How Do Image Captions Drive Consumer Engagement on Social Media?

Abstract

When brands share images on social media, they often pair these visuals with textual captions. How can brands craft image captions that effectively engage consumers? This research introduces the construct of caption extension —defined as the extent to which a caption goes beyond directly describing the visible elements of its paired image (e.g., by adding new perspectives, interpretation, or imagination)—and investigates its impact on consumer engagement on social media. An empirical analysis of 95,155 single-image social media posts from 402 brands across 33 industry sectors, combined with an online experiment (N = 1,200), reveals that greater caption extension increases consumer interest, which in turn enhances engagement. However, this positive effect weakens as the brand’s psychological distance (i.e., the extent to which the brand feels remote or unrelatable to consumers) increases and may even reverse when the distance is especially high. These findings highlight two critical factors for driving engagement on social media: (1) the relationship between different content formats (e.g., visual and textual) and (2) the alignment of content with the brand’s unique characteristics.