Writing Effective Captions: A Beginner’s Guide

An essential tool for managing your social media platforms is writing compelling captions! Your caption is a great tool to provide more context, insight, personality, and engagement to your posts. 

With the help of OpenHouse Marketing, you’re already posting high-quality content to your social feeds. However, you could miss out on capturing people’s attention without proper captions! 

Social media captions can help increase traffic to your website, gain followers, shape your brand personality, and connect with your target audience. Quality visuals and content will stop your followers from scrolling, but carefully crafted captions can help sustain your engagement. 

So how can you deliver consistent captions effectively? We’ve outlined a few simple tips to help you write captions successfully! 

Focus on the First Sentence

Many social media platforms, including Instagram and TikTok, will hide the remainder of your caption after a ‘more’ link. With this in mind, you’ll want to make the most of your first sentence, writing key details first.

Not only should important information come first, but so should any attention-grabbing language. Lead your language with a hook to keep your audience engaged and interested in reading more! This will help sustain their interest in your content from the get-go.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to increase the searchability of your posts, so don’t forget to use them to your advantage! Try using a mix of branded hashtags (hashtags you create for your business) and industry-related topics and keywords. 

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. What words or topics are currently relevant to them on social media that will help them find you? Also, consider the placement of your hashtags within your caption. 

To keep things organised, try adding your hashtags at the end of the caption. You might even place hashtags a few spaces below your caption so they will only be viewable if your audience taps the ‘more’ tag. 

Write like You

To truly win your audience over, capture their attention with what sets you apart from others; your personality! Be authentic and fluid when writing your captions to write how you would speak to people. 

Use conversational language to help your sentences flow and read naturally to your audience. You can still appear professional and intentional while staying true to yourself. Your unique personality is your marketing superpower. Use it to your advantage!

Add Value

Your captions should offer value beyond the content in your posts. Adding tips or statistics will help you increase your value to your audience! You may even share a personal story or quote to connect with your audience. This will make your content more likely to be saved, bookmarked, and interacted with, boosting engagement. 

Consider Length

When writing an effective caption, you’ll always want to consider the length! Depending on the nature of your post, you may want to keep it concise or expand your thoughts and explanation for more context. Whichever option you decide is best, always value quality over quantity. 

Don’t write a long caption without offering any value to your audience. If you can get your point across clearly in 1-2 sentences, there’s no need for overkill. Alternatively, don’t skip out on writing a long caption if you need more context or have more to explain to your audience! The call is entirely up to you and the individual post. 

Engage Your Audience

Your caption is a prime opportunity to engage with your audience to boost your content. Try asking questions to your followers, inviting them to share their answers in the comments, or tagging a friend that would agree with your post. 

Whatever the response from your audience is, make sure you seize the opportunity to reply and interact with them in the comments! This will help you appear more active, reliable, and personable online. The more interaction your post gains, the more visible your account will be on social media algorithms, including Instagram. 

Next Steps to Take

Now that you have the foundation for writing effective captions, you’ll want to put these tools to use on your account with quality content. 

If you’re ready to take the pressure of understanding social media marketing off of your plate, our services were designed to help you. We provide monthly, customisable, social media templates and resources to mortgage agents, brokers, and real estate agents on a subscription basis. Click here to learn about our offerings, services, packages, and more!