It’s no secret that graphics, images, and videos generally get the best performance across social media. That said, regardless of how fabulous your visual media is, captions are equally important.

When you choose media to share on social networks, it is important to consider whether or not your media will evoke curiosity. As we’ve been learning from the social media training with Lynn Bardowski, it is important to use media and captions that will start conversations and encourage engagement.

If you share a graphic that shows an item, the item’s description, and the item’s price, there really isn’t much for your followers to be curious about because it’s all laid out in front of them. This type of tell-all graphic leaves no room for questions or engagement. It also eliminates the need for your followers to actually consume your content because the graphic can literally be absorbed in a glance.

In an effort to avoid getting too geeky on the topic of social media algorithms, we’ll just say this: While your visual media is an incredibly important value across social media, your caption could be the key to your post being seen by more people. The new algorithms tend to favor posts that get a lot of engagement. When a post receives lots of engagement, it signals to the social platform that the content is high quality and that other users might also want to see it, therefore furthering your post’s reach. Engagement translates into likes, comments, shares, and clicks.

In other words, if you post media that grabs the attention of your followers combined with a caption that makes your followers stop scrolling and read your caption to learn more, social media platforms will consider it a higher quality post than a post that is simply a tell-all graphic. Add a link in with your caption, and you’ve just earned social media gold when your followers are intrigued enough by your media and caption to click the link to learn more and/or place an order.

While it may seem efficient to simply post graphics that reveal everything, it isn’t effective in the world of social media marketing. It is more important to grab attention with media, engage your audience with a caption (don’t forget to monitor your social media and reply to questions and comments left by your followers to build a relationship with them!), and get the link click to your website.