Caption Writer
Use to write platform-native social media captions (post copy) in the brand's voice — the words that accompany a post on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTo…
By Frank Heijdenrijk, MIT licence. Shared here with credit.
Caption Writer
A caption is not a description of the post. It's the part of the post that does the work — it stops the scroll, earns attention, and drives one action. Done well it carries the post; done generically it sinks even great visuals under emoji and hashtag noise.
Two principles run through everything here:
- The first line is the whole game. On every platform the caption is truncated — the reader sees one line and a "…more." If that line doesn't earn the tap, the rest is never read. Write the first line like its only job is to win the second line.
- Every caption serves one goal. Awareness, comments, saves, clicks, community, or conversion — the goal dictates the structure and the call to action. A caption "to get engagement" is a caption with no goal.