Why lookout for these things while writing your Instagram bio?
Your Instagram bio is the first thing people see when they come to your profile.
Your profile picture aside, what would determine if like-minded people would follow you on Instagram is your bio.
By like-minded people, I mean people that would be interested in who you are, for your business- your products or services.
You should treat your Instagram bio like your 150-character business pitch to make your brand stand out from competitors.
If you write it well, you can easily convert visitors to follow your page or click on the link in your bio.
A good Instagram should give a good first impression and convince people to click your link in bio or follow you.
For example, on their Instagram profile, socialander digital agency captures what they do in one sentence, something every good bio should do
Your Instagram bio should tell what you offer at a glance but most people fail to capture everything they are about in 150 characters thereby losing the opportunities to earn themselves a new follower or a new click on their bio.
By the end of this article, you should be able to write better bios for your Instagram and get yourself more loyal followers.
Before you write your Instagram bio, you should answer the following questions
- Who are you?
- Who are you targetting?
- What do you want to be known for
Creating an audience persona will help you in this discovery process.
What your Instagram bio should contain
Instagram has its custom bio format, meaning that every Instagram user has the same space and character limit for their bio. Your bio could be in a bulleted form or a few short lines depending on what you prefer.
Every Instagram bio should contain the following;
1. Your name
This is the first thing that will catch people’s attention once they come to your page because it is shown in bold. It’s easily the first thing people will regard you as. Your name should be something you would want to be called.
To be discovered easily on Instagram, you need to include a keyword of what you do as part of your name so that when somebody inputs that keyword on the Instagram search field, your profile will show up.
Our social media manager at socialander lived up to this on his Instagram profile
Do you see that he added the clause ‘social media manager’ on his name field?
This will make his profile show up any time someone searches for a social media manager on Instagram, you can also do that for your business.
2. Your username
This is what Instagram would know you as. It’s what will be shown when people tag your page. You can also add a keyword to what you do on your username or you could leave it out and use your name.
You can also use this place to express your brand’s unique proposition.
For example, this coaching brand for stay-at-home-mums chooses their username as “amumandmoreng” to easily capture their value proposition.
3. What you do
This is where you say what your page or brand is about in a few short sentences. This is the most important part of your bio because it gives you the chance to sell yourself in a few words.
Take advantage of this field to express the key things your brand is about or up to.
For example, Big mama spices, a food seasoning brand captured all the seasoning flavors they make in their bio.
With this people will know what to expect from the brand.
4. Your link in bio
This could be your business website, the link to your eCommerce store, or any other custom link that leads people to a more expanded form of what you are about.
Art split, a brand to flip and invest in artworks utilized this feature to add the link to their online art exhibition site. People can easily click on this link and find themselves in an array of beautiful artworks to choose from.
5. Your location
This is where(country or city) your business is located. It could also be the address of your brick-and-mortar business building.
You can include a location on your bio if it’s relevant to your business.
For example, terrenous limited, a real estate company added their physical address so customers can easily locate them. Seeing that it’s a real estate company dealing in physical locations, it is only right to add their location to walk the talk.
6. Your contact
You can include your contact or your email address on your bio if it’s not a business page where your email and contact have their place.
Overall, your bio would not be complete if there’s no way to get in contact with you on it.
10 things to note while writing your Instagram bio
1. Instagram has its own SEO (search engine optimization)
One thing that will get you seen on Instagram is your name and username. They are part of your bio a reason to take your bio seriously.
As we mentioned above, adding keywords to your name and username will get you more seen on instagarm.
You must not add keywords to your name anyway especially if it’s a business. You can skip this point, but make sure your bio covers what you do at a glance.
2. While writing an Instagram bio, show your personality
Since your bio is the first thing people will see on your profile, you should infuse your brand personality into it to make it complete.
For example Pepsi, a food company does this well by making their Instagram bio all about them.
They told you what to expect from their Instagram with just 2 sentences “serving stunning Pepsi visuals all day, every day. So get ready to double tap.
3. Add your skill and target audience
Adding your skill i.e what you offer and who you’re targeting will better draw your ideal audience to you.
For instance hervest a brand focused on women’s finance made it clear that it is women they are focused and they didn’t leave it out on their bio.
4. Include relevant keywords
Your keyword should highlight your core values and what would interest your audience.
Keywords will get your account more focused and connect you to like-minded people. It gets your purpose across at a glance.
Look at the way this financial literacy brand placed its two keywords in their bio: financial literacy and investment. This alone has made it clear what they are about without saying so much.
5. Have a strong CTA
Your CTA could be your website URL or the link to your store, event, expanded bio, etc. anything you want your audience to know more about could be in your link in bio.
Ideally, you should draw people to click your CTA just like this writing coach below has done.
Your call to action can also be your contact or email that people could reach you with. Just don’t leave your bio without a CTA.
6. Add line breakers to your bio
You can use emojis and punctuations to add spaces to your bio or you can add invisible line breakers with these few steps;
- Type your Instagram bio or caption into the bio or caption area on Instagram.
- When you need a line break, tap on the “Enter” or “Return” button on your keypad.
- Add the symbol in the next line. You can add a period to make it as minimally visible as possible in your Instagram bio or caption.
- Tap on “Enter” or “Return” again and start typing the next paragraph.
- If you want more line breaks between two paragraphs, you can keep repeating steps 1 and 2 in your Instagram bio or caption, as needed.
7. Make your bio more about your audience than it’s about you
Your Instagram bio is about you but it should appeal to your audience.
You can do this better by talking to them directly just like uber did
This phrase “here for you, here for life” on the MTN bio shows that they’re more focused on their audience
8. Add some fun and humor if it’s necessary for your business
You can use emojis or creative texts to infuse humor to your bio or you can add some mystery to it just the way Netflix picked their bio from a scene in a movie.
9. You can add a branded hashtag to your bio
This will be most useful if you’re promoting an Instagram contest or a user-generating content. You can also use hashtags to create a long-lasting impression on your audience.
Also, because users can follow branded hashtags, adding your hashtags to your bio could keep your brand at the top of that hashtag
See the way coca-cola added the hashtag to their campaign “#realwonder” to keep it in the minds of their audience.
10. You can tag another account
Instagram will allow you to tag an account on your bio. You can add one or more accounts so people can easily click on these accounts and it will lead them to the page.
You should utilize this feature to showcase your other brand if you have one just the way the CEO of socialander did it on his Instagram bio below.
What else on writing your Instagram bio?
Profile highlights
You can arrange other detail about your business as your highlights. Your profile highlights is a range of pictures with a cover. You should customize these covers to suit your brand elements to make your page uniform.
Use your story to promote your bio
Don’t leave out your story portion. Keep posting on your Instagram story to attract more people to your page and bio.
In summary, your Instagram bio should show your value proposition, highlight your brand voice and contain a clear call to action. Figure out what your users are looking for and add that to your bio.
Now you’re better equipped to write a better Instagram bio, go on and create your bio or edit your current one.
Talk later
