How to Write Scroll-stopping Social Media Captions

Whether you’re scrolling on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, some accounts make you stop.

And I don’t blame you at all.

It’s just the history of all the awesome captions they feed you regularly.

If you were to make a wish, you’d wish it was your business account on the other side, blushing from all the attention.

Put simply, writing engaging social media captions can clear a path to your audience’s attention. And when you have that, achieving social media goals becomes easier.

In this guide, I’ll explain the components of a social media caption, how to write captions for social media, and examples to inspire you.

Let’s dive in.

What is a social media caption?

A social media caption contains words and other elements used to provide information about your social media post.

For platforms like Facebook and Twitter, your social media caption can stand alone as your post. However, on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, your caption supports your media.

In most cases, social media captions contain:

• Words
• Numbers
• Emojis
• Hashtags
• Link 
• Tags

While social media captions are meant to inform, they can be spiced up to stand out and attract your audience. Then, you can get your audience to take actions like visiting link in bio page, dropping comments, or inquiring about products.

Otherwise, your posts will get lost in the sea of hundreds of captions they see every day. 

Now, I’m not saying every caption requires you to be Albert Einstein. But you need to be thoughtful about your words and their effect on your audience.

Let’s see some ways to gain attention and achieve results through your captions.

Social media caption tips

1. Tailor your captions to your audience

Most businesses publish social media posts like items to tick off on the to-do list. So, it’s no surprise their posts please the boss rather than their audience.

With this approach, you can publish social media posts every day, and followers will just scroll past them. 

But once your audience reads your caption and thinks, “that’s for me,” you’ve got their attention.

How do you tailor your social media captions to your audience?

First, you have to understand your audience. This starts with creating a buyer persona that contains extensive details about your ideal buyer.

Your buyer persona can contain details such as:

• Name
• Job
• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Work hours
• Ambitions
• Hobbies
• Dislikes

After interacting with customers for years, you know what can pique their interest. 

You just have to think of them when creating your captions.

Imagine what your audience is doing or needs when they see your posts, and write what they can relate to.

In a nutshell, putting your audience first is the foundation for creating the best social media captions.

2. Create social media captions according to your goal

Have you ever read a social media caption that just rambles? 

By the time you get to the middle of the caption, you’re in the Sahara trying to find your way back home.

Most times, this is a sign of having no aim for the social media post.

Apart from your overall social media strategy, each post should have a goal. Common goals for social media posts include:

• Brand awareness
• Product awareness
• Engagement
• Account growth
• Website traffic
• Lead acquisition
• Sales generation

For example, a post about a giveaway can aim for account growth or lead acquisition, while another post featuring user-generated content can aim for product awareness or sales.

Those posts will have different approaches, even though you’re writing captions for the same audience.

Here’s a post by Sprout Social:

The caption is straightforward, and the viewer is left in no doubt about the message. You can also predict the aim here is to drive web traffic.

Once you understand why you’re publishing a post, every word, emoji, and hashtag in your post will work towards the goal.

3. Write social media captions that tell a story

Whenever I visit Instagram, I look forward to National Geographic’s posts.

Why?

Whether it’s a post about an earthquake in Japan or a cobra in the Kalahari desert, National Geographic tells captivating stories that can grab you in the midst of social media noise.

Personally, I’m surprised we don’t have more stories on social media.

Every day, we live and encounter stories.

A co-worker who just got engaged. Your kid’s baseball match. A new customer who can’t get enough of your product. 

If we look beyond the surface, we’ll find many interesting stories or interesting ways to tell regular stories.

Here are some stories you can use in your social media captions:

• Customer stories
• Employee stories
• Company stories
• Behind-the-scene stories
• Product stories

Apart from captivating your audience, stories can show the human side of your business and pave a way into their thoughts.

Here’s an example by National Geographic:

While every caption can’t be a story, find a way to tell a story every other week. This will help mix things up and hook your audience.

4. Infuse humor in your social captions

Laughter is a universal language.

Laughter isn’t for me, said no one ever. I mean, people pay Chris Rock because they hope he will make them laugh.

Apart from being healthy, humor can make you memorable to your audience. Not only that, but your audience will look out for your posts.

However, creating funny captions is hard. Very few people can come up with funny words without trying.

For others, it takes a lot of thinking.

Here are a few ways to create humorous social media captions:

• Find funny social media captions and adapt them for your industry or audience.
• Find unconventional things about your industry.
• Latch onto a trend.
• Ask a funny co-worker or friend for ideas.

Remember that the best humor works for your industry and audience. So, even if you’re making a regular joke, find a way to connect it to your industry.

Check out this LinkedIn post by GetResponse:

Many people won’t get this joke, but marketers (GetResponse’s ideal audience) will definitely get it.

That said, don’t try too hard to be funny. It won’t be funny.

Like most things, regular practice to create funny captions will deliver many humorous results for your audience.

5. Use a call to action

A call to action leads your audience to take action after reading your caption.

Usually, this action is related to your goal. For example, one post may ask a question and request answers in the comments, while another will urge viewers to click a link in bio.

A social media caption without a call to action is like a bedtime story without a lesson to learn. While viewers may like it, they won’t know what to do after reading it.

Also, getting people to do things as a brand can make them like you more. Love grows more by giving than receiving, right?

Then, people engaging with your posts will signal to social media platforms to push the posts to more people like your audience, which is another opportunity for engagement.

Of course, some posts work without CTAs. For example, a post appreciating customers at the end of a year. But these posts should be the exception rather than the rule.

Common call to actions you can use include:

• Answering a question in the comments
• Clicking a link in bio
• Entering a giveaway
• Following your account
• Visiting an Instagram/TikTok shop
• Saving your post

Note that the action you request should also come with a benefit for your audience.

While telling your audience to take action is great, they’ll ultimately ask, “what’s in it for me?”

This can be a gift, an opportunity to learn more, knowledge to improve their lives, or humor to raise their mood.

This way, followers will have more reasons to take action.

Here’s an example from Saie, a skincare company:

The call to action is clear for anyone who wants to enter the giveaway.

Once you have a goal for your post, a call to action is vital to achieving that goal.

6. Use relevant keywords and hashtags

Keywords and hashtags serve similar functions in your social media posts.

Keywords tell people and algorithms what your post is about, while hashtags help group your posts into relevant topics.

Using relevant keywords and hashtags can help you show up in Instagram search or other social media platforms.

Another benefit is that social media platforms can understand your content and recommend it to people who don’t even follow your account.

I’d say the most important benefit of using relevant keywords is reaching more of your ideal audience. People interested in the topics you post about.

Generally, you can use brand, industry, and topic hashtags for your posts.

Social media platforms also help with hashtag suggestions. You’ll see suggestions after typing a few letters of your hashtag.

But if you publish using a social media management tool, some of them offer hashtag suggestions while scheduling your post. So, exploit this feature if it’s available.

Here’s Metalocus, an architecture magazine, using relevant hashtags in its Instagram post:

In a nutshell, use keywords and hashtags to reach people interested in your posts.

7. Use an AI caption generator

I know mentioning artificial intelligence (AI) gives some people panic attacks about losing their jobs, but AI can also assist you.

On the day when you hit writer’s block, an AI caption generator can lift you out of the rut.

An AI caption generator takes your prompt and creates a caption from it. Even though you don’t have to use the caption verbatim, it can be a good foundation to write a social media caption that works.

Luckily, AI caption writers come with some social media management tools. 

I’ve used a few of them and found some good results. Beyond words, they also include emojis and hashtags.

Here are some options I’ve tried:

• Later:  To create a caption, you’ll describe your post and select a tone. In turn, Later will generate 3 captions from your prompt. You can read my Later review for more details.
• Pallyy: To create a caption with Pallyy, you have to enter a description, length, tone and format, and the number of hashtags. You can also save these captions. Read my Pallyy review to learn more.
• Vista Social: You get ChatGPT 4 to create social captions. Once you enter a prompt, you’ll get a few captions. Read my Vista Social review to learn more.

Another option is to go into ChatGPT to enter prompts for your social media captions.

While these options shouldn’t be used every time, they can give you a lot of ideas to write an effective social media caption.

Social media caption examples

National Geographic

National Geographic explores things and events that happen around the world. 

From rare animals to disaster management to climate change, National Geographic delivers a lot of information that most people don’t know.

And to captivate its audience, National Geographic uses engaging storytelling in its captions to make you care about its social media content.

Chipotle 

Chipotle is an American chain of restaurants that sells tacos and burritos. But you can easily mistake the company for a humor brand.

The company generally uses humor in its social media captions.

What I find most interesting about their humor is that it’s related to their products.

They use captions that most of their prospects and customers will understand.

e.l.f. Cosmetics

e.l.f. Cosmetics produces makeup and skincare products. On its TikTok profile, the company features people using its products.

One thing the company does really well is delivering calls to action in its captions.

You can see captions telling its audience to shop for products, watch a movie, or enter a giveaway.

After watching each video, the audience knows what to do.

Partake Foods

Partake Foods is a food and drink company. The company is another example of using CTAs to engage its audience.

It regularly features products and asks its audience to answer questions. Asking questions is a popular tactic to increase engagement on Facebook, and Partake Foods does this well.

You’ll also see captions ending by telling followers to visit its stores to enjoy a deal.

Cupshe

Cupshe is a clothing brand that sells lingerie. The company has branded hashtags that customers can use on Instagram.

But beyond that, the company also uses other hashtags, like #beach or #swim, which are relevant to its products.

With these hashtags, both people searching for the brand and relevant topics can find its products.

Conclusion

Writing effective and engaging social media captions is as important as carefully designing images and editing videos.

Captions can provide context, increase engagement, encourage action, and widen the reach of your posts.

Put simply, captions can increase the chances of achieving your social media goals.

But as with many things, you’ll get better at writing social media captions with a lot of practice.

So, take these lessons and implement them in your future captions.

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