{"id":1421,"date":"2020-02-04T15:51:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T15:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=1421"},"modified":"2023-10-18T17:35:35","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T17:35:35","slug":"how-to-come-up-with-captions-for-every-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/ca\/blog\/how-to-come-up-with-captions-for-every-post\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Come Up With Captions For Every Post"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Don\u2019t let the sea of photographs and videos filling your feed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even LinkedIn fool you: the written word is alive and well. <\/p>\n

Companies that want to take advantage of social media services as a marketing channel<\/a> have recognized that these services have become increasingly visual in nature. This is partly due to the fact that we consume much of our daily content on smartphones, where swiping and scrolling through posts quickly is the norm. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the fact that, as social media content proliferates<\/a>, marketers are competing against an increasingly short attention span, which means in some cases, an image or animated clip might get noticed more readily than a lengthy blog post. <\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, this has led a lot of brands, including small and medium-sized businesses, to beef up their skills behind a camera, and to work with third parties like agencies and influencers to figure out how to tell their story in a way that appeals to the eye as well as the mind<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A great picture or video on its own won\u2019t do much, though. Great captions are the key. <\/p>\n

Much like the legend at the bottom of a treasure map, a caption provides a quick and easy way for those looking at content on social media to understand what it is they\u2019re seeing and why they\u2019re seeing it. <\/p>\n

A great caption can do several things for a brand. First, a lot of social media posts are now indexed though search, so the text in a caption helps search engines pick up on keywords or themes that interest your customers. <\/p>\n

Second, a caption provides the context that\u2019s often necessary to turn a static image or a video into a message that aligns with your firm\u2019s marketing objectives. <\/p>\n

Third \u2014 and perhaps the most important \u2014 a caption can also give your audience on social something to do other than simply swipe or scroll along to the next thing in their feed. <\/p>\n

Of course, writing a caption is a little different than the traditional forms of copywriting a marketer might have done to create an ad, or even more standard content marketing assets like a white paper or a case study. There\u2019s a bit of an art to it. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re new to writing captions for social media posts, or are assigning such tasks to someone else, keep the following tips in mind: <\/p>\n

You\u2019re already showing \u2014 so start telling<\/h2>\n

The old writing rule of \u201cshow, don\u2019t tell\u201d works great when you\u2019ve got pages to fill. In social media posts you\u2019re often constrained by the number of characters that the service allows (or that your audience will read).<\/p>\n

Instead of just describing what\u2019s in the image or video, then, try to focus only on the essential details that will matter. <\/p>\n