Don’t miss this opportunity to get your message across

Baby goats can provide many lessons for getting your message across.

What??? Baby goats?! What do baby goats have to do with getting your message across? Not much (though they sure are cute). But your eye was drawn to the photo and the caption, wasn’t it?

Captions are often overlooked in web articles, but they’re a great opportunity to get your message across. People may not read the entire article, but they will likely look at the photo. And if they look at the photo, chances are they’ll read the caption too.

The caption is a chance to get your message across to people who may not read the article, and it’s also a chance to entice them to read more.

To do:

Look at your top 10 most visited articles. Do you use captions in your photos? If so, are they descriptive of the photo, or do they tell a mini story?

For example, let’s say you have a photo receiving an award for their project. A caption in a print publication might say something like, “Girl Scout Troop #857 from Oklahoma City receive the Mayor’s Award for outstanding service to the community.” The web isn’t print, so you don’t have to play by those rules.

Try something like, “These girl scouts devoted their summer break to rebuilding the run-down park and are now being recognized by the mayor for their service.” Doesn’t that sound a little more inviting? Then, if visitors want to know more, they can find details in the story. If they click away from your site without reading the full story, at least they might be aware of the work the girl scouts did.

Take a look at the captions in your 10 most visited articles and think about how you can use them to connect the photo with a key point in your content. The more useful captions you can write, the better.

Bonus tip: These updated captions could make great social media posts!