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For a variety of reasons, Instagram presence is a must for businesses these days. Since Instagram has over a billion users, it’s a perfect place to reach your target audience, no matter what product you have. But what makes you any different from 25 million businesses on Instagram hoping for the attention of potential customers?
With a great number of competitors on the market, having an excellent product is not enough to hook people and keep them coming back. Marketers should provide people with a reason to trust their brand without spending much time. As specified in research by Missouri University of Science and Technology, online visitors need just 2.6 seconds to form a first opinion of your brand.
When it comes to Instagram marketing, your bio is a way to explain who you are, what you do, and make a great first impression. It’s also a chance to grab visitors’ attention and convince them to follow your brand.
Depending on your bio context, Instagrammers will decide whether your company fits their needs or not. Not only should you tell everything you want about your brand in less than 150 characters, but you should also make your bio eye-catching to hook visitors and get more followers.
With a well-written Instagram bio, visitors can learn:
- Who you are?
- What do you do?
- Where can they read more about you?
- Where your business is located?
- How can they get in touch with you?
As you can see, your bio is aimed at telling more about your brand. To make the most out of it, here’s the list of 5 tips to write the best Instagram bios…
1. Write More About Your Brand in your Instagram bio
It’s not a secret that the primary goal of your Instagram bio is to provide visitors with information about your company, its values, and products.
When people come across your Instagram profile, the description at the top of your profile is the first thing they pay attention to. If it helps them understand who you are and what you do, it’s more likely they will scroll your Newsfeed to see your posts. Since all users are limited to 150 characters, it’s important to be creative when writing your Instagram bio. Keep in mind that it should tell everything you want your customers to know about your brand.
Here’s how to write an informative Instagram bio:
Use focus keywords: If you know about SEO at least something, chances are that you know what focus keywords mean. When you write the Instagram bio, it’s important to use words and phrases that both describe your product and identify what people are searching for.
In plain English, focus keywords help visitors clarify what kind of content they can find on your account, and therefore they can decide whether your profile is relevant to their interests and needs.
Add branded hashtag links: Marketers have been using trending hashtags for many years. From optimizing for discovery to showcasing brand advocates, branded hashtags have many benefits for businesses. With a recent update, users can add clickable hashtags to Instagram bios.
For now, visitors can tap on the hashtag in your bio to see recently uploaded photos that have the same hashtag. Informing their visitors about branded hashtag is easier than ever these days.
Insert a website link: There’s an option for all users to add a link to your bio, and therefore drive website traffic with Instagram. When choosing a link for your bio, keep your Instagram goals in mind.
For example, if you’re starting up and you want your visitors to learn more about your company, you’d better add a homepage link.
However, if you want to affect the buying decision process, sending visitors to your online shop is a proven way to show off your products. Whether you insert a link to your homepage, dedicated landing page, or recent blog post, it must help you accomplish your goals.
If you use all the above-mentioned tips, you can write an actionable and informative bio that hooks visitors. A good example of this is J.Crew, an American multi-brand retailer. Although its bio is simple, it’s also direct which means visitors get detailed information about the company.
With a quick glance at the bio, it’s easy to understand that J.Crew works in the fashion niche and the company uses branded hashtags so that consumers can find more information about a product or service with ease. Moreover, J.Crew invites visitors to follow the bio link to buy items they may have found on the Newsfeed.
The sum up? Your bio is your visit card, so it’s important to make the most out of it. If you use your bio to tell visitors more about your company, that’s great. If you keep your bio updated, that’s even better.
If constantly changing the bio and keeping it updated seems like a lot of work, you can use a Paraphrase tool. This will help you constantly come up with new Instagram bios.
2. Enhance Your Business Account with Profile Links
Instagram is rolling out business-specific features that help companies use the platform for promoting their products with ease. In March 2018, the company announced an update that allowed users to add clickable profile usernames. When users tap on the mentioned profile, the link leads to the profile. For brands, it means another opportunity to optimize their bios.
According to Forbes, customers crave authenticity and transparency, so marketers should seek out ways to sound less salesy while promoting their products online. When it comes to writing a killer Instagram bio, there’s a proven way to give your business profile a human touch and boost engagement: mention a business owner.
Let’s take a look at an example by Artificer Coffee, coffee bar & roastery. The company often takes their followers behind the scenes to tell more about the working process, so it’s no wonder they have decided to mention both co-founders, Dan Yee and Shoji Sasa, in the bio section.
If you’re a larger brand, you can also link to other official handles to inform your visitors about branded accounts you have on the platform. For example, H&M has separate accounts for men clothing, kids wear, and home accessories, so they never miss a chance to cross-promote their profiles with the help of bios.
Before adding a profile to your bio, keep in mind that users can untag themselves, so you need to choose the relevant account that is connected to your business to ensure it provides visitors with additional information about your company or its values.
3. Let Visitors Connect with You in Different Ways
Do you know that 80% of Instagram users voluntarily connect with a brand on the platform?
When new visitors come to your Instagram profile, it’s more likely they want to find ways to contact you. It means marketers can’t afford to miss a chance to connect with their potential customers on Instagram. Thus, it’s important to provide visitors with contact options. Living in the digital era, people have different communication preferences: from phone-calling to text messaging. The more contact options your visitors have, the better.
If you run a business Instagram profile, there are three contact options for you to add:
- Email: Since 72% of people prefer email communication, adding your email address is a perfect way to connect with your visitors outside of Instagram.
- Call: Phone-calling is the fastest way to get a reply in time, so customers prefer calling when it comes to urgent questions.
- Directions: if you promote a local business on Instagram, your visitors may want to find your location.
For example, Blue Star Donuts is a donuts & coffee chain with several brick-and-mortar stores in Portland and Los Angeles. Since the company wants to attract potential clients, it’s no wonder they’ve added not only the phone number and email but also their physical address to the bio so that visitors can understand whether they can visit their store or not.
No matter what your business is, it’s high time to adjust to new standards and get ready to communicate with your customers via Instagram.
4. Include a call to action in your Instagram bio
Once you’ve interested visitors with the description, it’s time to encourage them to take an action. While you can use the right words in the bio, there’s no more effective way to convince Instagrammers to take an action than add an action button. With call-to-action buttons, customers can interact with your business without leaving the app. If you run a business profile on Instagram, you can add these buttons when editing your contact options.
Depending on your business and its goals, you can choose from the following call-to-action options:
- Book
- Buy/Get Tickets
- Reserve
- Start Order
No matter what action button you choose, it must give your visitors a clear direction that supports your Instagram marketing goals. Foundr is a great example of this method. Not only the company invites Instagrammers to visit the website, but it also encourages interested visitors to buy their products within the app.
Back in 2010, when the platform was launched, no one could have predicted selling on Instagram would be possible. When you add action buttons, you inform your visitors what you expect from them, and therefore unlock your selling potential.
5. Be Creative to Draw Visitors’ Attention
Creativity is the key to writing an eye-catching Instagram bio. If you can stand out from the crowd with your bio, it’s more likely visitors will pay attention to your profile. The more creative you are, the more original Instagram ideas you can come up with.
There are three proven ways to customize your bio:
- Break up the text: Since modern users scan text, it’s important to improve the readability. To break your text up, add spaces and paragraphs. Keep every line for one message so that visitors can understand your ideas without spending much time.
- Personalize the font: If you want to catch the eye of your visitors, use tools like Textizer or LingoJam to customize your bio’s font. While the majority of Instagrammers use standard fonts, you can spruce your bio up with a custom font.
- Use emoji: Internet users are in love with emojis: nearly half of Instagram comments contain an emoji. If you want to hook your target customers, you need to think and act as they do. Thus, it’s important for marketers to use emojis for communication. Moreover, it’s a great way to bring authenticity and fun. For more tips on using emojis, checkout emoji guide.
Since your bio is the first thing your visitors see, it’s important to make it creative, and therefore tell more about your personality. Take, for example, this bio by Vanessa, the founder of Flip & Style blog. She changed the font, broke up the text into three lines, and added emojis.
With the above-mentioned tricks, you can spruce up your Instagram bio with ease. As you can always edit your bio, don’t be afraid of making changes to find the description that fits your company’s style.
Conclusion
Your Instagram bio is not just a few words about your company’s success. It’s a powerful method to hook visitors and convert them into followers. Thus, it’s important to spend much time editing your bio. Never forget that your bio makes the first impression which determines whether potential customers want to learn more about you or not. Therefore, you should spend an ample amount of time writing the best Instagram bio.
What steps do you take while writing an Instagram bio? What has worked best for you? Please leave your comments below.
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About Hugh Beaulac
Hugh Beaulac has over 5 years experience in digital marketing. He is a content manager behind MC2 Bid4Papers website, part-time social media manager and guest contributor to different blogs. To get in touch with Hugh or read his latest articles, follow him on Twitter.
