My Secret to Write Golden Instagram Captions with Storytelling Formulas!

Instagram captions are one of the best formats to scale the relationship with your audience & get more sales for your business.

But to nail your Instagram captions, you need to learn storytelling formula used by big brands to sell out their inventory.

I’m talking about frameworks used by marketing teams at Fenty Beauty (Rihanna’s Brand) & rare beauty (selena Gomez’s brand). Both of these brands nail their Instagram captions with help of clever word play & storytelling.

But to begin with you need to understand how storytelling helps businesses to scale their business & build a better relationship with customers.

What Brand Storytelling stands for

Storytelling for brands isn’t telling fairytale to your audience to make them fall in love with your brand.

It’s about making your audience understand what the brand stands for by telling the audience a compelling story about how your brand do business differently than the competitors.

In a short sentence, Brand storytelling is walking your ideal customers through a journey to help them understand your brand messaging.

How Selena Gomez’s Rare beauty used storytelling

Recently after the controversy between Hailey beiber & selena gomez. Selena went live to thank her audience for supporting her & during the controversy & trends about her vs hailey beiber. Sales for rare beauty also went up as the audience was trying to support her.

During this time period she went live and shared the vision and story behind her new beauty kit. That it’s for everyone for every skin tone, all the attention was on her brand.

And she put the story out there that her brand stands for “everyone”. No barriers!

After that her marketing team started running Ads with same statement as Ad heading on every single platform!

That’s brand storytelling in practicality, real brands don’t tell shiny stories. They tell right stories at right time to make people connect.

And that’s what your Instagram caption need, not glittery emojis to spark storytelling. But simple storytelling to make people engage.

How To Use Storytelling In Your IG Caption Writing Process

I have seen creators with 2.3-5M followers sell less than 10 products when working with brands. Same stands for brands, without using compelling stories & building audience connections. You will eventually fail to capture the best of your audience.

That’s why it is important to use storytelling in your Instagram captions. How?

Focus on Making Followers click

Your story won’t work to convert, if no one reads. That’s why you need to work on starting lines of your caption. Try to make the first few lines intriguing enough for readers to not lose the connection.

This starting part is more about your understanding of writing better titles as you will need to sum up the message of story in starting to make people read.

Your Story need to be simplified

A complex story can make a bigger impact on your audience as they will perceive it as a more valuable story. But at the same time, research shows that brands should focus more on making their business more memorable.

That’s why simplified stories in captions to help a broader audiences will help your audience to remember the message of your post & brand.

Try to focus on using words that make it easier for your audience to see the vision behind your brand. The easier it is to see, the higher impact you will have!

Ending comes before interval

This is the principle used by Pixar to write amazing stories. And it works for brands too.

The reason why ending is far more important than interval is because you have to remember what you want your audience to have at the end of the story.

If you can figure out how you can leave your audience with a good ending to understand your post. You can fill the middle part of the story easier.

Endings are hard even for great storytellers.

To Sell Better, Ask this

You need to ask this question to find the importance of storytelling to sell products in Instagram caption. What question?

Ask yourself: Why you need to tell this story to make them buy? From the answer you will understand what is the key message you want to spread through your story.

When you know that, the caption writing gets better and easier.

Storytelling In Instagram Stories Vs Captions

My personal beliefs are storytelling in IG stories is far more effective than captions. The reason behind is narrative behind stories is people don’t expect you to deliver the value like original posts. That’s why storytelling in that format can impact your relationship with audience in a good way.

But regarding followers growth & organic reach, you have to use storytelling in captions because that’s how you gain new followers.

Storytelling In Instagram stories is for community building, on other hand in captions it stands out for follower growth & product sales.

Instagram Storytelling for building 540 True Fans

I’ve been very straightforward & transparent with my audience & storytelling was part of my strategy from beginning of my journey.

I wasn’t highly active on Instagram but constant use of storytelling resulted in me gaining 540 newsletter subscribers in 2 weeks of launching my first edition.

Why this happened? My newsletter was my product here. And I was very clear from the beginning about why I started, what’s my goal and much more.

My audience understood the brand story of The Social Juice (my newsletter) which resulted in getting 10% of my IG audience to sign-up within two weeks.

That shows power of storytelling to build businesses with ease & no-pain.

Takeaway

Instagram storytelling for captions is simple to explain. I told you simplify the message, figure the ending, have an attention grabbing starting. But you know what? Your first Instagram caption will be bad at story but you will get better with practice.

This is a life-changing skill and once you master it. You will have a better chance at audience building, networking and much more. Important part is you start doing the practice work!

The Marketing Genius of Rihanna At Super Bowl

This is what I’m hearing about Rihanna not getting paid and sneaking a product placement during her super bowl performance.

A lot of marketers on twitter, IG & Tiktok are coining it as Rihanna will benefit a lot from this marketing move. Marketers with real experience know that this won’t benefit Rihanna as much as Tiktok marketers are estimating.

But I believe this is a great time to explain how Buyer psychology works.

Not a single potential buyer of yours is just going on google or social media and buying from the first brand they see.

In my open-report earlier this year, where I found out that:

95% of potential buyers aren’t actively looking to purchase. They need to be informed about their needs.

That’s why your brand needs to create enough awareness around your business to make a potential customer consider buying from you.

Brand awareness can be generated through content, Influencers, events and many other channels.

And that’s the first reason why Rihanna’s sales might go up. As the people were already aware about her products from different channels, they were in their journey to buy her products.

Another awareness generating event made the potential buyer reach the decision of making a purchase.

Like I mentioned that, they needed to be reminded of their need. How gorgeous was she looking during the event?

That look boosted the desire of her average buyer to buy more products from fenty beauty to look that good.

Power of Influencers

Another research finds that 32% of consumers trust celebrity backed brands more. But now celebrities roles are also being replaced by Influencers.

And now Adobe’s Creator report shows only 14% of creators are influencers. So, you need to choose influencers instead of creators & celebrities

Now Rihanna’s music gives a brand messaging of strong women and that’s another factor influencing the decisions of buyers.

When working with creators or Influencers, you need to study their content first to understand the messaging because number of followers won’t help you get more sales.

Just like 100M viewers won’t buy Rihanna’s Product, buyers will be the ones connecting with brand messaging.

Less focus on numbers, more on messaging.

Product Photography

Fenty did well at nailing the product imagery & visual content before the super bowl to make the feels of their product more relatable.

Why this worked is also backed by data, As 89% of consumers agree that product imagery is important.

I don’t need to tell more about this because image is art that speaks thousand words. And if you can nail your Ad creatives to make users connect. The conversions will eventually come.

But you also have to nail the messaging & awareness as I mentioned.

The End move

I don’t know this was intentional but she did many interviews where she kinda gave the impression that musical guests will be joining.

But in the end, she decided to stand alone & announced pregnancy too. Making sure the camera captures her using fenty beauty & looking good.

She didn’t do that alone, there is marketing team behind her that understands marketing. Fenty Beauty’s marketing team is doing well at email marketing too.

You shouldn’t just talk about her super bowl genius, try to study her brand well enough. It doesn’t end at sneaking your product in super bowl performance.

This was my analysis of how marketers & businesses copy what Rihanna did at super bowl but in the correct way. Study Fenty Beauty’s marketing or may be spy on it to learn more.

How The Last Crumb Became a Luxury Cookies Brand

This is How Matthew Jung, the founder of The Last Crumb, built a luxury cookies brand with the help of clever marketing and consumer research.

Early Work on Building Customer Experiences

Matthew and his co-founder, from the beginning, knew that their cookies were delicate and highly delicious. But from the start, they decided to charge $12 per cookie and to sell a box of 12 cookies for $150.

They needed more than a great product.

The co-founder, Derek Jaeger, knew from the beginning the need for marketing and building better customer experiences to scale the brand.

Derek wanted to take the principles used by brands like Rolex, Nike, and others to anticipate their target customers to forget about the price and think about the experience of eating the cookies.

How They Built a Luxury Experience

Derek, in one of the interviews, said they hadn’t spent a dime on marketing. Here’s how they built a luxury experience with $0 marketing.

Product Packaging: The brand confirms that in the early days, they increased spending on making their boxes and cookie packs to ensure consumers love the unboxing experience.

Before I get into the next part, even though they claimed $0 marketing spend, I think they meant paid marketing.

Because they hired Cole Schafer, the founder of HoneyCopy, to help them with email marketing and copywriting.

Email Marketing: Cole and the co-founder Derek worked on crafting an email marketing strategy. The brand on average, hits the customer with more than 5-6 emails on your order. Explaining the brand story, how orders are prepared, etc. To give the customers that premium experience.

The next part Cole worked on, and he mentioned on a podcast that he wanted to visualize the cookies through words with the names of cookies.

Product Naming: Cole worked on naming the cookies with the usage of clever words and messaging to visualize the cookies to the consumers.

With names like “What the F*ck Velvet”, “Not Today Mr. Muffin Man” “50 Cent” (Birthday Cookie), “Stiffler’s Mom”, etc.

With every cookie drop, they have new names shifting the perspective of buyers on how it will taste based on the name.

In recent times, they have launched new-to-new styles of cookies with different names. They are anticipating every drop!

Using Nike’s Sneaker Drop Strategy

The brand has thousands of people on its waiting lists for cookie drops due to its exclusivity.

They use a framework Nike uses to drop sneakers and create exclusivity around the product.

The Last Crumb uses the principles of luxury management, where they turn cheap products into expensive, high-demand products through exclusive distribution strategies like lottery drops.

Where selected customers on a waiting list get the chance to order the product and buy to enjoy the experience.

The reason exclusive distribution strategies work is that they don’t just elevate the customer experience but also help to build the community and provoke internet discussions.

You can find 100s of community discussions around their cookie drop because influencers posted they got the drop, and people discussed, “I also tried but bad luck,” meaning all that exclusivity and a time stamp on getting the cookies created discussions that helped them grow organically faster and better.

The Last Crumb's story shows us that building a luxury brand in any industry isn't about having a shiny product; it's more about how you craft your brand messaging to grow your business.

7 Key Elements To Build A Strong Personal Brand in 2022

Personal Brands are the new marketing channels deriving your target audience towards your business and product line.

Personal Brands like Steve Jobs and Elon musk are the reason Tesla and Apple are thriving in this decade. What can we learn about personal branding from these both entrepreneurs?

Here are 7 Key Elements you need to be build a successful Personal Brand like Elon Musk & Steve Jobs in 2022!

Human- Behaviour

This is the most difficult part but you need to start with understanding “how people see you?”. You want to build a personal brand everyone loves but at first you need to define your brand position. Think from a strangers perspective, and analyse what’s the most likeable, valuable and hateful part of your brand.

An easier way can be surveying your current audience. You will see different-different perspective but align your brand for one point of view.

Build your personal brand around that and you will find more success than other People trying to build a personal brand with undefined target audience.

Networking

Your network plays a vital role in building your brand. How? To show your presence in the industry you need to collaborate and network more and more. Here are few tactics that will help you to build an effective network of people that influence your personal brand.

Show your availability and presence by reaching out to your closest colleagues and industry people because those real relations will spread the word!
Remove Personal Brands with Bad reputation. Elon Musk now has a completely different personal brand while people who started with him are hated by Tech startups and referred as PayPal Mafia. Don’t let other brands network influence your new audience.
Make a List of 10-15 People and connect with them and build relationships. Then, ask for suggestions from those people about who to connect within industry now?

These 3 Tactics will help you build a great network of people who understand your personal brand and will spread the word around your business.

Storytelling

Your Story makes your personal brand connect with people more easily. Every Disney movie Hero has a different storyline and but your favourite Disney Hero is the one you find most relatable.

Why you relate to that particular hero? Because your story aligns with his storyline. Even though it’s aligning only 1% you will find it relatable. And That’s what you need to do!

Tell your story to your target audience and be real. If your story doesn’t connect with a huge audience, it’s not a problem. But the fact you are being truthful will help you build an authentic brand that only few relates in the beginning but with that your presence and story will be more relatable!

Consistency

In your journey of building a brand, failures are waiting for you to stop and leave dreams of building a personal brand in 2022.

But the best thing you can do is to document your failures and share your thoughts on how or why you failed because consistency is the most effective strategy to build a personal brand that people actually know about in your Target Market.

Consistency is required, that’s why figure out a structure to make sure that you show up everyday to share your thoughts through a post, live or quick reel. In an unstructured way, you will run out of ideas and context to why and how to show up the next day!

I built a ghost Personal Brand when I started due to inconsistency. Don’t make that mistake!

Reasonability

There’s a famous saying that people don’t want to know how you do it, they wanna know why you do it?

Which sentence is more appealing?

I am using Instagram for my business because that’s where my target audience.
I use Instagram to sell my services to my target audience.

If you found the first one more relatable. Your are like most humans, who take most actions based on the reason behind it. If you chose the second option, you are among few humans who focus on motive more than reasonability.

To Build A Personal Brand that makes people buy, you need to give your audience insights about why you do it and how it’s changing your life. When they will hear the reasons, they will be more interested in your personal Brand.

“Give them a reason, to stick with your personal brand”.

Your Presence

It might sound harsh but no one will take you serious unless you have a strong presence in your industry. That means you need to build a social media following, blog or community to show your presence and get new opportunities and followers.

In 2022, Everyone with a social media following has a personal brand but they don’t get treated as a personal brand because they don’t focus on all other elements of personal branding. But you are focusing on them and if you don’t focus on your social presence. Then you have silent personal brand worse than a brand with bad reputation.

That’s why you need to build your audience on social media, blog or through community tools to spread the word out!

Product Alignment

The last and most crucial aspect of a brand is how you are going to align your product and services with your brand Image. I failed to find the best product for my audience for months. I changed few things and launched new products and those were digital. But if you are starting a personal brand with a physical product with only one-line up. You need to test your audience a lot in the beginning.

Why? Because once you build a personal brand around a different need. Your product is about to fail on the launch day. That’s the reason you need to keep your brand aligned to your product line up from the day one.

Two best things you can do is promote the product and provide value with it from the first day.

Have a free product to test out your audience interests. Like If you are selling electric toothbrushes, keep your brand around dental hygiene and launch a hygiene guide first featuring your product. Then, introduce that product to your audience.

Never change the Brand alignment and go out of line because the end goal is to sell and you won’t sell if you did that!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 4Cs of personal branding?

4Cs of Personal Branding are Character, Consistency, Community and Creativity. You need to develop your character consistently which helps in building a creative community around your branding.

Who is an example of Strong Personal Brand?

Elon Musk, Gary vaynerchuck, Naval Ravikant, Brian Dean and many more business creatives are a great example of strong personal brands.

How To build a personal brand as a Coach?

Building a personal brand as a coach is important in 2022. You need to build a brand identity that connects with your clients and fulfils their needs through your offered services. That’s why always keep your services formatted to make the work easier for your ideal clients and build a different brand identity to attract more clients.

What are personal branding Trends in 2022?

Personal Branding in 2022 is all about having a social media following, Branded fonts and branding photography. Most Gen-Z and Millennial creatives trying to build a brand are focusing a lot on these aspects.

How to Stay Updated as a personal Brand?

You need to know what’s happening in industry and how platforms are changing. You can’t read every single piece of news about business. But you can subscribe to receive those updates from me, if you are interested in marketing and social media trends related content. You can subscribe to my newsletter where I share marketing and business updates that matter!

Building a Personal Brand as an entrepreneur is the best thing you can do to build a trustable business. Especially Growing Gen-Z user base on internet tells us that they prefer buying from brands that connect not hide!

Choice is yours a hideous brand or a trusted one. Which one you choosing?

A Visual Representation of This Blog Post!