When writing for social media, our main goals are to:
At Surfshark, we generally have four main types of social media posts along with occasional posts on other platforms:
| Type | Length |
|---|---|
| Instagram post | Should be a mix between long and short captions. Could be as short as 1 sentence or as long as 500-1K characters (including spaces) + CTA. |
| Instagram story | Should be short. Best to keep them up to 1 sentence (if necessary, could be 2-3 sentences) + CTA. |
| Up to 280 characters (including spaces & links) + CTA. | |
| Up to 500 characters (but this does not necessarily mean all captions have to be this long) + CTA. | |
| Instagram reels | Up to 2,200 characters and 30 hashtags (but ideally keep it short like TikTok) + CTA. |
| Tiktok | Up to 150 characters, including hashtags + CTA. |
When writing social media captions, follow the points outlined in the Social Media Checklist to see the different TOVs for each platform. Below you’ll see examples of captions.
The first sentence should grab the reader's attention. It should be a fact, a question or illustrate a problem/goal/fear.
Examples:
Let’s chat: Ever wondered about what VPN companies without a no-logs policy do with your data?
Humans have emotions, code doesn’t.
Twitter: Cybercrime against children is no novelty. But the way in which they should respond isn’t taught either. Teach children how to spot a phishing scam with our FREE interactive cartoon: https://surfshark.com/research/cybersecurity-for-kids Don’t feed the phish 🐟
We want users to react to our social media posts, therefore, we need to write in a way that sparks emotions. People share/comment/like content on social media only if it strikes a chord with them. This doesn't just mean adding a sentence asking to comment on the post. Ask questions, provide clear benefits, include relatable examples - something that would spark emotions.
Example:
Phishing is nothing new. Anyone can become a target, whether you have 100 or 1M followers. If you ever receive a message from Instagram customer support, check if it’s legit first.