Written the way you write, or not worth posting
Everybody can tell. A caption built out of three emoji and the word indulge is recognisably nobody's, and it costs you more than posting nothing would. So the first thing your team does is learn how you already talk — from your own posts, your own reviews and your own menu — and then you go through it and correct it.
What a template writes ✨ Treat yourself this Tuesday! 🍝 Our AMAZING pasta is calling your name — don't miss out!! 🔥
#foodie #foodporn #instafood #yummy #delicious #foodlover #eeeeeats #foodgasm #foodstagram #nomnom
What yours writes Two courses, $17, Tuesday to Thursday. The sea bass is in it this week — over charcoal, since the weather turned. Until three, and then it goes back on the menu at its own price.
#bangkoklunch #sathorn
The rest go in the first comment, so the caption stays a caption.
- Three to five words for how you sound
- Warm. Dry. Never breathless. You choose them, and every caption is written against them.
- A do list and a don't list
- Say the dish by name. Never promise a discount. Two short lists that stop you having the same argument every week.
- The things you always say
- Your sign-off, the house phrase, the line about the rain. Kept, and rotated, so it reads as yours rather than as a stamp.
- How you punctuate
- Emoji never, sparingly or often. How long a caption runs. Which language comes first when you write in two.
- Where the tags go
- One or two inside the caption and the rest underneath. How many is taken from what places in your own market actually use, not from an article about hashtags.
All of it is drafted for you on the first read and every line of it is yours to overwrite. A voice you are not allowed to edit is not your voice, it is a setting — and the venues that get the most out of this are the ones that spent twenty minutes arguing with the first draft.