Hello. It’s me again, your favorite fabulous photo blogger, here to talk to you about captions. What’s in a caption? Well, everything, really. Captions are an important tool for driving business engagement with your content. If you want to sell products based on photos, you’d better believe you need a good caption. In the age of social media and SEO, there’s never been a more important time to increase you caption-game, so here’s the scoop on how to caption photos for social sites like Facebook, Instagram and more.
Why are captions important on social media?
Captions are important on social media because they drive people to your website to learn more information about your products, to ask questions and promote better SEO. That said, many small business owners don’t put enough time, thought or effort into creating massively successful captions.
It’s almost understandable. If you don’t get why captions are so important why spend time carving out a handful of characters when there is so much other stuff that needs to be done? However, captions ARE a big deal. They include keywords and hashtags that make your posts more searchable on social sites like Instagram and Facebook. They offer an opportunity for branding and, like other social posts, they can be designed to drive engagement.
How to caption photos for social media
Here are the some practical tips for captioning your social media photos:
Prioritize engagement
First and foremost you should prioritize engagement with your social followers. This might mean running a contest, promoting your members, asking open question, requesting feedback or offering helpful tips based on keyword searches. When you consider how to best engage your core audience in a short caption, keep the content minimal and thought-provoking or helpful.
Focus your intention
As a small business owner, you should only post content with intent. That’s not some new age woo, it means only post content that serves some kind of purpose, whether its to establish branding, create more customers or position yourself as a thought leader, you must first understand why you are posting a picture and focus on the why when you create the winning caption.
Stay on-brand
Branding, branding, branding. You may be wondering, “When is Kristina going to stop talking about branding?” Spoiler alert, the answer is never. In a digital age, branding is literally everything when it comes to growing awareness about your business and getting in front of the right people. Of course branding should be a big part of your social strategy. Staying on brand with captions means watching your tone, deciding whether to ask a thought-provoking question or tell a story and so much more. When you consider a caption, you need to stay on brand.
Take your time
Finally, you can’t rush greatness. If you need a great caption, take your time. As someone who cares so much about my business, I sometimes spend a day or two thinking about the best captions for my scheduled posts. I’m busy, too, I don’t have all the time in the world, but creating great content is important. As they say, content is key. And that means paying attention to everything from blogs to photo captions and learning how to caption photos for social media, even though it takes time.
There may be a few ways to come up with a great caption for Facebook, but there’s only one way to get top-rated branding photography in Tampa Bay and beyond that catches your personality and brand in a single session. That’s by booking a consultation with Kristina Maness Photography. Contact me today for details.