Instagram Captions: How to Write the Perfect One (+ 95 Caption Ideas to Steal)

Ever wondered how to increase your reach and engagement and, in turn, grow your following on Instagram? Your Instagram captions could hold the key.

Yes, Instagram is a visual social media platform, but your caption carries more weight in the Instagram algorithm than you think. 

For one thing, your Instagram captions offer important context to the algorithm, which helps it categorize your photo, carousel, or reel and show it to the people most likely to engage with it. Think of it as social media SEO (or search engine optimization).

For another, your caption can be crucial in prompting engagement from your followers. For example, you could use those 3,000 characters to:

• Authentically connect with your followers in a meaningful, vulnerable caption.
• Ask them a question and prompt them to comment to answer.
• Share some helpful information that has them lingering on your post to learn more.
• Have them laugh out loud, encouraging them to like or share.

A strong visual can catch users’ attention, but carefully thought-out Instagram captions can do more heavy lifting when it comes to growing your following on Instagram.

In this article, we’ll cover how to do all that with expert guidance, along with some prompts to use in Buffer’s AI Social Media Assistant to turn it into your own personal Instagram captions generator, plus share some ready-made Instagram caption ideas for you to use on your next post.

AI Instagram caption generator 

Buffer’s AI Assistant is social media smart, meaning our specialist engineers have trained it to understand the nuances of each platform. 

So, with the right prompting from you, it can help you generate the perfect Instagram captions for your target audience. 

If you’re a Buffer user, you’ll find the AI Assistant ready and waiting to help in the post composer window. To find it, just tap the + New Post button, then Use the AI Assistant. A window will open to the left of the composer where you can prompt the AI.

Not a user? No sweat. You can use Buffer’s AI Social Media Post Creator to help you write your Instagram captions without signing up. 

Whichever route you choose, be sure to get specific about a) the subject of your Instagram post and b) who your target audience is when prompting an AI tool to help you write captions for Instagram.

Don’t be afraid to include more details! The more specific you are, the better your AI-generated Instagram captions will be. You can ask for the caption to be in a specific tone, a certain number of characters, and even include target keywords or hashtags. 

Here’s a prompt to get you started: 

For example: Write a [tone] Instagram caption for [target audience] related to [topic]. The caption should be at least [number] words long and include the keywords or hashtags [target words]. 

10 AI Instagram caption prompts

Need more inspiration? Here are some more caption prompts to get you started. Remember, copying and pasting these will only get you so far. The better you prompt the assistant, the better your Instagram captions will be. 

1. Write an Instagram caption that includes a list of [number] tips for [target audience] on [topic].
2. Write an Instagram caption that showcases [number] ways to [achieve a specific goal related to the topic].
3. Take this [other social media] post and transform it into a caption for Instagram: [paste the text from the old post]
4. Write an Instagram caption that debunks common myths about [topic] for [target audience].
5. Write a funny Instagram caption for [target audience] that will help them feel better about [specific challenge]
6. Write an Instagram caption that promotes our new product/service [description of product or service] that includes a call-to-action to encourage [taget audience] to [take specific action]. 
7. Write an Instagram caption that breaks down [complex topic] into simple steps for [target audience].
8. Write an Instagram caption that shares [number] interesting facts about [topic] for [target audience].
9. Write an Instagram caption that breaks down the benefits of using our product or service for [target audience]. Some of the benefits are [list benefits here].
10. Write an Instagram caption that contains a motivational message that encourages [target audience] to do [specific action].

95+ Instagram caption ideas

Maybe you don’t have an overarching social media marketing goal or social media strategy right now — you may just be looking for something simple and clever to accompany your next post. 

If that’s the case, this is the section for you. Here are a host of different Instagram captions to steal for your next selfie or photo dump carousel, whether you’re after funny Instagram captions, one-word Instagram captions, beach Instagram captions, and more. 

15 short Instagram captions

Good Instagram captions don't have to be essays. Let your reels or pics speak for themselves with these short Instagram caption ideas.

1. “Grateful”
2. “Chasing sunsets.”
3. “Thanks for the memories.”
4. “Core memories”
5. “In my happy place”
6. “Baby steps.”
7. “Dreaming.”
8. “Proof of life.”
9. "Limitless."
10. “OOO.”
11. “Courage.”
12. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
13. "Making my own sunshine."
14. "Life is better when you're laughing."
15. “The best life experiences are free.”

10 funny Instagram captions

Funny captions often make for the most memorable Instagram posts. Many Instagram users want to be entertained, after all! Here are some of the best Instagram captions I've seen for inspiring a laugh from your followers.

1. “I’m just here for the food.”
2. "If I had a dollar for every time I got distracted, I wish I had a puppy."
3. "My favorite exercise is a cross between a lunge and a crunch... I call it lunch."
4. "I'm not lazy, I'm on energy-saving mode."
5. "I'm not arguing, I'm just explaining why I'm right."
6. "Building an empire... one typo at a time."
7. "Is it too late to be a morning person?"
8. "Putting the ‘pro’ in procrastination."
9. "I like big books, and I cannot lie."
10. "I need six months of vacation, twice a year."

10 birthday Instagram captions

These birthday captions for Instagram can be used on your own birthday (a very happy birthday if it is!) or tweaked to use as a message to someone else. I've included some that will work for a business birthday, too.

1. "I don't know about you, but I'm feeling [insert age]."
2. "Aging like a fine wine."
3. "HBD to the MVP!"
4. "Old enough to know better, young enough to do it anyway."
5. "Happy cake day!"
6. "Your life is a beautiful story. Here’s to writing your next chapter."
7. "Growing up is optional, growing old is mandatory."
8. "Another year closer to those senior citizen discounts!"
9. "Level unlocked."
10. "Growing stronger each year, thanks to our customers!"

10 motivational Instagram captions

Sometimes, the image is so aesthetic that it requires something moving to accompany it. Here are some options for your next Instagram post. (Bonus: these could make for some great text over Instagram reels, too.)

1. "Create the things you wish existed."
2. "Turning can't into can and dreams into plans."
3. "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success."
4. “You didn’t come this far to only come this far.”
5. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
6. "When nothing goes right, go left."
7. The best view comes after the hardest climb."
8. "The sky is not the limit. Your mind is."
9. "The harder you work, the luckier you get."
10. "The secret to getting ahead is getting started."

10 Instagram captions for small businesses

It can be tricky to create fun captions for Instagram but still strike an appropriate tone and maintain your brand voice as a small business. Here are some clever Instagram captions to get you started:

1. "Who needs therapy when you can go shopping here?"
2.  "Shopping here is a form of self-care."
3. "Laughter is the best medicine, but our products are a close second."
4. "Behind every small business is a dream, hard work, and dedication."
5. "Big dreams, tiny team."
6. "Every order makes us do a happy dance!"
7. "Making cool stuff since [year]."
8. "Thanks for supporting our dream."
9. "Doing what we love for people who love what we do."
10. “Dream big, shop small.”

20 quotes for Instagram captions

Sometimes, someone else said it better. From Taylor Swift to Han Solo to William Shakespeare, here are some quotes that could make for the perfect Instagram caption.

1. "I don't even have a 'pla.'" — Phoebe Buffay, Friends
2. "Never tell me the odds." — Han Solo, Star Wars
3. "Love is the most common miracle."  — John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
4. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet
5. “People like me are gone forever when you say goodbye.” — Taylor Swift, All You Had To Do Was Stay
6. "Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” — John D. Rockefeller
7. "Isn't that just kick-you-in-the-crotch, spit-on-your-neck fantastic?" — Rachel Green, Friends
8. "Exit, pursued by a bear." — William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale
9. “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.” — Taylor Swift, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?
10. “It's not that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but it's your best friends who are your diamonds.” — Gina Barreca
11. "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." – C.S. Lewis
12. "The purpose of our lives is to be happy." – Dalai Lama
13. "Great things are done by a series of small things brought together." – Vincent Van Gogh
14. “Not all those who wander are lost.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
15. "I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying." – Oscar Wilde
16. "You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it." – Robin Williams
17. "The new me is really still the real me." — Drake, In My Feelings
18. “Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.” — Michael Scott, The Office
19. “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”― Neil Gaiman, Coraline
20. “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain

10 beach Instagram captions

Even if you're not a travel creator, you can be forgiven for flooding your feed with seaside Instagram posts on a beach holiday. Here are some poignant, clever, and cool Instagram captions for your beachy snaps and clips.

1. “My job is just… beach.” — Ken, The Barbie Movie
2. "I’m looking for a man in flip-flops. Sun-kissed. Seaside. Good vibes.”
3. “Life’s a beach.”
4. "Gone to the beach, be back never."
5. "Life is better in flip flops."
6. "The tans will fade, but the memories will last forever."
7. "Every time I slip into the ocean, it’s like going home." — Sylvia Earle
8. "Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
9. "The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." — Karen Blixen
10. "Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away." — Sarah Kay

10 Instagram captions for selfies

Here are some witty, funny, and moving Instagram captions for selfies.

1. "Be the reason someone smiles today."
2. “Confidence level: Insta selfie.”
3. "Self-love is the best love."
4. "Just another day being awesome."
5. "Won't delete later."
6. “You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." John Lennon, Imagine
7. “Always be a first-rate version of yourself and not a second-rate version of someone else.”― Judy Garland
8. “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” ― Mae West
9. “It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” ― Lewis Carroll
10. "Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are." — Brené Brown

What makes a good Instagram caption?

A strong Instagram caption supports your photo or video, offers a window into who you are, educates, prompts your followers to engage, or all of the above.

How does it fit into your creator or marketing goals for Instagram? Is it prompting follows, creating awareness, encouraging engagement, or sales?

Does it come across as authentic to your brand identity? Not every brand is witty, and not every brand is super serious.

Closely tied to authenticity is brand consistency in voice and tone. Your audience stays for the type of content you’re known for publishing, so a good caption should reflect who you are.

Does it encourage user engagement? Engagement is the bread and butter of any social media platform — your likes, retweets, shares, and more, show that your account resonates with your audience. It’s a great idea to focus on getting users to engage with your post in your Instagram captions.

Ultimately, however, your Instagram captions should be relevant to your images. Is there an object you want to highlight? Is there a theme you can run with? Stephanie Gutierrez, a Senior Social Media Strategist at Online Optimism recommends using playful puns to keep your caption light or clear and concise CTAs to drive your desired results.

How to write a great Instagram caption (according to experts)

A good caption can create more engagement, which improves how Instagram’s algorithm highlights your content on the feed.

Decide on what goals you want your Instagram captions to achieve

Once you know your goals: to sell, engage customers, or otherwise, you can better understand how to craft the copy of your caption.

“When coming up with Instagram captions, there are two things [to keep] mind,” says Mireia Boronat, a Senior Content Marketing Executive at The Social Shepherd. “The goal of that piece of content (awareness, engagement, or conversions) as well as the type of creative (entertaining, inspiring, promotion, or educational). These two factors will dictate how sales-y or creative we should be."

You also need to keep your audience and the circumstances of each of your Instagram posts in mind. A silly caption on a post about your brand’s giving-back initiative might not go down well. Alternatively, if you bury the main point too far in your caption, you may not achieve the goals you set for that post.

Determine the length and content of your caption

Not every caption needs to be short and sweet, but not every caption must be an essay. Some brands have super-engaged audiences who will read every word of their caption, while others are there for something else, like a new sale or product announcement.

As Mireia shares, “There's nothing better than knowing your audience to write something that will be relevant to them, and that is the right tone of voice.” Each post should have a purpose and intention, so lead each one with its specific goal and let that goal dictate the call to action. What do you want followers to do?

Several experts also recommend short Instagram captions. "People spend less time on each creative and scroll down to the next piece of content pretty quickly," Mireia says. "That's why keeping things short and sweet has more chances of performing better and referencing any pop culture or current trends.”

That said, there may be occasions when you want to lean into microblogging in your Instagram captions. This is a tactic often used by creators, who will grab their audience's attention with a short Instagram Reel — something that contains only enough text to intrigue — then follow up with the real value in their caption. This could be something like a how-to guide, tutorial, or personal story.

When users linger over a caption on a reel, the video will continue to loop in the background. That time spent on an Instagram post is also an important signal to the algorithm that your content is valuable, and may help increase your reach. 

Grab the reader’s attention immediately

Instagram’s format means that an attention-grabbing strategy is not always necessary, but it could be the difference between a user staying a few seconds longer on your post or scrolling past.

There are different ways to grab a viewer’s attention with your Instagram captions – the most effective is to include the most important details first. After a couple of lines of text, Instagram hides the rest of your caption behind a “more” link, so say the most important bit first. Only about the first sentence will be seen in a user’s Instagram feed, so make sure it’s compelling or asks a question.

Elizabeth Kraus, the marketing expert and content producer at Fit Small Business, recommends that you also experiment with emojis and text to get users to look twice at your post. 

“A couple of easy ways to do this are through using bold or italic or 𝓈𝒸𝓇𝒾𝓅𝓉 or even really extended •.,¸¸,.•´¯   𝓊𝓃𝓊𝓈𝓊𝒶𝓁  ¯´•.,¸¸,.• 𝕧𝕚𝕤𝕦𝕒𝕝 text, which you can get painlessly through cut-and-paste functionality on a site like LingoJam. The second is to add emojis to break up the text. Emojipedia has one of the easiest search engines for finding just the right icon for your Instagram posts.”

Once you’ve got the reader's attention, make sure your Instagram captions evoke some type of emotion. Elizabeth highlights a study cited in the book Brand Immortality that shows that emotional content is twice as effective as content that appeals to an instinctive part of the brain versus content that requires more cognitive processing.

Some other ways to grab attention are asking a question, directing people to your link in bio for more details, or using a clear call to action.

Examples of accounts with great Instagram captions

Some of the best Instagram caption ideas come from Instagram itself. I love scrolling through my Instagram feed to see what clever captions other brands and creators have come up with.

With that in mind, here are some of the best Instagram captions I've seen on the app lately:

Tessa Hughs: The 'reel' value is in the caption

I mentioned above how including the real value from your Instagram post in your caption rather than giving it all away in the video could boost reach.

Tessa Hughs (@spatialawareness____) does it masterfully in the video below. Two bonuses for this strategy: 

1. Your audience doesn’t need to tap and hold your reel to review advice they may have missed. 
2. A short reel than contains only the ‘hook’ of your post will be much easier to film and edit!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tessa Hughes (@spatialawareness____)

National Park Service: Longer Instagram captions with great engagement

We first discovered the wonder of the National Park Service’s Instagram account when it was featured in Link in Bio, a newsletter about social media. Their account often defies the convention of keeping Instagram captions between 150-300 characters with long, humorous, and engaging captions.

The account often starts Instagram posts with a funny sentence (as seen in the post below) or a CTA that encourages readers to continue reading the post, which follows through on the engaging introduction.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by National Park Service (@nationalparkservice)

We’re Not Really Strangers: Connecting to your audience through short but engaging Instagram captions

The Instagram account for the We’re Not Really Strangers card game has great engagement — over 5.6%, which is a lot for its audience of 5 million followers.

The Instagram captions on the posts tend to be short, but in tandem with the post, they always encourage conversation in the comments. In the post below, the brand's audience shares their "little things that aren't little" in the comments.

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A post shared by we’re not really strangers (@werenotreallystrangers)

Jeannette Aranda: Mixing long and short Instagram captions as the post calls for

Jeanette Ogden, who runs @shutthekaleup, is an Instagram influencer who posts a lot about motherhood, fitness, and food on her account.

She mixes caption length up depending on the post and sees a lot of engagement from her audience. People seem to resonate with her and enjoy it when she goes more into detail.

Jeanette’s account is a great example of understanding your audience and knowing when to go in-depth.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jeannette Aranda (@shutthekaleup)

Less is more when it comes to Instagram captions

Treat your Instagram captions like you would a press release, and look for ways to remove anything unnecessary. “Less is more” doesn’t just refer to the length of the post but also to the number of hashtags or emojis you include. Or, instead of tagging someone in the caption, use Instagram’s tagging feature instead.

You have up to 3,000 characters for every caption, though you don’t have to fill that space. But this doesn’t mean your Instagram captions can’t be long, either. It means you’re communicating the most important information and not adding filler.

Also, using a character counter can help ensure your social media captions stay within platform-specific character limits.