Creating engaging and successful social media content is difficult, even for seasoned professionals.
When it comes to writing captions for social media content, those who work in marketing in the coffee sector it can be a challenge to produce captions that are consistent and align with your digital marketing strategy.
We’ve prepared a list of top tips to help break you out of caption-writer’s-block, and to elevate the quality of your captions for social media channels.
Write less
Seems like a strange tip for caption writing – however, writing less is one of the most valuable steps in creating captions that will capture the attention of your audience, and generate more engagement.
The coffee industry is full of incredible stories, descriptions and research. This includes tasting notes, recipes, producer stories, product launches, experimentation, product descriptions, reports, sustainability commitments … the list goes on.
In writing captions for social media content, it’s easy to get caught up in all this information and try to share as much as possible. Although a lot of copy may interest some followers, many won’t take the time to read long captions. This will lead to decreased engagement levels and a lower click-through rate to your link in bio/web link/product tag.
When creating posts and captions for your channels, consider the following:
- Time – how much time are you spending on long captions? By shortening your captions to a few, short sentences you will be able to produce content more efficiently, leaving time for more creative tasks (reels, anyone?)
- Click-through rates – we all love successful content; but how do we measure ‘success’? Some of the best indicators are click through rates, ie. people clicking through to learn more about your post(s) via your link in bio or web links. If your caption is short, engaging and enticing enough, you’ll have more members of your audience clicking through to learn more.
- Attention span – unfortunately, you’re not the only one vying for the attention of a global coffee audience. With so much content being published across multiple channels every day, the attention span of social media users is constantly dropping. Short captions will allow your current (and new) followers to acquire all the information they need in the shortest time possible.
- Text-only posts – platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn aren’t as media-reliant as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. By using text-only tweets, polls and questions to your audience, you can increase engagement levels and generate more traffic to your profiles.
Use your carousels
The introduction of multi-photo posts on Instagram in 2015 was a game changer, and the expansion of this to video two years later was another cause for celebration. These days, carousel posts (a continuous image posted as a multi-photo post) are among the most popular forms of viral content on multiple platforms.
So, why are carousels relevant to your captions? Carousels are great for a number of reasons, including:
- Impressions: carousel posts feed into the multiple algorithms used by Instagram (and other platforms), meaning they appear multiple times on a users’ feed. In layman’s terms, that means your post is seen multiple times by the same person. This leads to an increase in Impressions, improving the performance of your content overall.
- User Experience: On any social media platform, carousel posts are easy to swipe through and absorb information in an easy and digestible way. This heightens User Experience (UEX) and will lead to greater follower growth, sharing and other engagements
- Sharing copy – for your captions, this is the most important part of carousels. Posting multi-photo carousels is an easy way to break down lengthy copy into smaller, beautifully designed sections. This is extremely useful if (a) you have longer copy that you simply can’t shorten, (b) there are multiple steps/facts you need to explain, or (c) you want to post ‘shareable’ content such as guides and recipes.
Hook, elaborate and link!
Most (if not all) forms of advertising or digital marketing serve a central purpose: capturing the attention of an audience.
Long captions are the equivalent of opening a large, thick book and seeing lots of tiny text: you immediately think “Hmm, I’m not going to read all of this.” On the other hand, shorter captions are more approachable, less intimidating than longer captions and allow you to convey the most important information as quickly as possible.
So, how is this done? We recommend a three-part structure to your captions that we like to call ‘Hook, elaborate and link’:
- Hook: use the first sentence(s) of your caption to capture the attention of your audience. This may be in the form of a question, a bold statement or an exciting announcement (eg. “Want to know which are the best and most affordable brewers?”).
- Elaborate: Use a few sentences to provide context for your hook, explaining essential details or providing your audience with more reasons to read more via your next step (eg. “We’ve put together an essential list of the best coffee brewers available for under $100, along with some brewing guides and barista reviews”).
- Link: This is where the click-through rate shines! Use the last section of your captions to provide relevant links, or a Call To Action (CTA) to improve engagement. This can be in the form of a simple ‘Link in bio!”, a URL link or link preview, or a question for your audience (eg. “Do you have a favourite coffee brewers? Let us know in the comments).
Using these three tips, you’ll start producing shorter and more eloquent captions that will not only save you time and stress, but lead to community growth and higher engagement. Of course, don’t forget to include relevant hashtags and product links (but more on that in our next post).
To learn more about effective digital marketing strategies and using high-quality copy for social media, get in touch with a member of the PDG Media team.
