Best Practices: Tips to Improve your Instagram Bio

Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms, drawing in 112.5 million users to date. According to Hootsuite, Instagram is expected to keep increasing in 2021 to reach 117.2 million users. With the platform’s popularity, maintaining an eye-catching Instagram page is incredibly important for boosting brand awareness and drawing in new followers. Since Instagram is a photo-sharing platform, many Instagram influencers and brands often overlook one crucial part of their page: their Instagram bio.

Not only is your bio the backbone of your Instagram presence, but it creates the first impression of your personal brand, so it’s important to properly introduce yourself to potential followers. If you’re looking for ways to improve your Instagram bio, here are some helpful tips.

What Your Instagram Bio Should Do

Instagram gives you 150 characters to introduce yourself and sell yourself to new visitors in order to encourage them to follow you and engage with your page. Your bio should answer three main questions to people to interact with you:

1. Who are you?
2. What do you offer?
3. Why should someone follow you?

By addressing these questions, someone won’t have to dig through your photos to get a feel of who you are. Instead, they can quickly read over your bio and decide to hit the follow button right below it. Make sure to highlight your personality as you address these questions as well, so you can compel potential followers to take action based on what they’ve read.

The Main Components of Your Instagram Bio

Before you get to typing, make note of these main components that can help you construct a killer bio:

• Name: This is pretty self-explanatory, but starting off with a recognizable name is essential. It’s your identity on Instagram, so you can make the name section in your bio the same as your username to keep things consistent. Or, you could make your username match another handle, like your blog, while including your real name at the top of your bio. It’s up to you!

Here’s a pro tip: including a keyword in your name can help people discover your account. For example, making your name “John Doe | Travel” if you’re a travel Instagram influencer can help you get discovered by any user that types “travel” in the search bar.

• Category: If you have a business or creator profile on Instagram, you can choose a category to make your brand/personal brand easily distinguishable. The category you choose will appear directly under your name and can help potential followers get a feel for what you do with one glance.

• Contact Information: Business or creator profiles on Instagram also include contact buttons where you can put information like your phone number, email, or directions to your business. With one tap of a button, people on Instagram can get in direct contact with you with these features.

• Website: Since this is the only place on Instagram that you can put a clickable link, it’s beneficial to use this section. You can change the URL as often as you like, so you can direct your followers to check out a different link whenever you please. Most often, Instagram users use this section to link to their websites, their Instagram pages, their blogs, or their Link Trees that allow them to direct followers to multiple links at once.

• Call-to-Actions: If you have a specific profile for your brand, you can use CTA buttons to lead users to specific actions, like booking a table at your restaurant or buying tickets for your event. If this doesn’t apply to you, including a call-to-action in your bio can still be helpful. For example, you can instruct them to click your link or check out your new video.

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What to Put in Your Bio

After hitting all of the points above, it’s finally time to start writing a fun and innovative bio. The main goal? Inspire people to click the follow button. Even if you’ve got some amazing photos in your feed, a boring bio can be your downfall. Here are some tips on what to include in your bio to keep it fresh and relevant:

• Your location: If you’re comfortable with it, putting your location in your bio is a great way to drive traffic to your page from the locals and can even earn you some incredible brand collaborations. To put it into perspective, if you have “Los Angeles, California” in your bio, multiple businesses in LA will know to reach out to you for sponsorships since you’re nearby. If you’re a travel account, including a location in your bio is also a fun way to let your followers know where you are or where you’re headed next.

• Include relevant hashtags: Adding hashtags that are affiliated with you or your brand is a great way to link to tagged content. You can also include a branded hashtag to promote or collect user-generated content. Or, if you’re currently running a promotion or contest, including a themed hashtag could help highlight the contest to your followers.
• Use emojis: Reading a plain bio can be boring, but emojis can spice it up! Emojis can convey a lot of information with only one character, which is helpful since you only get 150 when writing your bio. They’re a great way to highlight your personality and to break up text in your bio from a visual standpoint.

Here are some to get you started: 

1. 1. Location pin: The location pin emoji is great to use if you include your location in your bio.
   2. Envelope: Using any envelope emoji in front of your email address is a cute way to personalize your bio with contact information when you don’t use a button.
   3. Downward pointing finger: You can use this emoji in the last line in your bio to instruct other users to click your website link.

Besides the character limit, there are no limitations to what you can include in your Instagram bio, so get creative! As long as you keep your desired audience in mind and cater to their needs through your introduction, you’re in great shape for making yourself known on the platform. And with these helpful tips, your page will be fast-tracking for success.