A caption on Instagram adds context to your post and lets people know what they’re seeing. If you don’t add a caption, your viewers may be confused, and that reflects poorly on your content
For example, if you post a selfie, but you don’t tell viewers why you posted it or what the backstory is to that image, they may think you’re just selfish and posting photos of yourself.
Or, if you just a post a photo of a flower with no context, they may think it’s pretty, but it won’t generate a lot of dialog. When you leave the caption blank on Instagram, the viewer doesn’t know what you’re doing and may not engage with your post, and you’ll be left wondering why you’re not getting any attention.
After you create a post and edit your Instagram photo or videos, you add the caption in the New Post screen. Begin typing in the section where it says “Write a caption.”
You can add the caption to your Instagram post on the New Post screen after uploading and editing a post, but before you publish it.
How much text should be in your Instagram caption? It’s generally a good idea to communicate too much rather than too little, so consider writing one to three short paragraphs. Simple one liners can work for some people on Instagram if they’re very clever and creative.
Due to the formatting and layout on Instagram, a paragraph may actually be a single sentence — and that’s okay! It’s better to have your content well spaced and easy to read than trying to read one very long paragraph. Your three short paragraphs may only be a handful of sentences, or they may be longer, descriptive paragraphs.It’s also worthy to note that you are not limited to just three paragraphs! You can actually write a significant amount of content on your Instagram captions. Instagram allows you 2,200 characters for a caption. When you hit that limit, you aren’t able to write any more content.
Some accounts choose to use Instagram as a micro-blog, writing longer captions to add more value and information for their audiences. The image below shows an example of both a short caption and a long caption. Use whatever works for you!
An example of a short caption and a long caption that capture the attention of the Instagram audience in both cases.Formatting your Instagram caption
An Instagram caption without formatting becomes one very long, run-on paragraph that can be hard to read. To avoid this, use spacing, emojis, and formatting tricks to break up the content for more visual appeal. The image below shows an example from @tanya.plummer.health with spacing and emojis to make it easier to read and follow.Getting spacing to work on Instagram can be incredibly frustrating if you don’t know this trick! Make sure that when you end your paragraph, there is no space after the last character. Most keyboards default a space after a word or punctuation mark, but that simple space will remove the formatting to drop a line and create a new paragraph. Backspace right up to the last character to avoid this issue.
Additionally, you can only have one special character as your last character. So, you can have a period or a question mark at the end of a paragraph, but you can’t have a question mark and an exclamation point together, or the formatting won’t work. The same thing applies to emojis. Unfortunately, you can’t have an emoji as the last character on the paragraph or the formatting won’t work.Android users seem to have an easier time formatting their captions directly within the Instagram app and retaining the spacing. For iPhone users, it’s often recommended that you write your captions in the Notes app on the device and then copy and paste that caption into the Instagram post for better formatting options.
Good formatting on Instagram allows your content to be easily read and stands out as visually appealing.
Instagram truncates all captions after two or three lines of text. If there’s more text to read, a “more” button appears at the end of the truncated text. To read the entire caption, you have to tap the “more” button.
Make sure that the first few lines are enticing enough that your viewer will want to tap or click the “more” button to read your entire caption. This first sentence of your Instagram caption should be captivating like a great title, or bold with emojis or capital letters. It should make a statement or ask a question. You want to entice the viewer to read more!
Including calls to action in your Instagram caption
Instagram is a visual platform, and you can’t leave a clickable link in a post description, so if you want your audience to take action, you have to give them a clear call to action (CTA) in the Instagram caption.In order to make CTAs effective on Instagram, you want to keep them as simple as possible. They should be one-step actions. The most commonly used one is “Click the link in my bio.” But you could also use actions like: “Tag a friend in the comments below” or “Send me an email for more information.”
The key is to keep the CTA simple to follow. It should be designed to reward the viewer by providing him some sort of value. He may learn something by reading an article you linked to on a website, or get a free product if he clicks the link, or be able to enter a contest by posting a photo and tagging you.
Calls to action are most commonly reserved for business accounts that want their audiences to follow through on an action for a reward. However, personal accounts may still use them if they want to drive traffic to a website from Instagram . Maybe you want people to go to your YouTube channel or Flickr account and you have that link in your bio. A CTA would direct viewers to watch the full video by clicking the link in your bio.