How to Create Engaging Captions and Hashtags for Social Media

Posting on your event rental company’s social media can be daunting. How do you enter into the conversation in the events industry? How do you use the platform as a tool to grow your party rental business? It all starts by writing content that makes your ideal customer want to know more about your rental company. Start with an appealing intro, create meaningful messages, and call your potential clients to action.

To get the most value from your event rental company’s social media presence, consider these useful steps:

  1. Describe the problem your events customers face.

     

  2. Utilize captions to provide unique insights.

     

  3. Include a clear call-to-action to drive sales.

     

  4. Use targeted hashtags to meaningfully expand your audience.

     

Let’s dive in:

Hook in Your Audience With a Problem

Your potential event customers’ problem is most likely the number one marketing message you aren’t using. If the very first words of your social media post make your reader stop scrolling because they say, “Hey, that sounds like me,” then you are doing it right.

For example, starting off a caption with “Ugh! If I see another chiavari chair at a wedding, I am going to puke” will draw the attention of a future client who is looking for unique decor options and fancies themself to be more stylish than the average party thrower. If you offer more uncommon rentals, you have just engaged your ideal customer.

You can phrase the hook in the form of a statement or a question. Some great questions to grab more eyeballs on the rest of your caption could be, “Are you struggling to find the perfect linens to match your micro-weddings style?” or “Did you know that it doesn’t matter how great the food is if the plates are ugly?”.

Regardless of the format, the goal of the hook is to get your follower to read the next sentence. Each sentence that follows is designed to get them all the way through to your call-to-action, where you have the opportunity to sell to them or deepen the relationship.

Post with Purpose in the Body of the Caption

Often, event rental industry pros post on social media just to get images of their inventory out in the world. While that is not a bad aim, you can use social media for much more than just an interactive catalog. The words you write should position your brand as a helpful expert and inspire action. Since you have already proposed the problem, the words that follow should relate to how you can help be the solution.

There are three main social media post types that you can use.

  1. Pro Tips: This is the most direct option that addresses the solutions head-on. If the problem you pose is that no one is ever sure about the cleanliness of inflatables, you could talk about the top 5 things to ask your rental company to make sure your bouncy house is safe and highlight your cleaning protocol.

  2. Empathy + Credibility: Show that you understand the problem from personal experience and that you have the knowledge and talent to provide a fix. One of the most frustrating things for any planner is being knocked off their timetable by unforeseen rental set up or tear down time. You could talk about a client’s experience with another unnamed rental company and how it made them feel. Then, you could illuminate your readers about how you have open lines of communication and always stick to the time you set.

  3. The Three-Step Plan: Everyone wants to transform from an unwanted state to a desired state. Help your audience do that by providing a high-level, simple plan. Don’t know what type of rentals you need to match your event theme? No problem! All you have to do is

    1) Create a mood board
    2) List all of the elements you need to execute your vision
    3) Contact rental companies and send them your mood board and list to match with their inventory.

    A plan creates clarity and makes your potential customer’s life easier. Any time you can remove the fog of decision making, you will win.

Rotate through these types of posts to build a complete story on your feed. Over time, you will begin to be known for being action-oriented, customer-centric, creative, and professional.

Tell Your Social Media Audience What to Do

If you just offer great advice, your audience will love you, but your bank account will not. You need to clearly tell your caption readers what to do next after you drop your juicy brain gems. Encourage them to take what they have just learned and put it into practice. This could be telling them to click a link to schedule a call or to read one of your blog posts that goes more in-depth on the topic. Invite your audience into a deeper relationship with you to nudge towards the sale.

Use Hashtags to Broaden Your Reach, Not to Be Clever

While it is very tempting to just use hashtags to highlight a point, make sure that you lean into their true purpose as categorization and discovery tools for social media. The goal of a hashtag is to help users find what they are looking for. Use relevant hashtags for your posts that your ideal customer would search for. Some examples could include #partyrentals #eventrentals or #weddinginspo.

Resist the lure of the hashtags with lots of posts like #love or #ootd. Those tend to have lower engagement and are not related to what you are selling. The best way to discover the hashtags that will work the best for your business is to look at what hashtags your audience, competitors, and industry leaders are already using.

After you capture the attention of your ideal customer, the most important thing to remember is that you need to engage. It’s not social if you’re not social. You have done the work to get them interested. Now, you just need to keep the conversation going.

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