we threw out a line for those searching common business and marketing terms.

3. Include a Call to Action (CTA) to Increase Engagement and Generate Leads

Most people are conditioned to scroll and “like” within a few seconds. Encourage more comments by running a fun contest and asking people to tag a friend or answer a question (see example below from one of our thriving iScreamSocialMedia clients).

Sukkar Instagram Post

To generate leads, add your website link and phone number in posts. For Instagram posts that don’t allow links in posts, include your website in your bio and add “Click on the link in bio for more info.” If your Instagram account has more than 10k followers, you are one of the lucky accounts that can add a link in your IG stories! Wondering how you’ll ever get to 10k followers? We can help.

As you’ve probably seen through your own forays on social media, it is generally pretty easy to tell when a post feels phony. Distinguish your brand with consistent captions that reflect your brand avatar and truly connect with your followers. Thoughtful captions are a great way to step up your social media presence.

Love social media as much as ice cream, but mastering your business feed is making you want to scream?  iScreamSocialMedia can help you get your voice back so reach out at 305-455-0720 or e-mail.