You just put the final editing touches on a new drool-worthy photo of your art, pop it into Instagram with a flourish and then land on the caption page.
Crap. What do I write??
Your mind draws a blank, and then in a panic you lay down a quick vaguely-related emoji and call it a day.
Come back in a few hours to maybe see a comment or two that read like this.
“Cool”
“Nice!”
Which is better than no comments, but yikes, that also kinda makes me want to give up altogether (please don’t).
And really, you can’t blame them. Art has a hard time speaking for itself, and your caption doesn’t exactly inspire them to shout praise from the hilltops.
It’s time to change that.
It’s time to take the metaphorical caption bull by the horns and make them work for YOU.
Let’s learn how to write epic captions that convert casual viewers into adoring fans that shower you with praise, love and their hard-earned dollars!
1. Tell a Story
Tell the tale about that one time in college that you fought off a pack of demon bears with nothing but a Bic Lighter and a toothpick, saving a basket of puppies.
Everyone loves a good story. Grab them with a struggle (bonus points if it is super relatable to your ideal audience) and have them walk along the emotional journey of success with you. By the end you will have them invested and stoked to hear more.
Even if you aren’t out there playing Hero every weekend, you are not excluded here. Everything can be a decent story if you set it up the right way.
Share the tale of how you overcame the struggle of setting up an art show out of town when you forgot the backbone of your setup. Or how you managed to save a painting after your darling feline walked her muddy little toebeans over the surface. Or hell, how you managed to motivate yourself to paint even though all you wanted to do was faceplant into the cloud-soft pillows in your blanket fort.
You have a story. You just have to share it.
2. Tell them what to do
Have you ever asked someone “do you like being told what to do?”. The chance of someone shouting “Yes!! I love being told what to do, I have no free will of my own and will stare at a speck on the wall for hours if I don’t have instructions to do otherwise!” just isn’t that great. A little fire of defiance lives in all of us.
While people may not like being told what to do, sometimes they need it.
Free will and choice is awesome, but structure is something we crave, despite rarely realizing it.
Enter, Calls to Action.
Calls to Action, or CTAs, are simple prompts that encourage your audience to do something. Leave a comment, buy a product, tag a friend, the list goes on and on.
You spent all that time and energy sharing a great story, it would be a shame to have your audience pull the old “Cool, next!” trick on you and leave right away. So tell them what to do before they leave your post, you’ll be surprised how effective simply asking them to do something can be!
(Oh and bonus tip – don’t confuse the crap out of them by having a bunch of CTAs. Stick to one per post, and make it very clear what you want them to do. This isn’t the time for being cutesy and vague.)
3. Focus on what makes you uniquely you
You are the secret weapon for writing epic captions that covert.
Answer a quick question for me (see what I did there? Call to Action baby!) – when was the last time you purchased something online from a small business that you didn’t like?
Not you disliking the product, disliking the small biz owner. Like they rub you the wrong way, or have sketchy morals, what have you. If you did buy something, do you still like the product?
Let’s slice through the bushes for a sec. Most people support small businesses that they like, and run screaming from those that make their Spidey-senses tingle in the worst way possible. So it goes without saying that you want to get on the “Like” side of the fence rather than the icky “Dislike” side.
This leads me to a wonderful and terrifying statement – regardless of what you do, not everyone will like you. Simple as that.
But hey, those people that don’t like you just aren’t your kind of folks, and as long as you aren’t a monster with a horrible moral code, this is totally fine. If you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.
So be your radiant self. Make a list of a few things you adore outside of art and talk about them all the time. Slide them into your captions or conversations, let your audience know what floats your boat. Your readers will start to connect these things with you, and hey, you’ll probably even capture the hearts of folks who have the same interests.
“Mkay so why does it even matter if they like me?”
People buy from other people they like and trust. You are a person that is running a small biz, so the more people like and trust you, the more your sales will spike. Which is pretty fab all around.
So go forward and make awesome captions!
Want to take an even bigger flying leap towards your (inevitable) success as an artist?
Watch my FREE masterclass training, Scale Your Art Sales.
It’s the online class for beginner artists that are filled with a fiery creative passion, and want to grow an audience online that actually want to BUY their artwork
