Every marketer under the sun is touting long captions as a method to increase engagement on Instagram. It can work BUT if the caption is 500 words for the sake of having 500 words, followers keep on scrolling.

The TL;DR: Words matter. You need to provide value so we put together the top three instagram caption tips:

1.     Economy
Make every word matter. Study websites that you admire. Don’t be afraid to go big. Look at Facebook ads, Nike, Coca-Cola, Apple, Amazon. They have almost unlimited ad budget and have likely perfected boiling down information into its purest form. Just. Do. It.

2.      The Hook

Movies, newspapers, magazines, and radio all use a hook at the beginning to pull the reader/viewer/listener in. Craft a one-liner to open your caption using who, what when, where, why. What is the problem, what is the solution and why should the reader care, right away.

3.     Evoke Emotion

Try to evoke an emotion with the first three words. This sounds impossible, but it can happen. Using the “when +  I + [blank verb] ” construction is the most effective. “When I saw…”, “When I was…”, When I fell…” make people want to know more, enticing them to click on the ellipsis to read more. For example, “When I jumped out of a plane…” or “When we launched our million dollar product…” makes people want to know more. A word (or three) or caution: constructions with was/were as the verb are the weakest you can use. Try to keep the verb active.

A scroll-stopping image is key as well, and nowadays, doesn’t even have to be particularly related to the caption content, so long as both provide value.