6 Instagram Caption MISTAKES (DON'T Do This!)

Key Takeaways

What is up everyone? Welcome back to my channel. In today's video, I want to walk you through the six mistakes that I consistently see people making when they are writing their Instagram captions. Now, even in my own client base and people in my community, I constantly hear how challenging it is to write engaging and captivating captions for your audience. So, if you want to learn about the six mistakes that I always see, then keep on watching. All right, so cutting straight into the chase, the first mistake that I always see is when people write unmeaningful captions. Meaning that your captions have no relevancy to your audience whatsoever. A good example of this is captions that are just simply an emoji or a song lyric or something that's just super random that has nothing to do with what your audience interests are. Now, obviously, there are tons of accounts that can get away with this, specifically meme accounts, humor accounts, makeup accounts, sexy selfie accounts, but at the end of the day, my personal philosophy is is that when you have a really engaging caption that is meaningful to your audience, it will increase the chances of someone commenting, but not only this, sparking a deeper conversation with you through the DM. But at the end of the day, regardless if you choose to use the caption space as a microblog or maybe just a witty one-liner, you really want to think about your audience at the end of the day. What would your audience want to see? What would your audience really resonate with? And try to deliver that through that caption. Now, some of you guys might be wondering, well, I have no idea what my audience wants. Now, what I personally do when I'm writing my captions, and I'll put an example right here that has generated a lot of engagement rate, is when doing captions, I always think about the types of conversations that I'm having with my audience. For me personally, a lot of people in my audience are in the beginning stages of their entrepreneurial journey, and they really have a lot of struggles around that. That's why a lot of my captions are centered around this story so that I can really teach them and give them important lessons through that caption, which has increased not only my engagement rates, but also the type of relationship that I have with my audience. Now, if you are someone who is just starting out your account and you don't really have an audience to connect with yet, what I highly recommend is joining Facebook groups within your niche, going on forums, and really doing a lot of social listening to understand what people in your audience or in your future audience is talking about, the questions that they have, and try to answer those questions in your Instagram caption. Also, before I head into the second tip, if you really struggle with coming up with these caption ideas, definitely check out this video right here where I show you all of my strategies on how to find those content pieces. The second mistake that I see when people write their Instagram captions is that they don't have an engaging hook. What a lot of people don't realize when they're writing their Instagram captions is that the first sentence is one of the most important. And what I mean by this is even when you're scrolling through the feed, what you'll notice is that Instagram will only show the first line of the caption unless you click see more. So, if your first line isn't engaging enough for someone to really want to read the rest, then you're kind of in a pickle. Not only this, the second mistake that I see a lot of people make within that first line is that it's too long. If that first sentence is way too long, half of it will get cut out. That's why you really want to be conscious of the length and making sure that people can actually read it within that first line without needing to click see more, and that it's still engaging and relevant enough for them to want to click see more and read the rest of that caption. The third mistake that I see people making when they are writing their Instagram captions is that the spacing is non-existent. Meaning that as they're writing their caption, it's basically a blob of text. Any normal human being when reading that, they're going to be completely turned off because when you're just looking at that from a bird's-eye point of view, it looks very overwhelming. So, if you want to make it easier for your audience to follow along, make sure that you have those white spaces to make it easier on the eyes. Now, to defeat this problem, what a lot of people do is that they'll put dashes in between, they'll put emojis in between, but what I like to do is I like to use this website right here. I copy my caption in it first, and then I convert it to insert all the white spaces, and then I paste it onto my post. This is going to help me have those white spaces without me needing to add more emojis and without me needing to add those dashes in between my paragraphs or blurbs. Now, a rule of thumb to make it a lot easier on your audience is to just make sure that each section has only about two lines max. If you have more than two lines, it really does become a little bit too overwhelming on the eyes. Now, I completely understand if your microblog or your caption is something that is super meaty and you have a lot of information to share, I get it, but please, please, please, just try your best to make it as easy on the eyes as possible to increase that retention of someone actually following through with reading the entire piece of content. Speaking of making things easier on the eyes for your audience, the fourth mistake that I see a lot of people making actually is putting way too many emojis in your caption. Now, even for myself, this was a mistake that I made a lot. I would always feel the need to bombard my caption with emojis on every single line in order to make my message a lot more captivating, but at the end of the day, what I slowly realized is that it was actually distracting my audience and taking away from the message that I wanted to share. So, I definitely hope that you take this advice, um but at the end of the day, everyone's preferences are different. These are just mine. Now, moving on to the fifth mistake that I see people make when they are writing their captions, and that is is that they are making their captions all about them. Now, when you are writing a caption, I understand a lot of people like to tie their own personal stories. However, the mistake that they make is that they don't tie that story to their audience. They're not making it relevant to their audience, and instead, all you see is a victim story or something that is completely about them in the caption. It's always about I I I I I and never about you you you you you, if that makes sense. So, when you are writing your caption, you really want to make sure and you ask yourself, how is this relevant to my audience? What is the lesson that I want to share? Really think about the audience versus always thinking about yourself. Because if you're constantly only thinking about yourself and the story that you want to share and you're not linking it back to your audience, what that caption becomes is a diary or a journal entry. It's nothing relevant, it's nothing life-changing for someone else, only yourself. So, at the end of the day, what you want to realize is when you are writing a caption and you really want it to be meaningful to your audience, you want to ensure that each piece of content that you're doing has a key takeaway for your audience to walk away with, and it's not just a story that is all about you. Last but not least, the last mistake that I see a lot of people making in their caption is not having a call to action. Now, personally, I believe how you end a caption is just as important as how you start a caption. Meaning that when you have a beautiful caption written and there is no call to action after or there is nothing that you're telling your audience to do afterwards, you're really leaving opportunity on the table. That's why at the end of your captions, really give direction to your audience on what to do next. Don't have an anticlimactic caption. So, for instance, maybe at the end of the caption, you can say, "DM me if this resonated with you." Or, "Comment below if you agree." Or, "Like this post if you agree." Really give some sort of action step for your audience to take after reading this wonderful caption that you've created just for them. Now, at the end of the day, what I want you to realize is that these six mistakes that I'm pointing out are only my own personal preferences. Everyone is entitled to deliver and consume content the way that they want. These are just the general things that I've noticed and the things that I have changed that have really worked for me and for me to have a really high engagement rate. If you have a different way of doing things, you do you, boo, but these are just my tips. Now, if you want to learn more about how I structure things in terms of content, then make sure you hit the notification bell because in my next video, I'm going to teach you how to write the perfect YouTube script, aka how I like to structure my videos from A to Z from a scripting and delivery standpoint. So, if you want to learn more about that, then definitely hit the notification bell so you don't miss it. Now, if you want to learn more about social media, business, and just life in general, make sure you watch these two videos as well. As always, guys, I hope you guys have a great day, a great week, and a great life, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye, guys.