Experiment: What is the length of the video caption that generates the most engagement?

You’ve been hard at work on your edits, filters, and sound clips on your latest Instagram reel and are almost ready to post… but then you hit the caption field. Time for an existential crisis.

Should I just add a couple of hashtags and be done with it? Or is it time to poetize mini-essays? (Don’t forget the third option: just delete the draft and throw your phone in the ocean.) Suddenly, a fun opportunity to share on social media turned into an opportunity to question everything.

When it comes to captions on Instagram Reels, it’s hard to know just how much is too much – will a long caption help or hurt your engagement?

Well, if you enjoyed my story about whether long Instagram captions work better than short ones, consider this a sequel and buckle up.

It’s time to find out the ideal Instagram caption length the only way we know how: spamming my poor, unsuspecting Instagram followers with content and taking nice notes.

Let the science begin.

Hypothesis: Videos with long titles get more attention and reach

Celebrity designer Coco Chanel once said, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.”While stripped-down minimalism can be the way to go when it comes to Instagram, sometimes it seems like more is better.

At least that’s how it was in my last experiment with inscriptions. By comparing super-short captions with long, detailed captions, we found that longer captions overwhelmingly lead to higher engagement on an Instagram post.

Our hypothesis is that Instagram Reels will be no exception. (Need an Instagram Reels crash course? Here! You! Go!) After all, with Instagram posts, longer captions provided more information, more opportunities to connect with followers, and better SEO.

Presumably, all these advantages will be valid for reels. But why assume when I can spend a weekend creating 10 Instagram videos and using them as fun bait to find out the truth? It’s time to test my lettering skill.

Methodology

To test the ideal Instagram Reels post length, I posted five longer videos (over 125 words). I also posted five videos with short one line descriptions.

I decided that long and short title videos should be very similar to ensure that the content itself would not be an engagement factor.

Since I recently completed an elaborate renovation and just can’t wait to talk about it for hours with anyone who dares to stand still to listen, I figured before and after content is the way to go.

I made a couple of videos about my bedroom (one with a long caption, one with a short one), one about the bathroom and so on.

For each video, I chose my trending sound, just so Instagram wouldn’t think I was spamming too much.

I also wanted to do this to harness the power of the Instagram Reels algorithm, which tends to upscale videos containing music videos.

Ten videos have been released worldwide. When I returned 48 hours later to see how they were doing, this is what I found.

Results

TLDR: Instagram videos with shorter captions got more engagement and reach.

While Instagram posts with longer captions drew more attention in our last experiment, I was surprised to see that shorter captions were more successful when it came to Instagram reels.

I guess I didn’t need to spend so much time writing long captions, after all. But until these minutes are returned to me, the lessons of my past become the wisdom of my future. (And I’m not at all upset that the absolutely incredible inspirational phrase I just came up with is probably too long and wordy to ever use as a caption.)

What do the results mean?

As with all these experiments, these results should be taken with a grain of salt. I only left my reels for two days and obviously they were heavily focused on one particular topic.

It is quite possible that a different type of video with a different audience would have shown itself differently. I didn’t even use hashtags here, so that might have affected my reach too.

But I think there are a few key points here, namely that it’s better to spend time honing your editing skills than writing a perfect one-liner.

Skimming reels, deep diving posts

Videos like TiKTok are meant to be discoverable, so the people who watch them may not be your biggest fans or cousins ​​who feel obligated to follow you back.

This may explain why posts with long titles performed so much better than videos with long titles. If your audience is just watching your content to consume it as part of an endless stream of fast-digesting video content, a clear caption won’t add much to the experience.

Tell your story with content, not a headline

With Reels, it seems like it’s best if the title offers additional material rather than a full backstory.

Make sure your video can stand on its own and makes sense even without the context of the caption: if someone isn’t reading it, they should still feel like they got all the key takeaways. (Looking for some tips on creating standout Instagram videos? We’ve got you covered.)

Harness the SEO Power of Signatures

Just because captions aren’t the most eye-catching element of your video doesn’t mean you should just leave it blank. A caption is an opportunity to add some strong keywords and hashtags to increase your chances of being discovered. Even if no one ever reads your signature, the search index will.

Of course, every social media account is a unique and special butterfly, so your mileage may vary. The beautiful thing, however, is that it doesn’t cost you much to experiment with how captions (or if they!) work for you and your personal social media goals. Once you’ve put your heart and soul into creating the perfect Instagram video, a smart caption is just the icing on the cake.