First impressions matter. Whether we’re talking digital first impressions or face to face, we all know how you present yourself to a potential customer is crucial. And with just 2.5 seconds to grab your audience’s attention on Instagram, crafting the perfect Instagram bio is one of the best ways to convert profile visitors into followers (and eventually, customers!).
One of the first things we do when we begin working with a new client is account cleanup and optimization. Before we schedule a single post or begin running ads, we ensure you’re putting your best digital foot forward. Here’s how we do that:
Your bio should be about you, right? Under most circumstances, sure, but when it comes to social, it should be about them.
On social media, we’re selfish. You follow accounts that add value to YOU. You engage with posts that speak to YOU. This is YOUR curated feed, after all.
As marketers, we need to present our brands in a way that immediately speaks to the value we offer our audience.
For wedding brand Joy, we rewrote their bio from “Wedding planning website, app and tools” to “Inspiration & tips to plan your wedding #withjoy & make your big day uniquely ‘you’.” Immediately, users know that they can expect to see daily wedding inspiration and tips that’ll bring value to them by following.
One small change helps our clients see an 8x average increase in website traffic from their Instagram: a single dot followed by a call to action.
Most Instagram bios feel cluttered. With just 150 characters available, brands tend to try and squeeze as much info as possible into that small space. As a result, users scroll on by - past your website, past your messaging, past your brand.
This may not feel like it would make any discernible difference, but adding a single dot to visually separate your audience-focused messaging from your call to action and link can make a huge difference. Just as paragraphs make a wall of text readable, that small separation makes your bio visually digestible.
Not onto that link in your bio - what do you want your audience to do once they click it? Download your app? Register for your event? Shop X product? Don’t just add your website and expect your audience to know what to do with it, tell them!
500 million people use Instagram Stories every single day. For many Instagram users (us included!), Stories have become the primary way they consume content on the platform. Uploading fresh static content is not enough to entice users to hit “follow”. You have to be active on Stories and show potential followers that they can expect to see you in their Stories feed.
Creating on-brand Stories Highlights is the most effective way to do this. Create a Highlight for each of your content pillars and themes and regularly update them with the latest content.
Here are a few of our favorite Instagram Stories Highlight ideas:
Just like Google, Instagram leans on keywords to help users find the most relevant accounts based on their search criteria. We always recommend that our clients add their hero keywords to their profile name.
For example, you can find us on Instagram as @sparksocialagency but our profile name reads “Spark Social Media Agency.” By including the “social media agency” keywords in our name, our profile is more likely to come up in search results for those searching for a social media agency.
Make it easy for your customers to share about you! Add your brand’s hashtag to your bio as a way to encourage your audience to tag you in their own social posts.
Bonus: bio hashtags are now hyperlinked! When your audience clicks on the hashtag in your bio, it will pull up all the photos with that tag, showing off all your valuable user-generated content.
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