10 Best Types of Quotes for Instagram Posts (and Tool to Find Quotes) (2024)

What do you see when you scroll through your old Instagram posts?

Is it just more of the SAME?... Nothing standing out?... Nothing going viral?

If so, your Instagram engagement rate has probably fallen flat.

Is there a quick solution that can turn things around??

Yes... Try quotes!

Instagram quotes can help boost engagement, grow your followers, and generate leads!

10 Best Types of Quotes for Instagram Posts (and Tool to Find Quotes)

In this article, we’ll cover:

• Why use quotes for Instagram?
• Where to use quotes for Instagram
• How to find IG quotes FAST
• The 10 best Instagram quote ideas for engagement
• The best quotes tool to make posting quotes easy

Why use quotes for Instagram?

We’ve all seen pages that are JUST full of quotes.

That can get boring.

Too many quotes can cause the same issues you had before:

• Low engagement
• Stagnating followers
• Monotonous posts

To avoid becoming THAT Instagram profile, some people avoid quotes entirely.

But the thing is, quotes can actually HELP your engagement (if you use them correctly)!

We don’t recommend posting Instagram quotes ALL the time.

BUT there are some profound benefits to incorporating quotes into your IG strategy.

Let’s look at 2 of them.

Increased engagement

Engagement is the Holy Grail of Instagram metrics.

If you don’t have engagement, your page isn’t adding to your business.

So the real question is: will posting more quotes get you more comments and likes?

Probably, yes!

Occasional quotes really CAN boost your engagement.

Take a look at how Ann Handley (marketing expert) uses a text-based post here:

See the number of likes?... That’s serious engagement.

And the goal of boosting engagement like this is to keep your followers INTERESTED in your brand.

Quotes on Instagram posts can mix up your content and drive more interest.

The result?

MORE engagement!

Increased followers

Did you know that 2 in 3 people say Instagram helps them interact with brands?

Another word for INTERACT is ENGAGE.

Over 90% of Instagram’s 1 BILLION users follow businesses on the platform.

That’s an audience of 900 MILLION people following businesses.

So what does that mean for YOUR business?

Increasing your engagement can help you tap into a HUGE number of new followers.

Even better?

New followers WANT to interact with your social media posts.

People will follow you if you post something they want to see.

If you post high-quality quotes, your follower count WILL go up.

Where to use quotes for Instagram

Let’s take a close look at the 3 places on your IG page PERFECT for quotes:

• Pictures
• Captions
• Your bio

You could post quotes in other places (videos, stories, comments, etc.).

But the following places are the most VISIBLE and long-lasting.

Pictures

When you think of posting on Instagram, pictures probably come to mind.

Posting a quote WITHIN a picture combines the best of both content types.

Placing text in a visually interesting setting can get people to stop scrolling.

For example, take a look at THIS quote’s visual effect:

Using a hand as a background is way too cool to ignore.

That attention turns into engagement (note the over 55K likes this post got)!

Try to use an exciting setting for your quote to maximize engagement.

Captions

Certain quotes might not belong in a picture.

Long quotes, testimonials, reposts, and excerpts are better placed in your caption.

Check out this example:

Here, the brand pairs a photo of one of their customers with that customer’s advice.

Get creative with how you use quotes in the caption of your Instagram pics.

They can make your captions more intriguing — the key to increased engagement.

Bio

Your bio is often the FIRST thing someone sees when they visit your IG profile.

An interesting quote can convince a viewer to hit that follow button.

Try the following when posting a quote in your bio:

• Use short quotes (20 words or less) in your bio.
• Pick something relevant to your brand (not just a random quote you like).
• Structure your bio to draw attention to the quote (think emojis and white space).

Your quote can’t replace essential info like your contact details and website.

Don’t forget to include those details in your bio, too!

Quick tip: How to CONSISTENTLY find amazing IG quotes

Want a QUICK way to ALWAYS have an amazing quote for Instagram?

Look no further than the best quotes tool: Post Planner!

Post Planner is an ever-growing content gusher with LOADS of quotes of all kinds.

Want a good quote for a caption?

No problem!

What about a good book quote already formatted as an image?

Post Planner has that too!

The best part?

You can get started for FREE by signing up TODAY.

The 10 best Instagram quote ideas for engagement

Will any quote send your IG engagement through the roof?

Not exactly.

Not all quotes will resonate with your followers.

Ask yourself these 3 questions before you post a quote:

1. What type of content does my audience normally engage with?
2. What is the overall tone of my profile? Does this quote fit the tone or not?
3. Do I like this quote?

Use the answers to those questions to guide your posts.

Ready to get started?

Use these top 10 types of quotes to post on Instagram for inspiration!

1. Funny quotes

When’s the last time laughing made you mad?

Exactly!

Funny Instagram captions and quotes tend to do well because people love to laugh.

Truly comical material can be a refreshing break from an avalanche of selfies.

But keep your audience at the front of your mind.

Don’t simply post something because YOU think it’s funny.

Post a quote your audience is likely to enjoy!

You can do that by choosing quotes directly related to your niche.

For example, this quote might do well on a sports page:

A word of warning: some people cross the line when they’re trying to be funny.

Instead of making people laugh, they hurt people’s feelings or offend them.

Offensive humor will hurt your page rather than help it!

Exercise caution to make sure that this doesn’t happen to you.

Humor is a great way to connect with your audience.

It can help you cultivate a more personal relationship instead of feeling unrelatable.

The more you can relate to your audience, the higher your engagement will be!

2. Inspirational quotes

Inspirational quotes are the OG engagement post.

People have been sharing them since humans figured out how to write.

They were the first types of quotes to get popular on IG and Facebook.

As old school as they are, they STILL draw likes, comments, and follows.

We don’t think you should EXCLUSIVELY take the inspirational route but don’t throw them out altogether.

Why?

Uplifting content makes people feel good!

If people feel good about themselves when they see your page, engagement will follow.

Just look at the number of likes in this example:

A good rule of thumb is that if the quote inspired you, it will also inspire others.

If it didn’t inspire you?

DON’T POST IT!

A quote that’s TRYING to be inspirational but fails is typically cringey.

Don’t do it to yourself (or your followers).

3. Motivational quotes

Remember the motivational posters that used to hang in offices and classrooms?

The new version of those posters is motivational Instagram quotes.

There are entire pages on Instagram dedicated to motivational material.

Motivational quotes on Instagram commonly refer to:

• Exercise
• Business
• Self-development

Too many motivational quotes can come off as cheesy or boring.

However, posting 1 motivational quote every month could drive your engagement up.

Take the following example.

With just 1 sentence and a simple photo, this brand generated over 2K likes:

Motivational quotes related to your business will be more successful than generic ones.

Finally, post quotes you can actually relate to.

That way, you can genuinely respond to comments (and build relationships)!

Pairing motivational quotes with personal experience keeps you human.

That closes the distance between you and your audience and builds COMMUNITY!

4. Famous sayings

People love quotes from famous people (philosophers, scientists, celebrities, authors, etc.).

Why?

Famous people are well-known!

Your followers are likely to recognize their names.

And most people feel better about themselves when they see something familiar.

It makes them feel knowledgeable.

Using famous sayings makes your posts more attractive because:

• Famous quotes are more authoritative.
• People trust sayings from well-known people.

However, not every famous saying belongs on your Instagram page.

You should make sure that the quote is relatable, relevant, and HELPFUL.

You should also make sure that someone who seems famous to YOU is also famous to your audience.

For example, you may be super into broom hockey.

The best broom hockey player in the world might seem like a celebrity to you.

But what about your audience?

Unless most of your followers are into broom hockey, they won’t be as impressed!

Finally, make sure that you attribute the quote you’re posting to the RIGHT person.

After all, it would be embarrassing to attribute a Gandhi quote to Marilyn Monroe.

5. Positive quotes

Sometimes a quote isn’t inspirational, motivational, or funny.

Instead, it’s just positive, happy, or encouraging.

You can place these quotes in pictures, but it’s more common to place them in captions.

Use positive quotes when:

• you post a selfie
• you post something to encourage your followers
• your picture doesn’t need a description, but you don’t want to leave the caption blank

Mental health, wellness, self-care, and life coaching brands can especially benefit from these types of quotes.

They’re perfect for turning a simple picture into an encouraging message.

However, don’t fall into the trap of using pointless quotes on every single picture.

That monotony will hurt engagement.

Instead, use positive quotes as captions now and then.

6. Song quotes

Over half of America’s population listens to music every single day.

Music is a massive part of most people’s lives.

It’s probably an essential part of your life, too!

That’s why quotes from songs (especially current hits) do so well!

Try to pick song quotes from music genres you suspect your audience enjoys.

Otherwise, choose quotes from popular songs that almost anyone would know.

When picking song quotes, consider 4 things:

• It should be positive.
• You should give full credit to the artist.
• The song should be well-known to most people.
• It shouldn’t be full of profanity (this will generally reduce engagement).

If you follow these rules, your song quotes could be your MOST popular posts!

7. Book quotes

Ever come across great book quotes your audience might enjoy?

Or maybe you’ve connected with your audience over books in comments or DMs.

If so, you may have a good idea of what type of books will resonate with your audience.

Try to share quotes from that genre!

Your audience will always engage more with things that relate to them.

There are multiple ways to share book quotes:

• Take a picture of the book itself.
• Find or create a picture of the quote from the book.
• Use a book quote as your caption or bio.

Always give credit to the author if you use any of their material on your Instagram page.

Book quotes make you look good, but plagiarism makes you look bad.

Post quotes without plagiarizing every time!

8. Movie quotes

Younger audiences usually relate more closely to movies than books.

If you’re targeting millennials and younger, movie quotes can be a great option.

When posting movie quotes, consider the following:

• The age of your audience. Post movie quotes from movies that your audience is old enough to be familiar with.
• The content of the quote. If it isn’t appropriate (or it isn’t relevant to your audience), don’t post it.

Finally, you may want to avoid posting quotes from incredibly obscure movies.

The point of posting quotes is to increase engagement.

People usually don’t engage with movies they’ve never heard of.

In other words, you might be a movie buff and have seen a movie at your local film festival.

Unless the quote is PERFECT for your audience, you should probably avoid posting it!

9. Quotes from your own blog

Quoting your own material on Instagram is a SMART way to advertise your website.

Announcing a new blog post on IG can skyrocket the number of people who read it.

However, pictures that just say, “Check out our new blog post,” are pretty boring.

Instead, use an intriguing quote to get people interested in reading the rest.

You can make a picture out of it (more on that below) or put it in the caption.

For example, take a look at this post.

The beautiful picture grabs your eye and the quote makes you want to read more:

This strategy pushes viewers to your website AND makes an engaging IG post!

It’s a win-win!

10. Customer quotes

Instagram is a great place to show off your happy customers!

People love seeing themselves on a brand’s feed.

Even better, potential customers will see that you already have many happy customers.

If you’re going to post user quotes, make sure that you:

• introduce the user to your other followers
• use a high-quality picture (preferably one that includes the user).
• get permission from the customer ahead of time. The last thing you want is to post a picture of a happy customer only to turn them into an angry one!

Reviews are already a great way to grow interest in your business.

Positive user quotes maximize the benefit of reviews (without looking self-obsessed).

Best quotes tool = Post Planner

Do you spend a ton of time on your social media strategy doing the following?

• Scouring the internet for material
• Planning quotes and captions
• Interacting in the comments
• Wash, rinse, repeat

And now we’re telling you that you need to spend EXTRA time finding and posting quotes?!

Don’t worry.

It’s actually easier than it seems (and can take WAY less time than you think)!

How’s that possible?

You can use Post Planner to automate your social media posting!

That means you can plan and schedule a whole month’s worth of content (including finding quotes to post) in a single afternoon!

Use these Post Planner features for a faster, easier, and more effective IG strategy.

Create a posting schedule

A posting schedule is an essential part of your Instagram strategy.

Instagram users are more active at certain times of the day.

Posting during those times can DRASTICALLY increase engagement.

You should also be spacing your posts out throughout the week.

In other words, if you post 3 times a week, then you should post on MWF instead of SMT.

Without an automated scheduler, you’ll have to log onto Instagram AT LEAST once per day (probably more like 3 times).

Sound like a lot of work yet?

Instead of making you do ALL of that work, Post Planner allows you to create a detailed posting schedule quickly.

You can customize several options:

• Posting day
• Posting time
• Type of content (pictures, links, videos, gifs, etc.)
• Social media account (if you want to post on Twitter and Instagram at the same time)

Select all the options you want.

Then, Post Planner will start to populate your posting schedule!

You can choose the media from your content streams (which we’ll look at next).

You’ll never have to log onto your Instagram to post anything!

Create content streams

This whole article has been about posting quotes on your Instagram page.

Still, we haven’t talked about how much TIME that takes.

Finding excellent quotes that have the potential to engage a lot of users?

That can take HOURS!

That’s on top of the other types of content you have to search for daily, too.

That’s where content streams come in.

Post Planner helps you organize content that you’re interested in into content streams.

Content streams are just collections of similar content.

For example, take a look at the popular content streams on Post Planner.

There are already several content streams for quotes, fitness, marketing, and more.

Can’t find an existing content stream?

Search a keyword and create a content stream for your particular niche.

For example, I searched the keyword “Triathlon.”

Post Planner returned HUNDREDS of relevant feeds, photos, videos, and articles.

That means I can have instant access to nearly unlimited content and pictures for my IG page.

Select the feeds you want in the content stream, then click “Save to Stream.”

Now that content stream will continuously display fresh content on your home page.

Find popular content

How do you find the content once you’ve created the content stream?

I’ll demonstrate.

Here, I pull up one of a “Quotes” content streams made by another Post Planner user.

I restricted the content stream to pictures only.

There are 2 ways to sort the content in the stream:

• Sort by stars
• Sort by likes

Post Planner assigns each picture a star value based on likes, shares, and several other factors.

The tool will give more stars to a picture that it thinks has a better chance of doing well.

You can also set a timeframe:

• New
• Week
• Month
• Year
• All

If you're looking for the freshest content, you can search by “New.”

If you're looking for evergreen content, consider looking at “All” or “Year.”

You can make even more specific content streams than simply “Quotes.”

For example, you can make a content stream that shows book quotes:

Post Planner would allow you to create content streams for each of the 10 types of quotes discussed above.

Doing so would drastically speed up your content-finding process.

Make your own content

What happens if you want to use a specific quote, but you can’t find a picture of it anywhere?

Do you type it out in Word, take a screenshot, and post it?

Nah.

Post Planner has better (and more exciting) options.

One of those options is Canva!

Post Planner integrates Canva into its platform.

That means you can use Canva’s impressive suite of graphic design tools.

Canva includes:

• Pre-made photo templates (including quote templates!)
• Powerful text tools
• Upload capabilities to use your own photos and overlay text
• Design tools to customize pictures
• Integrations with other apps for more flexibility

Using Canva is much quicker and better than other methods.

It’s more user-friendly than Photoshop, but it offers everything you need to make attention-grabbing images.

The direct integration with Post Planner makes getting pictures onto your social media schedule SO much more manageable.

Once you’ve created your post in Canva, you can import it into Post Planner.

From there, you can add it to your schedule for any of your social media accounts.

Once you’re back in Post Planner’s dashboard, it’s time to schedule your first post.

Schedule your posts

Your content streams will include material relevant to you and your followers.

That means it won’t take you long to find something that you want to schedule to post on your social media.

When you find the perfect quote, just hover over it.

Post Planner will show you these details:

• How many likes the picture has
• How many comments
• How many times people have shared the quote
• The platform people used to post the quote
• Post Planner’s star rating

If you decide that you want to post that quote, just click “Create Post.”

If you decide that you want to add it to your favorites so you can find it again later, just click the heart on the top right corner.

You can edit the post on the “Create Post” page before you put it on your schedule.

You can customize:

• Which social media accounts it will be posted to
• Your caption
• When it will be added to your schedule
• Whether you want to recycle it for future use

Once you have fully customized your post, just click “Add to Plan.”

The post will be automatically added to the posting schedule made in step 1.

It will automatically post to all of the accounts that you selected on the chosen day and time.

Simply repeat that process to fill your entire month’s calendar with posts in a single afternoon!

You’ll get faster as you practice navigating content streams, Canva, and scheduling.

Eventually, your social media plan will run itself with occasional maintenance from you.

Conclusion: Quotes for Instagram recap!

Posting quotes on Instagram is a great content strategy for boosting engagement.

But leveraging this type of post takes a nuanced approach.

If you focus too much on a single type of content, your page can become stale.

But using all 10 types of quotes (and other types of content) on your IG page? That keeps followers interested.

Always remember the golden rule of Instagram quotes:

KEEP THEM RELEVANT!

Your followers want content that relates to them.

So make sure that you aren’t just posting whatever you can find!

Keeping the quality high ensures that your audience stays with you for the long haul.

That sustained interest leads to increased ENGAGEMENT!

Sounds easy, right?

But you still have to manage the biggest challenge to a successful IG strategy:

The time commitment.

Using Post Planner can DRAMATICALLY reduce the time it takes to find quotes.

It can also help you create a detailed social media schedule for ALL of your accounts!

So start your Post Planner free trial today to get started!

Good luck and happy quoting!