Social media shouldn’t be difficult, but if it is, perhaps, you are missing one crucial element of success: writing social media captions for your small businesses.
Captions shouldn’t be created as an afterthought of your social media post. They cannot be created in seconds and tacked on to your visual content. A good social media caption needs to have structure and purpose as it has the power to attract, engage, and convert your followers.
A great social media caption can be created by following these 3 successful elements:
- Hook sentence
- Context
- Call to action
The power of a hook sentence
Whether it’s on Facebook or Instagram, a static post or reel, you generally have less than 10 words to grab the attention of your audience.
Too many people make the mistake of using descriptive words, titles or blatantly obvious statements as their hook sentence.
So…what is a hook sentence?
It is an opening statement that entices readers to read on. Hook sentences can take the form of a question, quote, thought-provoking statement, statistics or anecdote.
Take this for example, which one do you find more effective in driving action, engagement and interest.
Example social media captions for small businesses
The difference is subtle but I’m sure you agree the latter is more enticing, and interesting and seeks to get users to read more or take action.
Users follow businesses on social media not to be pushed their product day in and day out, but to have the business provide entertaining content add or value to their life.
Unfortunately, posting a photo of a flower, travel destination or product isn’t enough to engage users on social media anymore. Perhaps, consider adding value in the form of a fun educational fact.
The absolute necessity – adding context to your posts
This is where context comes into play.
On Facebook, you have the opportunity to expand the caption into a long-form story that adds value, educates or entertains. This is because Facebook prioritises written content over video or photos.
Think about it like this, you can post to Facebook without any additional visual component whereas you can’t on Instagram. When you scroll through your feed on Facebook, the written content comes first whereas the visual element comes first on Instagram.
Facebook uses written content to connect users and elicit community engagement. Instagram uses the caption to support the visual element. Therefore, on Instagram, it’s best to keep these captions short and sweet.
Regardless of whether you decide to adapt your content to suit the algorithm on Facebook and Instagram, here are some universal tips to use in your social media captions.
Tips:
- Write content that is authentic and aligns with your target audience’s needs
- Avoid asking multiple questions or delving into too many topics
- Write like a human (not a robot or a salesman/woman)
- Use emojis and have fun with them
- Break up the text into paragraphs and easily digestible sections of information. Don’t overwhelm your audience with big paragraphs of writing
- Have one clear call to action
The importance of a clear call to action
Now, we have touched on your social media posts needing a purpose. As there is no point in spending hours of your time, effort and resources if your content does not have one central point that directs your followers to take an action (e.g., learn more, subscribe, sign up for our free trial, don’t miss out, one-time offer, join our mailing list).
This is because your content is so much more powerful when it has a purpose. When it encourages customers to act and connect with your business.
Check out our call to action blog post here with countless examples for social media, blog posts and email marketing.
Our challenge to you…
From now on, every social media post you create should include these 3 elements of a successful caption: (1) hook sentence, (2) context and finally (3) a clear call to action as this is what a best practice social media caption for small business contains.
