How to improve your Instagram bio
There’s certain things that, when they come up on my Instagram feed or I see them on Facebook, I think to myself, ‘what a missed opportunity.’ One of them is an independent shop, artist or maker not having an Instagram shop. Another is when restaurants and cafes don’t have their opening hours and menu clearly visible on their Facebook page. This are just two examples, but these sorts of missed opportunities often just have one root cause—that not enough thought has been given to the audience.
The business knows their products and prices, menu and opening hours, so they can sometimes forget that people on social media may be discovering them for the first time. I understand, it’s easily done. I’m sure I’ve done it myself, because it’s not easy to put yourself completely in the place of your audience and work out what they do and do not know about you and what they will most want to know. But we do have to try.
There’s one area in particular where I see this mistake being made again and again. But don’t worry, it’s easy to fix, and I’m going to show you how! The problem is with social media bios.
A social media bio is the short description about you or your business on your profile page. Instagram and Twitter are perhaps the biggest platforms with this feature, Facebook instead has an ‘About’ section, which can be considerably longer. And Instagram is the platform where this short sentence or two is most important, because your profile is where people will go to find out more about your business, follow you, see if you have a shop and/or look for your website address. So they are already mildly interested in your business, but your bio could actually be putting them off following you, or stopping them clicking your website link, since at this point it’s still all to easy to lose your audience’s attention.
Who, what, why, when, where and how
A bio that doesn’t tell the person looking at it enough to decide that your business is relevant to them is not doing its job. To make sure your bio works for you, make sure you write it in the expectation that the people reading it have no prior knowledge of your business whatsoever. What do they need to know? The specifics will of course alter depending on what kind of business you have, but for all businesses the answers to who, what, why, when, where and how are vital in this introductory stage. But how do we squeeze all that into a short couple of sentences?
Well, fortunately we don’t have to squeeze them all in. The ‘who’ is of course your business name. ‘Where’ is your website link. ‘When’ should be dealt with by when you last posted — one reason why it’s important to post regularly. So that just leaves us with ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’.
Let’s start with ‘what’, since you should with your bio too. This is especially important if your business name isn’t self explanatory. Very, very simply and without jargon, state exactly what your business does. For example, the Perthshire Media Co ‘helps small businesses to succeed online’. How do we do that/how will clients benefit? ‘We can do it for you or show you how to do it yourself’. And why should you choose us? Well, we are the digital marketing experts behind The Perthshire Magazine.
As mentioned, ‘where’ is usually your website location, but you should also be sure to mention the area your located in. This is obvious if you have a physical premises, but it’s also important for online businesses. Why? Because many people are looking to support and shop local at the moment, so it’s a good idea to let them know where you are. They don’t have to be right in your village, but just knowing you’re in Scotland could make some people more inclined to support you.
Brand voice
Make sure you also write your bio in your brand ‘voice’. Are you child-friendly? Make sure you sound fun! Artistic? Put some emojis in for a splash of colour. Do you think you’re amazing? Say so! Are you helpful? Inject some warmth.
If you would like some help with finding your brand voice or writing your bio, do get in touch. A half hour consultation with us is just £25. Otherwise be sure to follow these guidelines: Write your bio in the expectation that readers know nothing about you, tell them clearly what you do, how you improve things for them, why they should use you and where you are. Write in your brand voice. And go out there and get some more followers!