Caption this: 5 copywriting tips for beginners!

Let’s face it.

Social media is content-saturated so finding ways to stand out can be tricky.

Of course, you can increase your chances with paid social, however, to get more bang for your buck, your copywriting needs to be something worth reading!

Think about the last post you stopped and actually engaged with. Did it have an intriguing image, bold text or a funny joke? This probably wasn’t an accident, but a carefully worded, well-written post.

But if you’re sitting there thinking, “Houston we have a problem, I’m the only one that thinks my captions are interesting,” don’t fret! I’ve summarised my 5 top tips to writing charismatic content.

1. Be Compelling

What’s the purpose of your post? Before putting pen to paper (or fingers to touchpad) I like to concisely describe the intent of the post. Who is my audience and what am I trying to achieve? Am I needing to educate, persuade, describe, delight, enlighten or entertain? This is the essence of copywriting. Once we are clear on our point, we can be compelling.

2. Tap into Power Words

Did you know? The most compelling words in the English language are; ‘you’, ‘because’, ‘instantly’, ‘new’, ‘results’ and ‘free’ (also ‘suddenly’ and ‘announcing’ are great). Bring this into your copywriting to make the reader understand exactly what you’re saying, and believe it.

In addition to using these keywords, you can also consider the specific letters in the words you’re using (technical, I know!), particularly when it comes to stop consonants and glide consonants. Buffer explains the difference:

“Stop consonants are those that cause the vocal tract to block when pronouncing the consonant  – using letters like t, d, k, g, b, and p.

Glide consonants do not obstruct the vocal tract and are quite frictionless when spoken – using letters like l, r, j, and w.”

Stop consonants slow the flow of the sentence to bring attention to a certain phrase or word. Glide consonants flow a lot better and don’t test the reader as much, which is great if you want them to read the whole text or draw attention to the image. Both are awesome!

And if you want to get super #Nerdy, you can even use literary devices such as parallelisms, alliteration, allegory or even colloquialisms (speak in your audience’s language!).

Extra Tip:

✨Use CAPS to highlight your power word

✨ Use emojis as bullet points 😉

✨ Break up your paragraphs with line spacing

3. Keep It Short

While long-form content has a place, when writing for social media captions it’s important not to lose sight of your audience’s attention span, which is extremely short! Some of us tend to be a little more verbose in the way we write, especially on our first drafts, so think critically about your choice of words. What words are absolutely essential, and what is just ‘faff’?

If you’ve got more to say, send them to your website to Learn More. This, of course, is a great opportunity to increase your database and for future re-marketing!

4. Get Chatty – Questions, quotes, and fill-in-the-blanks

What better way to spark engagement than asking your reader a question? This is especially great when you’re asking for customer experiences with your product. We even suggest beginning your content planning process with the copy before the imagery, to really get your focus on the ‘pull’ sentence.

5. K.I.S.S.

Ditch the jargon. What happens when you read these kinds of phrases:

• “Drive innovation.”

• “Become a disruptor.”

• And my absolute non-favourite, “Transform your business…”.

Did you roll your eyes?! Yes, they are some of the most over-used, under-effective statements of all time. Companies and their writers hide behind these terms every day, all across the web. And statistically, this will be at least a few of our readers!

Do the work. Say something ‘real.’ 

Summary

Now that you’ve got these tips in your toolbox, we’d love to see how you use them in your social media content! Tag us at @fullstopsocialmedia. 

Or, if you’re starting to appreciate that there’s far more involved in writing an awesome caption than you previously thought, get in touch! We’d love to help you create some seriously kick-ass content.