How to Write Better Social Media Captions

by Danielle Andrews, Co-founder of The Wedding Planners Institute of Canada Inc.

Social media is a great way to share your brand and engage with followers. It’s also a great place to share interesting content, like photos and videos. When you post content on social media, you want it to stand out from the rest of the feed. You want people to stop scrolling and take notice of what you’re sharing. One way to do this is by writing captions — they’re stories that draw people in. This article will discuss how to write better social media captions.

Captions with Intent

When you are posting to Social Media on behalf of your business, you want to make sure that everything you do is done with Intent.

Intent is the reason behind your actions and it’s what makes them powerful. It’s why something that could be a simple task can become a magical experience. Intent is the reason why when you give someone a gift, it means so much more than just giving something of value to someone. Intent is like a secret sauce that makes everything better.

In order to write better social media captions, we need to understand what our intent is for each post we plan on making. Here are some examples:

• We want people to buy our product or service
• We want people to read our blog post and then come back later for more content from us
• We want people to join our mailing list so we can send them offers and other great information about our business

Questions to ask yourself before posting a social media caption:

1. What problem/challenge am I addressing with this post? Or what knowledge am I giving?
2. Who am I writing this for? (Does this speak to my Ideal Client)
3. Does this reflect my Brand?
4. Why should this person care about what I am saying?
5. Who will this post help? (Does it help a potential client, or help you get more followers, etc)
6. What is the intent/purpose of this post, what am I trying to achieve?
7. Is there value in what I’m sharing?

Tips for writing better social media captions:

A caption is part of an image post that goes under the photo, video, or GIF. It’s a short description of what’s happening in the photo or video.

Captions can be very simple, but they should also make sense and help your audience understand what they’re looking at. Here are a few tips to help you write better social media captions:

• Put the important information first, only the first couple of lines show in your reader’s feed
• Keep it short and sweet. Try to stick to 1-2 sentences.
• Use attention-grabbing language to make your caption stand out.
• Humour is always a great idea, share a funny story or a relatable fail
• Use emojis, they are universal and add personality and interest to your posts and hashtags
• Use relevant hashtags strategically to increase visibility, hashtags are often used as a search tool
• Make sure your caption is relevant to the content you’re sharing.
• Proofread before posting to avoid typos and errors. Spelling and grammar matter! You always need to look and sound professional
• Make it personal, use “we”, “I”, “you”
• Encourage readers to engage by posing a question and giving a call to action.
• Make sure that everything you are putting out is high value.
• Not captioning a photo is like leaving money on the table for a business

Caption Character Limits

Each Social Media platform has a different character limit, so keep that in mind if you writing a caption that you want to carry over a few different platforms:

• Instagram: 2, 200
• Facebook: 63, 206
• Twitter: 280
• LinkedIn Company Update: 700
• Tiktok: 140 characters

Tools to help you with Caption Writing

You don’t have to do everything yourself and if you do not have the budget or inclination to hire a Social Media Manager there are a few tools available to you.

Utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The future is now! Did you know there are free caption-writing sites and apps that utilize the technology of Artificial Intelligence to come up with engaging copy and captions for you? I have had some great luck with copy.ai While I don’t use the captions it creates word-for-word, I do utilize the tool to help with writer’s block or as a jumping-off point.

When I plugged in the details of this article to copy.ai, this is the copy it generated for me:

“If you’re like most wedding planners, you probably spend a lot of time trying to come up with unique and engaging captions for your Instagram posts. And while that’s great, it’s also time-consuming and can be a bit intimidating — especially if English isn’t your first language.

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution: artificial intelligence (AI). Utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technology can be a great solution for wedding planners. AI-powered software allows you to dictate the message, topic, and style of a caption, and the software will write it for you. This frees up time in your busy schedule so that you can focus on other important aspects of running your business.” copy.ai

Isn’t that exciting?! Imagine all the great captions it can write for you.

Magic Write on Canva

If you are a Canva Pro member (and if you are a wedding professional why wouldn’t you be??), you have access to their new AI Text Generator. While not as sophisticated as copy.ai, it is great for writing captions and building lists, and is included in your Canva Pro membership! Because it is built into Canva, you are able to easily export the captions that Magic Write creates for you and put them into branded Canva documents for sharing in stories or posts as well.

When I typed in “Using AI to write social media captions”, it generated this content:

“Using AI to write social media captions can save you time and effort in crafting engaging and attention-grabbing captions. AI can analyze your content and suggest relevant and compelling phrases that will resonate with your audience. It can also help you optimize your captions for SEO purposes and ensure that your message is clear and concise. However, it’s important to review the AI-generated captions before posting to ensure they align with your brand voice and values.”

Made for you Caption Guides

Styled Stock Society is our go-to for feminine and girl power stock images to include in our Blogs or Ads, but they also have amazing templates for creative entrepreneurs as well. Each month they put out a Caption Guide complete with daily ideas for Social Posts and captions! Again, almost completely done for you, you just need to personalize their great copy.

Here is an example that they provided free on Instagram:

“As a Wedding Planner {or JOB TITLE], I see a lot of people struggle with [STRUGGLE]. If that’s you, here are a few simple tips to help you [OUTCOME]. Have anything to add? Drop it in the comments and let everyone know.”

Whether you utilize the services of a copywriter, artificial intelligence, or just come up with your own words, just make sure you caption your images and videos.