As of 2024, Instagram has had over 2 billion monthly active users, 90% of whom followed at least one business, making it a prime platform for reaching broad audiences. There’s a craft to writing the perfect caption, and brands need to to catch the scroller’s eye in seconds. Captions shape how audiences interact with your Instagram content and boost engagement.
This guide will explore how you can use digital asset management (DAM) tools to manage images, craft compelling caption variations and run sentiment analysis on those variations.
A well-written caption impacts engagement metrics like views, likes, and shares. Here’s how:
- Longer captions encourage users to spend more time on posts, boosting visibility.
- Uplifting posts (funny, inspiring, relatable) attract more likes.
- Calls to action (CTAs), questions, and polls drive comments and shares.
- Hashtags improve reach and help new audiences find your content.
Now, let’s see how you can use Cloudinary to manage your images and generate impactful captions for your social media. Using Cloudinary’s DAM, you’ll manage an image asset, generate different image caption variations with Cloudinary’s AI Vision, and run sentiment analysis for caption variations.
Cloudinary’s digital asset management (DAM) system, Cloudinary Assets, is the all-in-one platform for organizing and managing your digital content. It enables efficient access for admin, employees, and other stakeholders, providing protected and centralized control of your assets.
To start, you’ll need a Cloudinary account. If you don’t have one yet, you can create one for free. Once your account is set up, follow these steps to upload an image:
- Navigate to the Assets page.
- Click the Upload button on the top-right corner of the screen.
Clicking Upload will open up the Upload widget with several upload options. Choose any convenient option and image of your choice. Cloudinary’s DAM has several features for effectively managing your media assets, such as automatic tagging and metadata analysis, but they’re beyond the scope of this post. For more details on these features, check out the Cloudinary DAM documentation.
After uploading the image, you’ll then need to use Cloudinary’s AI Vision to generate caption variations for the image and do sentiment analysis. We’ll go over how to do this in the next section.
Cloudinary’s AI Vision add-on leverages advanced technologies, including large language models (LLMs), specialized AI models, sophisticated algorithms, prompt engineering, and Cloudinary’s deep understanding of visual content. This combination enables the service to understand and respond intelligently to user inquiries about images.
For instance, it can identify objects within an image, such as determining if a specific product is present in a user-uploaded photo, or it can provide detailed descriptions of scenes, like “A bustling city street with a red double-decker bus passing by.”
To set-up AI Vision, make sure you’re logged in to your account and then go to the Add-ons page. Click Cloudinary AI Vision as shown in the image below, then choose the plan that you want to subscribe to.
Once you’ve subscribed to a plan, it should show up in your Cloudinary console, as shown in the image above. You can now start automatically tagging images, moderate assets, and generate insights and recommendations on image assets.
Using AI Vision to generate caption variations and perform sentiment analysis for your image requires you to write a prompt and supply the URL of your image to AI Vision. Doing this will require a developer, as it involves making a POST request to the Cloudinary API. Then, Cloudinary will return the results of your request.
- Note: You’ll need your Cloudinary API key, secret key, and cloud name to make this request, which can be retrieved from your Cloudinary console. Follow these steps to get the details from your console:
- Navigate to the Settings page in your Cloudinary console.
- Under the API Keys section, your cloud name should be beside the section title.
- Generate a new API key if you don’t already have one.
After retrieving the necessary details, the next step is to send a request to the Cloudinary API. You’ll provide the credentials you retrieved from your Cloudinary dashboard to the API endpoint. While tools like Postman are commonly used for testing API requests, if you’re integrating this into your application, your chosen language or framework will have built-in methods for making API requests.
Before you make the request to the API, you have to get the URL of the image you uploaded to Cloudinary DAM earlier. To get the image URL, hover over the image in the Assets page on your Cloudinary console and click the <> icon at the top-right corner of the picture. Clicking the icon will copy the image URL to your clipboard.
When making the request, you’ll use a prompt to ask AI Vision to analyze your image, generate caption variations, and perform sentiment analysis on each caption variation it generates.
Below is a sample curl API request a developer would make with the retrieved information. The prompt in the request body captures what you require AI Vision to do:
// Curl Request to Cloudinary API
curl -X POST "https://api.cloudinary.com/v2/analysis/<YOUR_CLOUD_NAME>/analyze/ai_vision_general" \
-u "<YOUR_API_KEY>:<YOUR_API_SECRET>" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
--data-raw '{
"source": {
"uri": "https://res.cloudinary.com/<CLOUD_NAME>/image/upload/v1590019492/samples/sheep.jpg"
},
"prompts": [
"Analyze the image provided and perform the following tasks: Generate three unique and creative caption variations that accurately describe or complement the content, mood, and context of the image. Ensure the captions are engaging and align with the style commonly used on social media platforms like Instagram. Caption 1: Keep it short and trendy. Caption 2: Focus on storytelling or emotional appeal that resonates with the audience. Caption 3: Provide an informative or descriptive caption for broader context. For each caption variation, perform a sentiment analysis and classify it as Positive, Neutral, or Negative. Briefly explain the reason behind the classification. Return the results in a structured format, including: Caption variation, Sentiment classification, and Sentiment analysis explanation. Ensure the captions are suitable for global audiences, easy to understand, and align with the visual cues from the image. If possible, include emojis and hashtags to enhance relatability for social media users."
]
}'Code language: PHP (php)This is a sample response from the making the API request:
// API Response
{
"limits": {
"addons_quota": [
{
"type": "ai_vision",
"used_by_request": 727,
"remaining": 97730,
"limit": 100000,
"reset_time": "2025-02-21T00:00:00Z"
}
]
},
"request_id": "2f4c42353275b914156e4ea0de66cd11",
"data": {
"entity": "https://res.cloudinary.com/<CLOUD_NAME>/image/upload/v1590019492/samples/sheep.jpg",
"analysis": {
"responses": [
{
"value": "Caption 1: \"Traffic baa-ckup! 🐑🚗 #RuralRoadblock\"\nSentiment: Positive\nExplanation: This short, trendy caption uses wordplay and an emoji to create a lighthearted, humorous tone about the unexpected road situation, likely to elicit positive reactions from viewers.\n\nCaption 2: \"Nature's gentle reminder to slow down and appreciate the unexpected moments in life. Sometimes, the journey is more important than the destination. 🌿🛣️\"\nSentiment: Positive\nExplanation: This caption takes a reflective, philosophical approach, turning a potential inconvenience into a meaningful life lesson. It evokes positive emotions by encouraging mindfulness and appreciation for unique experiences.\n\nCaption 3: \"Rural road congestion: A common sight in farming regions where livestock herding often intersects with modern transportation. This image showcases the coexistence of traditional agriculture and contemporary life. #RuralLife #Agriculture\"\nSentiment: Neutral\nSentiment: This informative caption provides context and background about the scene without expressing strong positive or negative emotions. It objectively describes the situation and its broader implications."
}
],
"model_version": 1
}
}
}Code language: JSON / JSON with Comments (json)Below are the caption variations and sentiment analysis generated by AI Vision for this image:
1. Caption: “Traffic baa-ckup! 
#RuralRoadblock #SheepTakeover”
- Sentiment: Positive
- Analysis: This short, trendy caption uses wordplay and emojis to create a lighthearted, humorous tone about the unexpected road situation, making it appealing to social media platforms like Instagram.
- Caption: “Nature’s gentle reminder to slow down and embrace the unexpected detours in life’s journey. Sometimes, the most memorable moments come from the paths you didn’t plan to take.
”
- Sentiment: Positive
- Analysis: This storytelling caption evokes a sense of mindfulness and appreciation for life’s surprises, connecting the image to a broader, inspirational message that could resonate emotionally with viewers.
- Caption: “Rural traffic jam: A flock of sheep crosses a country road in New Zealand, showcasing the unique challenges and charms of agricultural regions. This common sight highlights the coexistence of modern transportation and traditional farming practices. #RuralLife#Agriculture#NewZealand”
- Sentiment: Neutral
- Analysis: This informative caption provides context and background about the scene, maintaining an objective tone while educating viewers about rural life and agricultural practices in certain regions.
To test the performance of any of these captions, you can upload the image with each caption variation to Instagram and use its built-in tool, Insights, to measure performance. Instagram Insights provides valuable metrics like reach, impressions, likes, shares, and comments, helping you identify which captions resonate most with your audience.
This post explored how Cloudinary’s digital asset management system can help users manage their visual media assets easily. We discussed captions’ impact on views, likes, and shares and demonstrated how to create, analyze, and test caption variations using AI Vision and Cloudinary’s tools.
Sign up for a Cloudinary account today to optimize your Instagram captions with our DAM and AI Vision for better engagement.
