Creating the Perfect Instagram Bio

When someone visits your Instagram profile you only have a moment to grab their attention. While your feed plays a huge role in whether someone will continue to scroll or not, your Instagram bio offers valuable (and often overlooked) space to grab your ideal audience’s attention and connect with the people who matter most to your brand.

With only a few lines to work with, many brands and businesses assume that a name and contact details is enough to maximize this space but the reality is with the right strategy in place your bio can be far-reaching in helping to accomplish your goals, reach new people and showcase who you are as a brand.

To help you get started in crafting the perfect Instagram bio, I’m breaking down a few key elements that every Instagram bio needs to optimize your profile and get the most for your business.

5 Features Every Instagram Bio Needs

Searchable Name

Your name is the only searchable portion of your Instagram bio. This means when people are typing keywords into the search bar on Instagram, what appears in the name section of your bio is the only element of your profile besides your handle that is going to be picked up. What are people most likely to search when locating a business like yours?

For brands like Nike or Sephora, it’s likely they would want this to be their company name but for a photographer or someone freelancing as a social media manager or virtual assistant, it’s possible you may want to include keywords that make it easier for prospective clients to locate you.

Consider how your ideal audience is most likely to search for you. If that’s not your business name, think about titles like “Toronto Event Photographer” or “Vancouver-based Illustrator” and leave the more specific details for the rest of your bio.

Who You Are & What You Do

Now that you’ve chosen a searchable name that makes sense for your business, you’ll want to use the rest of the space in your bio to tell your visitors who you are and what you do. This is your opportunity to show off your brand’s personality and offer a taste of what followers can expect from your content.

Consider elements like tone, tag lines associated with your business, which products or services you want to get in front of prospective clients and the style of how you want this information to be presented.

While some brands may opt to include fun emojis others may go for a more minimal approach and others still will add custom fonts to accentuate their brand and stand out from other companies.

What impression do you want to create with your Instagram bio? Use this as a starting point to determine what elements you’ll want to include here. What you say and how you say it will be unique for every brand but your ultimate goal is to leave readers with a strong sense of who you are and why they should care.

Hashtags and Alternative Handles

Hashtags and alternative handles are another key element to keep in mind when crafting your Instagram bio. Whether it’s a branded hashtag or a profile linking to your business’ sister-company, taking advantage of this feature helps to create additional access points for new followers to discover your content.

This opportunity also helps to cement your brands affiliation to other pages and allows users to know where else they can find you on Instagram.

In the Instagram bio for Cold Tea Social you can see that I use it to link to my personal profile, allowing clients to get to know me on a more personal level and see what I’m up to when I’m not working on projects. On the other side of this, my personal profile links to the Cold Tea Social page providing a link for those in my personal network to get to know what I’m doing in my professional life.

Clickable URL

Next, you want to include a clickable URL in your bio. For most profiles, this will be your company’s website but for other brands the question of what to put here is more challenging.

For instance, maybe you are a creator who wants to share their portfolio but also link to a podcast that you produce. This is when things like Linktree’s or Later’s Linkinbio feature come in handy, acting as customized landing pages that you can use to host multiple URL’s and offer a launchpad for followers to discover a more diverse range of your content.

To set up a free Linktree URL for your page click here or you can learn more about Later’s Linkinbio feature here.

Call to Action

Last, but certainly not least, you’ll want to include a call to action. This shows up in the form of a button at the bottom of your Instagram bio and calls on the people visiting your profile to engage in some way.

Primarily, these buttons are used for contact information offering an easy way for people to get in touch through email, phone or messaging your page. For other businesses, this may be an opportunity to add options like purchasing gift cards, placing food orders or offering a donation.

What you choose is dependent on your business’ needs but the value of accessibility when it comes to people getting in touch with your brand is insurmountable and these call to action buttons provide a simple one-click approach.

I hope this helped shed some light on how to write your perfect Instagram bio. Used together these tips can help to create a great first impression for prospective followers and offer a way for you to showcase your brand’s personality through a quick elevator pitch of information.

Have any tips that were missed here? I’d love to hear them in the comments or follow along and say hi on Instagram!