Do you ever find yourself scrolling through your Instagram feed and you suddenly come across a long photo caption that is one huge paragraph of unbroken text? Long caption copy — especially when it’s not broken up — can be a major turn-off for someone who is leisurely scrolling through their Instagram feed of gorgeous images. After all, people are on Instagram to consume beautiful and/or entertaining content, not to read a story.
I get it though. Sometimes as a brand you have to have an Instagram post with long caption copy.
A perfect example of this is when you use an Instagram post to promote your contest/giveaway. The caption copy of an Instagram post promoting a giveaway often includes rules, terms and a lot of other mumbo jumbo.
I come across a lot of these kinds of Instagram posts. This is largely because many of ShortStack.com’s users use our platform to create Instagram giveaways, contests and landing page campaigns. Then, when they go to promote their efforts on their Instagram accounts with a post, they do so with long caption copy.
So here’s the big question – what do you do if you have a lot of information you need to share, but you don’t want to turn people off with your long caption copy?
You add paragraph spacing to make your caption copy a lot more skimmable, i.e. a heck of a lot more appealing to readers.
If you’ve ever tried to add paragraph spacing to your caption copy in Instagram before, you’ll know that it’s a tricky thing to do. For a long time, I actually didn’t know what the “secret” was. Then, finally, I figured it out.
Here are the three rules you must follow to create paragraph spacing in your Instagram caption copy:
Rule #1: Don’t write your caption copy in Instagram.
Within the Instagram app, if you try to edit your caption copy to add paragraph spacing, it will just revert back to zero-spaced formatting when you press “done.” Instead, write your caption copy in your smartphone’s notes app and then cut and paste your caption copy into Instagram. You can also try writing your caption copy in an email draft on your phone or in a Facebook status update draft.
Rule #2: Don’t include emojis before or after break points.
If you want to include emojis in your Instagram post’s caption copy, do so within your sentences, not before or after them. Another thing you can try is adding emojis in between your paragraph spacing.
To do this, write out your caption copy in your notes app (or wherever you decide), add your paragraph spacing using by hitting your “return” button a couple of times, then, after the caption copy looks good, go in and add your emojis in the spaces between your new paragraphs.
Rule #3: Always take out the extra spaces where you want to add your paragraph spacing (this is the most important rule).
If there’s a space before the word and/or punctuation mark where you want to add paragraph spacing, you will not get the spaced-out caption caption you’re looking for.
Okay, that’s it. Follow these three rules and you should be golden.
For all you visual learners out there, here’s a quick video tutorial we made to show you how to add paragraph spacing to your Instagram post’s caption copy.
Hopefully these tips helped – let me know in the comment section below if you were able to make them work for you.
Author: Jim Belosic
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