My Five Part Caption Strategy for Better Social Media Posts!

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Tired of writing social media captions that do absolutely nothing to generate direct messages to your inbox, visitors to your website, or most importantly, applications to your agency?  I’ve got a five-part caption strategy that’s gonna fix all three of those for you and you can’t afford to make one more police recruiting post without it...keep reading! 👀

Hey everyone, it’s Tom Sye your Police Marketing FTO and this week, let’s talk about those all-important words that are found, depending on the platform, either on top of, underneath, or on the side of every single social media post out there and that is...the caption.  💬

Now this is an area that causes a lot of confusion and hesitancy with people who are trying to promote their agency on social media because there’s so many questions that you have about it and there’s really no ground rules. 😖 

What should I write?  What shouldn’t I write? How long should it be?  Should I say this, should I say that.  What if people don’t understand what I’m talking about?  What are those things called...hashtags?  How do I use those?  The questions go on and on...I know...I used to have all of these questions too. 🙋‍♂️

That’s why I developed this five-part police recruiting caption strategy that will have people sending you messages, commenting on your posts, visiting your website, and turning in police applications.  Let’s go! 🙌

Before we get into the strategy, let me clear something up...

What about the length of the caption.  Some people say keep them short so you can hold on to people’s attention spans.  Other experts tell you to make them long so you can get better engagement.  Here’s what I’ll tell you about caption length from my experiences...make them as long as you need them to be. 💡

If you can deliver an effective message quickly...something like captioning a photo with people smiling in it with ‘smiles...standard issue at’ whatever department you work for, then perfect.  Short and sweet.  If it requires more information and details like with a job opening or event that’s coming up...take the space that it needs and stay in it for the long haul.  You don’t want people not showing up and believe you me, they’re not gonna ask if you didn’t tell them. 💯

Determining the right length of a caption is something you learn by doing.  Every platform is different, every post is different, and every audience is different.  You gotta figure out what works for you. 👍

OK...let’s get into it...my five-part police recruiting caption strategy. 🖐️

If you want to be successful in converting eyeballs to applications, every social media post you make from this point forward should include all five of these caption elements... 

1. The hook

You see that first line in the caption of this newsletter's post (or the first line in the body if you're ready the email/blog version)?  The one that asks if you’re tired of writing social media captions that do nothing for you?  That’s what’s known as the hook and when coupled with an eye-catching photo or video title screen, are the most important parts of every social media post you will make! ⚠️

The reason for this? 🤔

When it comes to social media, you have right around 3 seconds to grab someone’s attention. Yep. That’s it! About 3 seconds! Clearly, this isn’t a whole lot of time, so you have to do something to get your applicants to stop their scroll and pay attention to you! 🛑

A hook gives your audience a reason to stop and check things out, just like you, wanting to learn how to write better captions for example.  You read the hook and are now reading this far because of it.  🤯

Hooks come in many different styles and can range from engaging questions to a simple ‘now hiring’ phrase.  Just make sure you constantly mix them up, so your audience doesn’t go blind to what you’re trying to do because you keep writing the same thing or use the same style over and over.  🐭🐭🐭

2.  The body

This is the blue-collar portion of the caption where your words punch in and get to work.  The body should provide all of the details you’re aiming to provide and be very clear and concise.  Use proper punctuation and don’t go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...see how annoying that is...be thorough but don’t over do it. 🤮

The biggest key for success with the body is splitting it up into digestible parts.  Every couple of sentences max, start a new paragraph (take note of the format of this newsletter).  That makes it so much easier for the reader and encourages them to keep going as opposed to thinking, there’s no way I’m not reading all that. 

3.  The WTF...where to friend?

This third part of the caption is where you want you audience to end up and it’s a combination statement of action and place to go.  For example, the WTF of your job posting can ask ‘you ready?’ followed by a link to the application.  A post about intern information can say ‘let’s do this’ followed by a link to the intern section of your website.  And a community event post with a ‘we gonna see you there?’ question can be followed by the address of the where you’re going to be. 🗺️

I call this the 'where to friend' element to remind you to be friendly when providing direction.  Just because you’re online, you shouldn’t forget the basic manners that were taught to you when you were much younger.  That encouragement and niceness is what gets people to follow through. 🖱️  

4.  The Call to Action

This is very similar to the statement of action we just talked about, and if I’m being honest, we’re really just doubling up on what we want people to do and we call it something different.  But this double tap, so to speak, is very effective in reaching the people who may have stumbled on your post and aren’t interested in what you’re trying to get them to do but will follow this easy call to action to feel like they’re a part of something. 🥳

The call to action portion of your caption is where you want to encourage people to like your post, share your post, or even both if you really want to go for it.  Let’s say you make a post celebrating a recent promotion of someone to Sergeant.  Your WTF could be ‘ready to see where this career will take you?’ followed by the link to apply and your call to action on the next line can read, ‘give this post a like to congratulate Sergeant whoever on their promotion’.  👏

You could have someone both apply, and like your post for the double win...while also capturing action from those not interested in applying right now with a simple like that expands the total reach of your post on the platform.  Either way...winning!  🏆

5. The hashtag

These little things seem so innocuous sitting down there at the end of your post, but they are incredibly important for making sure your posts end up in front of the correct eyeballs.  Never skip using hashtags but also don’t use general hashtags to display how you’re feeling like # whataday or # makingitgreat. 👎

You see, hashtags help sort social media posts into categories.  So, when users search for something, say ‘police’ or ‘police jobs’, or ‘law enforcement careers’, all good hashtags for you to use by the way, they can be shown relevant content to what they’re looking for.  Make sure your hashtags are keeping that in mind and showing up in relevant search results. 🔍

Don’t get crazy with them though...this isn’t a free for all and a lot of platforms are increasingly penalizing posts in the algorithm for stuffing too many in their captions...so keep them very specific to exactly what your post is about. 🎯

There you go!  My five-part police recruiting caption strategy that is sure to give your social media interactions a nice boost.  Give it a try and let me know how it worked out for you!  Spoiler alert, you’re going to have good news for me...it’s that good!  😎

Now...need some help with coming up with content so you can put this caption strategy to use?  My Social Media Content Calendar is loaded with all the police related content ideas you need to fill up your social media feed month after month! Sign up for free on my website at forcopstraining.com/smcc. 

🗣️ Psst...that’s the WTF part of this newsletter. 👆

Have a friend at another agency who really needs help with their captions?  Give this newsletter a like or share it with them so they can learn too.  Police recruiting is better, when we’re in it together.  🤝

🤫 That's your call to action. 👆

Have more questions about police recruiting, marketing, or anything else you're struggling with? Don't hesitate to reach out...I’m always here to help. ⛑

Until next week my Police Marketing Squad, happy recruiting! 😃

Tom

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👋 I’m Tom Sye, your Police Marketing FTO. I founded ‘For Cops’ Training to teach Police Departments how to attract more qualified candidates through the same tried and tested methods I’ve used for the past ten years at my own department to keep up with turnover and stay ahead of vacancies.

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