How to Write High-Quality Instagram Captions

If you’re anything like how I used to be, caption writing can take anywhere between 2 minutes or 2 hours (depending on how perfect my brain has decided everything needs to be for the day).

Prior to picking up my new strategy, I would finish writing my captions and just want to scratch it all out and give up.

In reality a single caption shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes (hopefully less as you practice more!). I’ve been able to find a pattern that works for me to create captions that people ACTUALLY READ without breaking my brain in the process.

So let’s get into it. How does one write captions for their business without wanting to pull their hair out?

Captions Aren’t THAT Serious!

The first thing to remember is that caption writing is NOT life or death. It is quite literally the opposite.

People often jump online to escape from the intense “life or death” stress. They want to be consuming content that makes them smile, or at very least is easy and entertaining to read.

For most businesses, I recommend writing captions as if you are writing a note to your good friend. Authenticity is how connections are made… especially over social media!

So throw away the idea that your caption needs to be a perfect sales pitch.

My Caption Writing Exercise

My favorite caption writing exercise is to grab a Google Doc, set a 2 minute timer, and just write without stopping. NO going back and editing or overthinking what you wrote. If the words get typed on the doc they stay there until the timer is up.

Once your timer is up, reread your caption and see what you gathered.

From here you can either go in and edit parts that need work, or you can save time by utilizing ChatGPT to do that for you!

How I Use ChatGPT to Make Good Quality Captions

Once I have my blurb of text of what I want to say for my caption, I will throw it into ChatGPT.

There are a couple important things to note with ChatGPT:

1. NEVER just copy & paste what ChatGPT gives you. Even if you don’t think people will be able to tell, trust me, they can.

2. ChatGPT should be used as a TOOL to help you bust through writers block, not to completely take over the job of caption writing. You need to still be using your creative brain.

3. Make sure you are prompting ChatGPT with as much information as you can give it for best results.

So how do I work with ChatGPT? Here are my steps:

1. Once I’ve created my blurb I copy it. Then I tell ChatGPT “Improve this Instagram caption in [insert tone of voice here].” Sometimes I will also add additional information like the goal of the post, how long I want the caption to be, or more information on the business that the post is for.

2. When ChatGPT gives me the improved caption I will see if there are any parts of my caption that could be reworded or improved based on ChatGPT’s suggestions. I will pull certain pieces from Chat GPT and not others.

3. If ChatGPT’s first suggestion doesn’t give me anything I like, I will ask it to generate 5 - 10 more improved captions using the same inputed information and repeat step 2.

4. Once I have a caption I like, I copy it from my Google Doc into Instagram and post away!

While, writing a caption isn’t rocket science there are a few things every caption must have.

Hook: The first sentence of your caption should be something that stops the scroll and makes people want to keep reading. I recommend using an emoji or two. This sentence should also be separated from the rest of your caption using the “Enter” key.

This is so people’s eyes don’t get overwhelmed with a block of text and it feels easy for them to keep reading.

Spacing: As a rule of thumb, you should never have more than three sentences without pressing the “Enter” key twice and making an empty line between paragraphs. Ideally I have two sentences in my captions before creating an empty line.

Again, this is because it makes your caption more appealing to your audience’s eyes and raises the chances of them reading your caption all the way through.

Call to Action (CTA): Your Call to Action (CTA) is what you ask people to do at the end of your caption. Every caption should have on of these. Here are a list of some actions you can call your audience to:

• Vote for your favorite in the comments

• Double tap if you agree!

• Guess which of this is a lie

• Swipe to learn more (for carousels)

• Save this for later

• DM me for the link

• Link in bio

• Ask me anything

• Tap for the link

• Share if you agree

• Take a screenshot

• Read more in the blog

• Ask me in the comments

• Tap and hold to read

• Follow for more tips

• Check out our highlight about [topic]

• Introduce yourself in the comments

• Head to our stories to find out

• Comment with your favorite emoji

• Share so others can learn too

Hashtags: Every post should have 5 - 7 hashtags that hang out at the very bottom of your caption. These hashtags shouldn’t be over 1M tags or under 10k. We will expand more on hashtags in a later lesson!

NOTE: Captions are also a great place to add in keywords. If you are adding keywords to your captions they should be included within your paragraphs not floating down by your captions.

Your Challenge: Write a Caption (that doesn’t suck)! ✍🏼

Whether you’re posting a carousel, reel, or a simple post go write a BOMB caption! Everything you need to know to write an incredible hashtag is written above!

I can’t wait to see your beautiful caption creations.

Happy writing!