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!