Through my work with my clients, I know that a lot of times, after someone has decided WHAT they’ll talk about in their next post, the overwhelm then is – well HOW MUCH? For HOW LONG? How in depth do I go? What goes in the post versus the caption? When do I cut myself off?
So let’s unpack some of that here.
My top reminders for you here are again:
People are not paying as close of attention to your content as your perfectionism tells you they are.
People need to see and hear and experience things multiple times in multiple ways to let it sink in.
People’s attention spans and capacity to learn new things while scrolling social media is super limited.
Use these reminders as an invitation and encouragement to keep it simple.
For caption writing especially...
The ideas and topics you want to talk about are likely nuanced, in depth, multi-faceted, expansive. Allow that reality to empower you to break up topics and subtopics into multiple pieces of content instead of trying to squeeze it all into one post. This is better for you as the creator AND for your audience members as the learners and consumers.
Sometimes the purpose of us posting something (ex: to remind our audience of the deadline to sign up for our next workshop) IS the actual content of the post (ex: The deadline to sign up for our next workshop is Tuesday). That’s chill, no worries. Good enough. You did it! Post is done. Great success.
Don't stress about it needing to have the structure of a 5 paragraph essay or like it’s going to be graded by a college professor. Different sections of your caption (if you even have multiple sections) don’t have to seamlessly fit together.
I literally use the sparkle emojis to create breaks in my captions when I have mini ideas or paragraphs that are kind of separate from each other. It also helps visually with breaking up the text and makes it easier for people to scan.
Your caption CAN be the same exact text or script as the actual post. This gives your audience multiple ways to engage with and process the same information.
Your captions can be standard blurbs about you, your space, your business, a current offer, your podcast etc that you keep in a note and add before you post.
Your caption can just end when you’re done with the idea. It’s okay if there’s no fancy conclusion. A majority of the people seeing your post likely aren’t reading to the end.
Your caption can be one sentence.