You’ve dedicated all that time to capturing the perfect image (often including sweet talking your clients into before and afters!) it’s beautifully filtered, cropped and ready to go – until you realise you have no idea what to caption it.

For those lucky enough to have a natural knack for words, captions can flow instantly after every image is created. For others, it can take 10 times longer than it took to take the damn photo itself!

On one hand, it may seem silly to agonise over one tiny caption. But in reality, the reason you feel stressed when it comes to creating the perfect caption is simple – it’s a reflection of your brand that you’ve worked so hard towards. Keep in mind that it isn’t just a caption, really – it’s a branding exercise. Just as your signage, décor and furniture, website, colour scheme and uniforms come together to create your business’ unique voice and branding, so too do your social media captions.

Here are some tips to getting it right:

But first, research!
Take note of what other pages are doing, that are similar in nature to your spa or clinic business and/or services. Collect some images of posts and their captions, create a mood board, and get a sense of the ‘vibes’ you like or don’t like. Take note of reasons why you don’t like certain things, and what you would do to change it. Your business should reflect you and your natural voice, so going with your gut is always best!

Find your voice
After conducting your research, you should have a clearer picture of the ‘voice’ you would like your business to portray. Are you jokey and humorous? Punny? Serious? Spiritual? Think about who you are and what you want your captions to do. Make readers laugh? Inject a sense of spirituality and wellbeing? Or position yourself, as a practitioner, to be a no-nonsense, forward-thinking leader in your field? This should be reflected across all (or most) of your posts.

Proof, proof, proof!
If you’re unsure about what you’ve written, have another person proof it before posting. This is true for both stylistic and grammatical purposes, as any errors in spelling or grammar can detract from the calibre and credibility of your business.

Don’t overload on hashtags
Not only does a hashtag overload look ‘spammy’, but Instagram has been programmed to bump down posts with too many hashtags from view. Around 6 is a good number.

Tag for engagement
Tag others that you think may appreciate and share your post. But don’t tag too many or too often – you may just rub some people the wrong way!