It’s the great social media debate: how long should an Instagram caption be?
While many marketers and business owners will swear by short Instagram captions, it’s important to dig into the latest research and keep up with best practice recommendations when it comes to Instagram caption length.
Ready to craft the best captions for Instagram? Whether you’re posting a carousel or an Instagram Reel, we’ve done the hard work for you to help you decide the ideal caption length for your next Instagram post.
Why does Instagram caption length matter?
So, why does the character count of your Instagram captions matter?
Instagram captions are designed to add context to your visual content. While your Reel or carousel might contain plenty of valuable information, users will likely jump to your caption to find out further details about the topic you’re discussing.
Plus, crafting the perfect Instagram caption has a stack of additional benefits, including:
- Organic visibility: By adding the right phrases, keywords and hashtags to your Instagram captions, you can make it easier for relevant users to find your content through the Instagram search bar (thanks to the principles of social SEO!)
- Brand building: Captions are where you can let your brand’s voice run wild! With a strong, memorable tone of voice that captures the personality of your business, your Instagram captions are another way to boost brand awareness and recognition
- Audience engagement: Injecting a compelling call-to-action (CTA) at the end of your Instagram caption is a sure-fire way to inspire your audience to leave a comment, share your post or even follow your brand.
Keep Reading: Discover 10 tips to gain followers on Instagram with our complete guide.
What is the best Instagram caption length?
Now, here’s the bit you’ve been waiting for: what is the ideal length for an Instagram caption?
While Instagram captions can be up to 2,200 characters long, hitting this character limit is not always the best way to boost engagement and drive results. Here’s why.
After reviewing over 9 million Instagram posts published in 2023, research by Social Insider found that short Instagram captions (under 30 words) drive a higher engagement rate than longer Instagram captions.
Plus, the most effective way to drive high engagement on Instagram is to pair a short and sweet Instagram caption with an Instagram carousel—as this is the best content format to inspire conversation.
How does the Instagram algorithm prioritize content?
It’s also important to consider how the Instagram algorithm ranks content when crafting your Instagram captions.
Currently, the main factors that dictate how content is ranked in the Instagram algorithm include:
- User relationships: Your most loyal, engaged fans are most likely to see your future content.
- User interest: Users who interact with content from similar brands are more likely to discover your content in their Explore feed.
- Relevancy: This score is set directly after you publish a post. The more engagements your post generates shortly after posting, the more likely the algorithm is to promote it to a wider pool of new users.
This last point is super important. When crafting your Instagram caption, you want to design a compelling hook that drives users to ‘read more’ and interact with your content, making a short Instagram caption a powerful way to boost engagement.
While short Instagram captions have been shown to increase engagement, you should experiment with longer captions, too. The best Instagram captions are crafted with your unique audience in mind, meaning it’s important to test a range of caption lengths, review your Instagram analytics and identify trends in your content’s performance.
Best Practice Tips: How to write the best Instagram captions
Ready to level up your Instagram caption-writing game? Explore these best practice tips for crafting engaging, attention-grabbing captions on Instagram.
Tip 1. Open with a compelling hook
The first line of your Instagram caption is the most important. Why? Because it’s the only copy visible to every single user, even those who don’t decide to tap ‘read more’.
With a strong opening statement, thought-provoking stat or rhetorical question, you can inspire users to stop the scroll, engage with your content and build a relationship with your brand.
Tip 2. Lead with your unique brand voice
Your brand’s personality needs to shine through every word in your caption. By injecting your unique tone of voice in your Instagram captions, you can give users another reason to trust and remember your brand.
Look to Instagram trends for inspiration on how to inject a playful, tone-in-cheek tone into your captions. Is there a relevant pop culture moment, meme or trending song you can reference in your caption to give your captions the edge?
Don’t be afraid to get creative, push boundaries and inject your brand voice into everything from your hook to your CTA and beyond.
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Tip 3. Harness on-brand emojis
Nobody wants to read a huge block of text, especially on Instagram. That’s why smart formatting (such as frequent line breaks) and visual elements (like emojis) are powerful ways to keep users engaged and reading your caption right until the final word.
The best way to leverage emojis is to think about:
- What emojis are on-brand for your business? Perhaps create a shortlist of 3-5 emojis to use across your social media posts.
- What emojis are relevant to your post’s topic? Add 1-2 content-specific emojis to parts of your caption that you want to emphasise or draw attention to.
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Tip 4. Inject a compelling CTA
What do you want users to do after they read this post? The best Instagram captions end with a clear action for users to take, such as visiting your website, following your brand or leaving a comment.
While generic CTA phrases (such as ‘learn more’ or ‘get in touch’) are a good starting point, it’s important to look for ways to differentiate your content.
Why not personalize your CTA to suit your brand voice or align the CTA to the specific resource or product you’re promoting? The more unique your action statement is, the more likely users will be to take action.
Tip 5. Leverage Plann’s AI caption generator
Stuck with writer’s block? Never fear, you don’t have to craft the perfect Instagram caption alone.
Unleash unlimited captions with the magic of Plann’s purpose-built AI-powered Caption Generator that will transform the way you create and schedule your posts.
Tell us a few key details about your post idea and our advanced AI Caption Generator will instantly create the perfect caption, including relevant hashtags, and even add a compelling call-to-action to encourage audience engagement.
Go on, generate your first caption now!
Instagram Captions: Your questions, Answered
Are long or short captions better for Instagram?
Short Instagram captions (30 characters or less) are shown to be the most effective way to drive engagement on Instagram. However, it’s important to test and experiment with different caption lengths to see what performs best with your account’s audience.
Are short captions good for Instagram?
Yes, short captions are shown to perform very well on Instagram. With Instagram taking more and more inspiration from other platforms (like TikTok), short captions are working particularly well for Instagram Reels—even just a few words can be enough to hook readers in!
What is the ideal length for an Instagram caption?
While there is conflicting advice out there, more sources suggest that Instagram captions between 135 to 150 characters is the ideal length. However, captions as short as 30 characters (or even less) have been shown to deliver strong engagement results.
What does it mean when Instagram says the caption is too long?
Unfortunately, Instagram has a character limit that prevents users from writing captions over 2,200 characters. If you’ve hit this character limit, you’ll need to shorten your caption in order to publish your post.
Level up your Instagram marketing game with Plann
Whether you’re struggling to keep up with the fast-paced nature of social media or simply want to devote more time to growing your business and focusing on those tasks that take place offline, Plann’s range of features is sure to help save you time with an automated social media strategy.
From AI-generated captions to cross-posting, analytics, hashtags and more, Plann can help you maintain a consistent posting schedule while you remain focused on business growth. We even auto-post your Instagram Reels to take the hassle out of growing organically on the platform!
Go on, and redeem your 7-day free trial of Plann Plus. If you don’t like it, keep using Plann for free!
