Placement and creativity make all the difference when publishers use calls to action on Instagram.
Is it witty yet approachable? Hmm . . . Well, is it professional yet friendly? Nope. That’s horrible, forget it. This is pointless.
These are a few of the thoughts you might have either when drafting an email to your boss pleading for more chips in the breakroom or when coming up with the perfect Instagram caption for your publishing company.
Writing Instagram captions can be stressful, especially when competing with other businesses for increased engagement and successful conversions. To ease this crushing burden, there is one essential element to every post—a call to action (CTA). This is a message that attempts to persuade someone to perform a desired action.
Simply put, be direct. One commonly employed method for directness is through commands, or imperatives (such as “comment below”). But what verbs should you use, and where should you include them in the post caption? Does the location of imperatives affect engagement?
Do This, Not That: Imperative Usage in Publishing Instagram Captions
To answer these questions, I analyzed 20 Instagram posts (60 total) for 3 different publishing companies: Simon and Schuster, Penguin Random House, and HarperCollins. For this analysis, I used systematic sampling, examining every third post. However, if there was no imperative within the post, I selected the following third post. Subsequently, I recorded the imperatives used and their respective locations, categorized as: beginning, middle, and end. If an imperative was not present in the first or last two lines of text, these were determined to be in the “middle” category. The engagement of each post was also documented, and a normalized average (calculated by dividing by follower count) for each location was calculated. From this analysis, I found 5 trends that book publishers follow to create effective imperatives in their Instagram captions:
1. Use strong action verbs. Short and strong CTAs are important when an app is based on quick-paced swiping through images or videos. These verbs need to grab and hold a person’s attention, and then guide them to an intended action. Out of 60 analyzed posts, 13 contained the imperative “swipe”. If the intention is to generally increase Instagram engagement, words such as “swipe”, “look”, or “click” can be extremely helpful to capture your audience's attention.
2. Don’t use negative imperatives. Out of the examined posts, the overwhelming majority (58/60) of imperatives within Instagram captions are affirmative, which is also the most common and direct form overall. There were only two instances of the negative imperative, both used by Simon and Schuster. These were the instructions “don’t miss” and “do not forget”. However, to communicate more effectively with your audience, a phrase like “don’t miss” should instead be “attend”. This is more powerful because it is considerably more straightforward and concise to provide a sought-after action rather than a discouraged one.
3. Typically, use imperatives at the beginning. This positioning pattern is most common across publishers AND received the most engagement overall. This is likely because Instagram truncates captions after the third line of text. Instagram users swipe quickly, focusing more on visuals than the captions below. Thus, beginning-positioned imperatives remove obstacles from conveying your desired action.
4. Use imperatives in the middle for contests and giveaways. For contests, promotions, and giveaways, book publishers typically include imperatives in the middle of their captions. Out of the 8 giveaway contests analyzed, all of them included imperatives, such as “learn more” or “tag a friend”, within the middle of the caption. Other content categories included event promotions and highly anticipated account takeovers.
5. Use like/follow/comment/ imperatives rarely. These are considered by Meta to be “engagement bait” and are consequently demoted. While it might be tempting to include them in order to gain greater engagement, my analysis concludes that these are only used within the publishing industry in posts that elaborate contest requirements. Out of the examined uses of these imperatives, 6 out of 9 were tied to giveaways. Publishers are typically more creative with their imperative choices, which ultimately promotes greater emotion and enthusiasm.
Conclusion
Book publishing companies vary in where they choose to include their imperatives within calls to action. However, the most engagement typically occurs with beginning-positioned imperatives. Positioning imperatives at the beginning increases the likelihood for audiences to notice and consequently execute the imperative. Book publishing companies also typically utilize more creative, engaging imperatives beyond the tiring “like, comment, follow” cliché.