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Caption
A caption is the text portion of a social media post, the words under an image, video, or link, where the hook leads and a call-to-action moves the reader.
What is a caption?
The caption is everything you write under your image or video. It's where the hook lives, where the call-to-action goes, and where context turns a piece of media into a story.
A photo without a caption is decoration. A photo with the right caption is a post.
What good captions do
- Lead with a hook in the first line. The feed preview cuts off after 80 to 200 characters depending on the network
- Match the network's voice: LinkedIn captions are longer and more thoughtful; X captions are punchy; Instagram lives in between
- End with intent: a question that earns a real reply, a CTA that moves the reader somewhere, or a closing line that lands
Network character limits
- X: 280
- Bluesky: 300
- Threads / Pinterest / Mastodon: 500
- Instagram: 2,200
- LinkedIn: 3,000
- TikTok: 4,000
- YouTube: 5,000
- Facebook: 63,206 (don't actually use that)
TryPost's caption character counter shows your text fits every network at once and warns you before truncation.
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