Instagram, once primarily a platform for photo-centric content, has evolved significantly, adapting to changing user behaviour and incorporating a range of features. In this landscape, the role of Instagram captions has become pivotal, especially when visuals within a 1080×1080 frame may not suffice to convey key messages effectively. Understanding when to use short or long captions is crucial for a brand’s social media strategy.

The M.A.F.V.I. Framework

So how do you determine which caption length is better than another? Here are some factors to look out for by considering the M.A.F.V.I. framework:

• Marketing objective behind each post (Awareness, Engagement, Traffic, Sales). This will help determine your KPI (e.g. CPC, CTR, CPA, Engagement Rates, Reach, Impressions etc.) to measure which caption length works best for your needs.
• Audience (Everyone or Niche Interest Audience).
• Format (Posts, Reels, Stories, Threads, Collections, Dark Ads).
• Visuals (Do they convey sufficient information? Do they require additional context via captions?).
• Intent (Are they tactical posts? Seasons Greetings? Brand storytelling? Educational posts? Testimonials? Giveaways?).

Crafting Short Captions for General Awareness

Crafting captions aligning with your marketing objectives and target audience is essential. For objectives centred on grabbing immediate attention, shorter captions are recommended. Microsoft reports that social media users, on average, have an attention span of 8 seconds. Within this brief timeframe, your visuals must be eye-catching, and your captions impactful.

Short Captions for Immediate Attention

When targeting a general audience, both organically and through paid promotions, it’s crucial to recognize that most users may not engage beyond the initial content preview. Capturing the essence of your message within a 125-character range is vital, as Instagram captions tend to truncate after the first three lines.

Writing a short caption that does not require people to ‘read more’ can be effective, since it retains audience attention better as they do not need to perform additional tasks to get the full picture of your message. In this case, writing a short caption that conveys the crucial message is recommended. An impactful caption fits within a 30 word range, summarises the key point of your visuals, and can either relate with the audience, instil positive emotions, or entice them to react via call to action.

Let Your Visuals Speak

If your key visuals convey the message of your brand either with words or with graphical content, a short caption would be recommended to not overwhelm the target audience. Take Dettol for example, using videos and carousels to convey the content, we can reduce what we need to convey within the captions. After all, let the pictures speak a thousand words, and videos a million more.

Tailoring to Video Content

For short-form video content such as IG reels, short captions are recommended due to the fact that the text of your captions overlay with the video content, which might make your content look more bloated and overwhelming.

The user behaviour for Reels are also different from Posts due to how Instagram algorithm allocates those format content to the audience, where audiences tend to be warm, and will slow down and look at Posts, they will skim over the content on Reels as Instagram recommends the content to a cold audience, most will barely even read the captions unless they require context for the video. An experiment conducted by Hootsuite revealed that shorter captions in IG Reels resulted in higher engagement (likes, comments) compared to longer captions.

Driving Purposeful Engagement for Specific Audiences

Posts designed to foster engagement, such as those involving giveaways, brand storytelling, or educational content, often demand more than a brief caption. Providing additional context allows the audience to fully comprehend and participate. If your audience shares a specific interest related to your brand, longer captions can maintain their engagement more effectively than shorter ones.

Providing Context for Giveaways

An example for long caption length for Instagram is Taiwan Beer, in which we utilised a giveaway post as part of our campaign strategy, as people require more details about the giveaway mechanisms and period. Without such extra information, audiences will not have a clear instruction on how to participate.

To Tell an Effective Story About Your Brand

Another instance of long caption length being more relevant is via storytelling. To tell an interesting story regarding your posts, requires a lot of settings and context for the audiences to capture the essence of your story. For example, the KOLs that we engage with for #H-TWO-ODareToDream allows fellow influencers to share about how H-TWO-O has helped them in their journey to achieve their goals related to fitness. If the audience relates and understands your story coherently, it can help to boost brand awareness.

To Provide a Testimonial

Long captions also come in the form of testimonials for your brand, which helps to boost brand authenticity. Take Geniebook for example, writing about how the classes have improved the grades of their children, such testimonials might not be compelling enough if it is summarised within 125 characters.

What is the Sweet Spot?

Studies on Engagement Rates

Studies by Hopper HQ, analysing over 1.2 million Instagram posts, reveal that longer captions consistently outperform shorter ones in terms of engagement. Specifically, captions ranging from 500-1,000 characters (approximately 75-150 words) demonstrate the highest engagement rates. According to Fohr, in 2021, the average caption length will be approximately 405 characters — or about 65-70 words!

Quality Over Length

However, one should not be too engrossed with the length of their IG captions, as there are other factors such as the quality of captions. If your first 125 characters within your caption does not convince people to ‘read more’, the length of the caption becomes irrelevant. A quality caption, in this scenario, is something that either summarises your messages within 125 characters, or serves as an enticing start of your post storytelling which will hook the audience into reading more. Your captions should also have a call to action that aligns with your marketing objectives.

Conclusion

In conclusion, understanding the nuances of Instagram caption length is pivotal for effective communication on the platform. Whether aiming for broad awareness or targeted engagement, tailoring your captions to your objectives and audience is key. As Instagram evolves to include new features like Broadcast Channels, Notes, Threads, and Collections, our caption strategy will have to adapt to how the UI of the format (including where our caption is located) interacts with both our audiences’ UX, and our marketing strategy.

If you’re eager to elevate your social media strategy, we’re here to help. Contact us today to explore new possibilities and optimise your Instagram presence.