Have you ever asked yourself, what is the best length for an Instagram Reels caption? You spent hours working on the edits, filters and sounds for your most recent Instagram Reel, and you’re almost ready to publish it. You then get to the caption field, though. Warning, existential crisis ahead!
Is it okay to add a few hashtags and call it a day? Or should we write a mini-essay with wax poetic? (Remember your third choice: simply delete the draft and drop your phone in the water) A nice chance to share on social media has suddenly turned into a reason to doubt everything.
It might be challenging to determine how much is too much when it comes to Instagram Reels captions. Will a long caption increase or decrease engagement?
It’s time to discover the best Instagram Reel caption length in this article.
Methodology
We posted five videos with long captions (125+ words) in order to determine the appropriate length for an Instagram Reels post. We also uploaded five videos, each with a one-line, simple description.
In order to make sure that the material itself wasn’t a factor in any engagement, both the long and short caption videos are in the same content.
We selected a different popular sound for each video to avoid being too spammy on Instagram. Additionally, we wanted to take advantage of the Instagram Reels algorithm since it favors videos with music, by doing this.
Then we post those 10 videos onto the media. Here is what we discovered when we returned 48 hours later to check on how they had performed.
Learn more about how to create Instagram Reels on your own here!
Results
TL;DR: Instagram Reels with shorter captions attracted more attention and had a larger reach.
We were amazed to discover that Instagram Reels were more effective with shorter captions.
| Reels with Long Captions | Reels with Short Captions | |
| Total Likes | 10 | 74 |
| Total Comments | 2 | 3 |
| Total Reach | 603 | 672 |
It seems that writing long captions wasn’t really necessary after all. So the final answer is that the best length for an Instagram Reels caption is simply short.
What do the findings tell us?
These findings need to be interpreted with caution. Our Reels were only posted for two days, and they were obviously only concentrated on a single topic.
It’s extremely likely that a different kind of reel and a different audience would have performed differently. Our reach may have been impacted by the fact that we didn’t even utilize hashtags in these Reels posts.
But we believe there are some important lessons to be learned from this, one of which is that you’re better off investing your time in improving your editing abilities than coming up with the perfect and smooth caption words.
Reels are for skimming
Reels, like TikTok, are merely for catching the audience’s attention, so those who watch them might not be your biggest supporters or your relatives who feel responsible for following you back. A detailed caption won’t make much of a difference if your audience is only viewing your content to absorb it as part of an infinite stream of quick-to-digest content.
Use the content, not the caption, to tell your story.
With Reels, it seems best if the caption provides supplemental information rather than a detailed narrative.
Your video should be able to stand alone and makes sense even without a caption; even if a viewer doesn’t read it, they should still feel as though they understood the main points.
Utilize the SEO potential of the caption.
However, you shouldn’t just leave the caption empty just because they aren’t the most compelling feature of Reels. In order to improve your chances of being found, use a few powerful keywords and hashtags in the caption. The search index will read your caption even if no one ever cares about it.
Naturally, each person’s social media account is one-of-a-kind, so results may vary. The wonderful thing, though, is that you can experiment with how much you want since it costs you nothing. So that, you can see how captions work for you and your own social media objectives. A creative caption is really simply the cherry on top after you’ve put all of your heart and soul into creating the ideal Instagram Reel.