Five ways to make your captions more impactful in fewer words

We all ramble on social media from time to time. Sometimes, you need a long post to get a point across! In general, though, five paragraph essays are not the best way to keep your audience engaged. To help you write pithy, dynamic captions, follow these top five tips.

Five ways to make your captions more impactful:

One: Remove “I think” or “I feel” from the sentence when you’re making a point.

When you add “I think” in front of your opinions – or even in front of an objective fact – it adds to your word count and makes the statement sound weaker. 

Take this example: I think it’s very important that really short captions are created and written to engage your audience.

Revised: It’s very important that really short captions are created and written to engage your audience.

(Don’t worry, we aren’t done editing that sentence.)

Two: Swap out adverbs for precise adjectives.

Time for my inner teacher to make an appearance! An adverb is a word that describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. Adverbs include ‘very’, ‘really’, and most words that end in ‘-ly’, like unusually or sincerely. These words can be useful. In general, though, they are dead weight on your caption and soften the impact of your message.

Back to: It’s very important that really short captions are created and written to engage your audience.

‘Very important’ and ‘really short’ could both be swapped out for more interesting words like critical, crucial, or essential and brief, snappy, or concise. 

Revised: It’s essential that snappy captions are created and written to engage your audience.

Three: Never use two words where one will do.

You might be using synonyms in your caption without realizing it. Always double check to make sure you aren’t repeating yourself. Nine times out of ten, choosing one, highly descriptive word will be more effective than using two words that mean the same thing together.

For example: It’s essential that snappy captions are created and written to engage your audience.

Revised: It’s essential that snappy captions are written to engage your audience.

FOUR: Avoid passive voice at all costs!

Passive voice puts your caption to sleep and uses unnecessary words. 

Here is another teacher moment from me: passive voice is when the subject of your sentence undergoes an action. Instead, your subject should almost always perform the action. 

For example, the dog catches the ball. The ball shouldn’t be caught by the dog. The race wasn’t won by the winner; the winner won the race. 

If you have an extra ‘by’ floating around in your sentence, that’s a hint you may need to rephrase it to be more active. 

For example: It’s essential that snappy captions are written to engage your audience. 

The finished product: It’s essential for you to write snappy captions to engage your audience.

FIVE: Challenge yourself to write the fewest possible words

Get in the habit of rereading your work and cutting down on excess verbiage. Having a friend (or a member of the Rosebud Social team) read over everything you write can also help you to get rid of unnecessary words, as well as spelling mistakes and unclear thoughts.

For example: It’s essential for you to write snappy captions to engage your audience. 

Revised: It’s essential to write snappy captions to engage your audience!

It’s time for a practice round! How many words can you remove from the below sentence while keeping all of the meaning intact? (Catch my answer, and some bonus tips, in the next Rosebud Social newsletter!)

My icy cold cup of very delicious coffee from Dunkin, a donut shop that sells coffee, splashed and spilled all over my immaculately clean Bronco.