7 Tips For Creating Engaging Social Media Captions
Everyone gets stuck writing captions, especially when you’re trying to make your social media captions engaging and get a reaction from your audience. This week I’m sharing a few tips on how you can create social media captions that get your audience talking to you.
1. Create Captions With Intention
When creating your social media post captions think about what the intention behind the post is. Are you trying to connect with your audience? Do you want them to take a specific action after reading your post? Is this simply to share your personality. Thinking about the reason behind why your posting is the first step in creating a caption that engages your audience.
2. Encourage Conversations
Try to create social media captions that encourage conversations and entice your audience to respond to you. A one line sentence about how you like lattes may not be enough. Try to ask your audience open ended questions to drive conversations. If you have a basic caption idea think of how you can turn it into a question. For example, instead of simply saying “Iced lattes are my favorite” you can try something along the lines of “I love iced lattes in the summer! What is your favorite summer drink?”. Remember that open ended questions usually drum up more conversation than “yes” or “no” questions.
3. Include A Call To Action (On Occasion)
Including a call to action can be another great way to make your social media captions more engaging while getting your audience to take an action. You can ask your followers to visit your latest blog post or answer your question. Not every single caption needs a call to action, since asking for people to do something too often may cause you to lose some of your audience — I mean would you like a friend who only asks you to do things for them?
Although everything in #socialmedia tends to hinge independent factors there are basics to ensure you get the most out of social media initiatives.
Discover the 8 elements of every successful #socialmediastrategy: https://t.co/l0ERQSlRZK pic.twitter.com/tRB9X5Lcrg
— Dhariana Lozano (@DhariLo) April 19, 2018
4. Add Value
Steering a little bit in the opposite direction of my prior point, a good way to connect with your audience is to add value to their day. Use your social media captions to give your audience information, provide a laugh, or share some inspiration. Giving a little something can encourage your audience to give a little something back. They may thank you, or share their own take on your post.
5. Put Yourself In Your Audience’s Shoes
What better way to create an engaging social media caption than to put yourself in your audience’s shoes? How would you receive the message if you were on the other side of the conversation? Take a step back and consider the following questions:
1. Why would my audience care?
2. Would I have something to say if I saw this post in my feed?/Am I giving my audience something to respond to?
3. Would my ideal audience or client find this interesting?
4. Does this caption reflect me (or my brand?)
6. Be Yourself
You need to stand out from the competition and break through the noise. The best way to do that is to be yourself and reflect your (or your brand personality) in your social media captions. Be true to your voice, and the way you communicate.
7. Tell A Story
If all else fails, a great way to create an engaging social media caption is to tell a story. Share a struggle, an anecdote, or any story that your ideal audience or client can relate to. Telling a story will help you show personality, and creates moments of real connection with your audience.
So yes, creating captions can be a little stressful, but always go back to basics: social media is social. Its about talking to people and trying to get them to participate in a conversation with you, not you talking at them. Do you have any clever ways to create engaging social media captions? Share them with me in a comment below!
❤ & #,
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Originally published at www.dharilo.com on May 16, 2018.
