A Detailed Look At A Perfectly Optimized Instagram Bio: A Case Study
One of the most important aspects of an Instagram strategy is growing your following, and one of the best ways to maximize your growth efforts is by optimizing your Instagram bio. If your brand has a presence on Instagram, you are certainly wanting to expand your reach by attracting more followers. Then, after they've seen your content, the goal is to convert them to paying customers or clients.
Before you get there, though, you have to convert them from casual scroller to follower on Instagram. Whether they found you through the Explore page, a paid ad, a hashtag or through your own engagement marketing efforts, they're going to need to make a decision about whether or not they want to follow you. A key element that goes into that decision is your Instagram bio.
How To Perfectly Optimized Your Instagram Bio (Best Tips & Strategies To Skyrocket Growth) 2020
What's An Instagram Bio?
When you go to your profile on Instagram, your bio is the set of words directly under your profile photo and follower count. It acts as exactly that: a short biography to tell your followers or potential followers who you are, what you do and why they should follow you. You can also add a link to a helpful resource, as well as relevant CTA buttons if you have a business account. These CTAs could be things like a phone number to call, email to contact or a link to make reservations for a restaurant.
Your Instagram bio is one of a handful of things that many people will look at before they decide to hit the follow button. They'll also look at a few of your recent posts, scroll through your feed, your highlights if you have them, and your profile picture. Some people will also look at your follower and following counts to see if you have social proof from having other people follow you.
You could have everything else perfectly crafted and created, though, but if your bio falls flat, you could be losing followers. And if you're losing followers, you are probably losing customers, which is certainly not what you want for your business.
What's The Significance Of Having An Optimized Bio?
Your Instagram bio is the only place you'll be able to consistently tell every potential follower about who you are and what you do. It is just about the only piece of content that every single person will see. They can't click the "follow" button from anywhere else on the site, so they have to visit your profile to do so. Once they're there, they can learn more about you through your bio.
However, it's also easy to throw away the chance to really make an impact with your bio. Creating an optimized bio takes strategy, thought and effort. It's much easier to write a few words about how great your company is and call it a day. If your ideal customer and potential follower doesn't resonate with it, though, they might be clicking away quickly and going back to their feed to scroll and see what else is new.
There are a few simple changes you can make to your Instagram bio to ensure that you're putting the right message out into the social media world. By strategically planning the copy you'll have on your profile, you'll be able to more effectively capture the right audience. This way you can rest assured that the content you're creating and publishing on a regular basis both in your feed and in Stories will be reaching the right kind of people.
The Case Study : (Tips For Creating the Best Instagram Profile Possible)
As we break down exactly what goes into a great Instagram bio and profile, we're going to show you a number of examples.
Let's take a look at how these profiles optimized their Instagram bio, and how you can make small changes that will have a big impact on your own profile.
Elements Of The Instagram Bio & How They're Optimized
There are five key elements of your Instagram profile, and your bio is just one of them. They all work together, though, to create a cohesive feeling and experience for your viewers to convert them to becoming followers. Those five elements are your profile picture, name, category, URL and your bio. By optimizing these five things you'll have a profile that's ready for new followers.
1. Profile Picture
Your profile picture is a crucial piece of your success with both Instagram marketing and growth. Potential followers are able to see it even before they visit your profile when they see their very first post from you. There are two primary types of photos you could choose to use. The first is your company's logo, and the second is a personal photo of a person.
When possible, if you have a personal brand, it's a good idea to use a photo of you. After all, you're the one who your followers want to learn about and connect with by following you! Let them get to know you from the very beginning. If you choose to go with this route, make sure you choose a close-up shot so that it's still easy to see you, even when the thumbnail is tiny in the corner of your latest post.
You'll also want to pick a plain background, which also helps make the image clearer and easier to see.
On the other hand, if you have a brand or a business that doesn't have one particular face, so to speak, you can also use your company's logo as the profile picture. That's what Kicksta does here for their Instagram. Now, their logo is bright and colorful, so it can easily capture the attention of potential followers or anyone scrolling by.
Using your logo also helps your visitors instantly get to know your brand, which can help them remember or recognize you in the future.
No matter what type of image you decide to use as your profile picture, there are a few technical pieces you should know and follow. When sizing your image for Instagram, you want to make sure it fits within a 110×110 pixel square. As you're editing it, though, remember that Instagram will actually crop your photo into a circle, so make sure everything important is in the inside of the circle. When you go into Instagram to upload it, you'll see a preview of what will be cut out when you go to upload it, so you'll be able to see if you need to edit it further.
Whether you're using a photo of you or a logo, you want to make sure that the subject fills the circular frame as much as possible, without losing too much in the crop. You may need to use a different version of your logo in order to fit it within the necessary parameters and still be legible and easy-to-see.
2. Name
Your name on Instagram is actually very important. The words that are listed in the name section are searchable within Instagram. You want to add something relevant to your business and what your audience might be searching for on the platform.
The account @jaclynbecketc has "health+self love" added after her name. Her business is more of a personal brand, as opposed to a large company, so adding that clarification of what she does can help her get in front of new potential followers. Most people who don't already know who she is will actually search for her name, so adding this extra copy helps take advantage of the searchability.
3. Category
Categorizing your Instagram account can also help new potential followers find you, and it can show the people who visit your profile how you fit into the Instagram ecosystem. There are many, many different categories you can choose, from artist to convenience store to public figure.
To choose your category, go to your profile, and then click edit profile. Underneath "Public Business Information," you should see an option that says "Category." Click that, and then use the search bar to search for key terms related to your industry. Before you choose the first one that remotely fits with your brand, think about how your ideal followers may be searching for you on Instagram and how they would categorize you. You may think you're an educator, but if they see you as a health coach, that's what they'll be using to try to find you.
4. Website or URL
Instagram is a great social media platform, but it does have its flaws. One of those is that within the platform you are only allowed one live link. Because of this, in any posts you want to promote, you have to say "link in bio" to direct them back to your profile so they're able to actually click the link and get to the page you're promoting.
It also means that you have to choose one link to have listed on Instagram. This can become a problem if in your posts you're promoting your most recent blog and a free giveaway and a podcast episode and your latest feature in Forbes and the list goes on endlessly it seems. All of those resources are excellent, but you don't want to be stuck updating your link every time you upload a new post.
Beyond that, think about the people who find your post two or three days after it's published. If you've already changed the link in your bio, they might not go to the trouble of trying to find it themselves. They could give up on finding the content, or worse - unfollow you.
That's why many companies will use a link in bio tool. In the above example, they used a tool called url.bio. With url.bio, you can use one URL to house multiple links. In fact, you can add unlimited links - but be careful if you add too many. You don't want your visitors to get overwhelmed.
You can also customize the look of your url.bio page. You can see here that Kicksta has changed their background color to pink, which is one of their brand colors. This emphasizes brand continuity for your followers once they click on your link. If you look closely below, you can see that the box for the top link is bigger than the rest. You can set the top link to pulse to capture attention if you'd like.
Using a link in bio tool also allows you to see valuable insights, and track how well your URL is performing. You can see which links are getting more traffic so you can better understand what your audience wants to see from you.
5. Bio
Now we finally come to the actual bio itself, which is one of the most important things in your whole Instagram profile. Before we talk about what to include in your bio, there are two points to note.
First: your Instagram bio is limited to 150 characters. Believe us, that's not many, especially when you're trying to captivate potential followers and encourage them to click the follow button.
Secondly: using emojis is a great way to maximize your characters. If there's a word you could easily replace with an emoji, that might be a good way to cut down on unnecessary characters. You'll see emoji examples in nearly every example we have below.
So, now that you know the amount of space you have to use, let's talk about possible things you could include within your bio.
- A Description of What You Do
As briefly as you can, describe what your business does, who you help and the results you can get for your customers. It's a tall order for 150 characters, but this is one of the best ways to let your potential followers know whether or not they belong in your community.
If your business has a catchy or memorable tagline, that's a great thing to put in your bio. Or, if you have a well-known tagline, you can always add a slightly edited version of your tagline here.
Even new brands that are just getting started on Instagram can list something unique in their bio. Any unique selling points, like being the first or the only company to provide a certain product or service, are good to highlight here.
If you have any sort of commendations or reasons someone should trust you, add them to your bio. Here, @stacytuschl builds trust for her business coaching business by listing that she was named the Wisconsin Small Business Person of the Year.
Social proof can sometimes be tricky to add to your actual bio. You can slip it in by saying something like "Helping 100s of women reclaim their schedules." Or, you can include a highlight that's full of client wins and testimonials that prove that your products and strategies work.
- Hashtag or Branded Hashtag
Consider adding a hashtag to your bio, too. This can help with searchability, and if you choose to use a branded hashtag, your new visitors will begin to know what to associate with your brand.
You can add your location directly into your bio, like Kicksta does here. Or, if you want to add your actual address, you can do that through your business settings. This is a great idea if you're a local brick and mortar business that needs people to actually know where your store is located.
This is a must-have in your bio. You need to tell people what action to take next. For most people, the action is going to be "click this link." You can tell people what they'll be getting, offer a free giveaway, or add emojis to show what you want them to do.
Conclusion : Optimizing Your Instagram Bio (Tips For Creating the Best Instagram Profile Possible)
So now you know the recipe for creating a captivating, compelling Instagram bio. The goal of the bio is to turn visitors into followers and to encourage them to click your link to visit your website or access your resources. By taking the time to optimize your Instagram bio, you'll be setting yourself and your brand up for success as you work to grow your following.
