As we try to cover every angle of online marketing, it’s amazing how many details there are regarding every facet of web development, paid advertising, and social media. Believe it or not, something as (seemingly) trivial as Instagram captions can affect how well you reach your target audience. We’ve found that the longer captions, those that span 75 to 150 words, are more effective.

Let’s explore why Instagram captions matter for business marketing and identify simple ways to make them better.

Why Longer Instagram Captions Matter

Establish Greater Photo Context – Yes, a photo is worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it more comprehensible with written context. Perhaps you’re posting a photo commemorating your 10th anniversary of business. While that might speak for itself in certain cases, it would also help to write a few sentences explaining the significance and thanking your loyal patrons for their support.

Create an Emotional Connection – You might already know that photographic advertising involves something known as “pattern interrupt,” where the picture almost forces the user to stop and examine it. If you’d like to do this even better, it’s smart to include a clever caption as well. This should be something that gives the potential customer a hint about your services but doesn’t give away the entire story. You want to pique their curiosity and get them to click through to the rest of your website.

Improves Website SEO & Foster User Engagement – Longer captions also help you engage with loyal customers and boost website SEO. A savvy business marketer knows how to exploit the caption space to insert keywords and leverage Instagram’s search engine to their advantage. Once again, captions of at least 500 characters also generate more user responses.

How to Compose More Effective Instagram Captions

Next, check out these simple strategies to create, not only longer, but better Instagram captions.

• Test all of your captions by experimenting with different lengths, long versus short, and quantitatively assess which work better.
• Remember that the best captions will include a call-to-action (CTA), which is where you drive folks toward various conversions.
• Use strategic hashtags, ones that aren’t too generic, but focus on reaching new audiences effectively.
• Don’t lose sight of quality just to gain greater quantity. You can ruin your effort to make longer captions by rambling or over-saturating them with irrelevant keywords.

Need Help With Social Media Management?

If all of this still seems vague or unfamiliar, then don’t worry. Most commercial businesses, especially smaller and medium-sized ones, outsource this responsibility to marketing groups like us. So, if you’d rather get back to running your business, then let us worry about Facebook posts, Instagram photos/captions, and Twitter advertising.

Social media management is one of our best competencies at DigiSphere Marketing. We can also shoulder the burden of your other marketing efforts, including website SEO or improving your online business reputation. If you’d like to learn more about social media for businesses, or anything else we do, then call us anytime at 941-803-4141.