5 ways to level up your social media captions

Coming up with strong and creative social media captions can be a nightmare. For any of you who handle social media through your work, you know this firsthand. It’s typically the last thing you think about after you’ve gone through the process of planning out content, producing it or tracking it down, and getting it organized to publish. It’s the final, seemingly straight-forward, yet mind-numbing task of actually writing the caption. It can be writer's block hell.

And really, writing captions can be just as hard on personal platforms too. Besides the content itself, aka the information that your audience needs to know, there’s also the pressure to have a certain style, tone, to be vulnerable, but not thirsty, to try, but not try too hard. Or – even harder – to be funny and witty, and to use some emojis, but not too many. Ugh. It’s a lot.  [For those of you who write effortlessly cool captions - Indy Blue - you don’t count]. 

Then on top of all that, there’s the macro challenge to maintain a consistent voice and pov throughout everything, which is it’s own art form [see our Q&A with master wordsmith Amanda Aldinger]. It’s all hard, or surprisingly easy for some, which can also make it more maddening. So if you’re here because you’ve found yourself in a particular spiral of angst over this last damn caption, hang on, breathe, we’ve got you covered.

We’ve pulled together some of our go-to prompts to help optimize the foundation of your caption[s] before you add in the flavor of your voice. These actually came from a course we conducted with Comcast on headline and caption writing for digital videos, and through the process we realized that with a couple tweaks, they are also applicable to social captions. It makes for a great starting point.. You should liken your caption to headlines,  which when written correctly, capture a reader’s attention and compel them to continue reading. That’s it, same goal.

So with that in mind, here are five prompts to help you formulate your social media captions:

• Relevance

  • What’s the newest or latest information? [ex. US Now Has More Coronavirus Deaths Than Any Other Country]

  • Use public names + celebrity + context, if needed [ex. US Open Finalist Leylah Fernandez: Canada 'Opened Their Doors' To My Family]. Alternately, avoid names if they aren’t public individuals so users aren’t forced to google whoever you’re talking about

• Curiosity

  • Advice, teasing, lists [ex. Exclusive: See Inside The 'Hype House' Mansion For TikTok Creators and 7 ways to make money online]

  • Questions [ex. How many of these animals can you name?]. This, done correctly, is also the easiest way to drive engagement

• Emotion

  • Use powerful words to provoke emotional responses [motivators: fear, laughter, surprise, anger]

  • Ex. 10 Hilarious Memes That Will Make You Cry Laughing, 10 Reasons Men Shouldn’t Be Helping Their Wives With The Housework [😤]

• Inspire action

  • Make specific, actionable promises [ex. How to have a healthier work/life balance; How to Take Command of Any Meeting]

  • Utilize quotes [ex “Domestic Violence is all about control.” Here are the Warning Signs]

• Stats, facts + numbers

  • Statistics add authority to your captions and grab attention [ex. 65% of dog owners make this mistake]. And of course be sure to credit your sources in the caption and through tagging.

  • Use numbers to set clear expectations [ex. 5 Ways to Write Great Headlines]

We recommend workshopping with 2-3 options, and if possible, sharing with at least one other person for their gut-reaction feedback. What we’ve found is that doing this exercise often surprises the author because it helps bring forth the most compelling part of a post or story, in the shortest and most succinct way possible.

Try it out and let us know what you think! [and as for the length and style of captions - from two words to full novels - stay-tuned for future guidance].