Instagram has become one of the most celebrated social media forums for individuals and businesses alike.

With consistent updates and promotion-friendly features, it has become the next part of business marketing and engagement growth strategies.  

According to Instagram statistics published on Hootsuite, an estimated 200 million Instagram users visit at least a single business profile daily. If you consider this estimation, then as a business marketer, you would want to make your profile as engaging as possible for the potential leads.

Many of us think that we should mainly focus on the visual aspects of an Instagram profile to make it more attractive and engaging for customers. However, images are not the only focal point that can make your content engaging. Other features, like captions, also play an equally significant role.

No matter how aesthetically pleasing your profile grid is, how actively you post, or how much variety your content has, people require context to whatever they engage with, and captions do precisely do. Words always have been the most powerful marketing tool, whether written or spoken.

Instagram captions can explain the image to the viewer, add further key messages, and make each post more relevant, searchable, and engaging.

7 useful tips to make your Instagram captions more Engaging

Below are some of the best tips you can utilise to leverage Instagram captions for making your profile and content more engaging for the audience.

1.     Keep It to the Point

Although many people do tend to write whole stories explaining the context and plot behind their posts, captions should be kept concise. People are there to engage with your content. It’s quality, not quantity, that will keep them hooked. A brief caption would intrigue them enough to know more as well as answer their core question. If you strategically plan your captions and align them with your posts accordingly, it makes it easier to increase engagement on the platform.

2.     Include emojis

Many people downplay the use of emojis as they consider them just cartoon stickers used to convey expressions. However, they are considered one of the core elements of texts because of their high rate of searchability as customers’ associate emojis with genuine expressions. And with the inclusion of almost everything in emoji collections, there are even more creative ways for texts to be supported by emojis, making the text body more attractive.

3.     Start with A CTA

Try to to start your caption with a CTA or “call to action”. Consider this tactic a sub-part of keeping your caption to the point. As you don’t have that much time to keep your audiences’ attention intact, thus you have to hot them with a likely course of engaging with your website or product through a direct call to action. For instance, many brands use ‘Click the link in our bio to purchase’ to take them up to the profile bio where they can click on a provided link taking them directly to the relevant item.

4.     Use hashtags and SEO keywords

Hashtags have come a long way ever since their inception on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. You can conduct a random Google search using a hashtag, and it will show up countless genuine search results from one or both platforms. You can us topic led hashtags and also create a catchy hashtag with your brand, and then incorporating it into your marketing campaign. Add to that a solid SEO strategy to research and find the appropriate keywords to use. The more layered a caption is with the right keywords and a memorable hashtag, the more engaging it is.

5.     Ask the audience

As often as possible let your audience take part. After all, it is for them that you are making the content, so you might as well have them participate. Write each caption so it speaks directly to them, with a conversational tone . It should be convincing enough to make them act on that call to action mentioned earlier. If captions generate dialogue, they automatically become more engaging.

6.     Encourage likes, comments, and sharing

The next sequential step is to encourage your audience through your captions to like, comment, and share the content and post that they engage with. But first, it is your responsibility as a brand to build that attraction through your marketing campaign that makes them want to share your product and content in their social circle. If you have underwhelming content,  and expect engagement from your target audience, then be ready to be disappointed!

7.     Start a contest

Lastly, one of the most effective and practical ways to get your post going through its caption is to incentivise the objective. The best combination is to announce a contest through a post image, and  in the caption, hype the audience to participate and follow up with the participation requirements and details. Make it a condition to share the post and follow the account so that as many people engage and follow back, it is profitable for your brand marketing.

Bottom line

All in all, Instagram has established itself as one of the leading social media platforms over the years. It will continue to integrate better features and updates that benefit all types of businesses across the site.

Author Bio: John William is currently working as a Front-end Developer at Dissertation Assistance, UK’s best dissertation services provider. He is exceptionally passionate about social media platforms and its benefits for businesses. John shares his insights on his blogging forum with a network of the audience that he gained over time.