Social media marketing is an essential strategy for online businesses to implement today. Despite that, many online companies mainly focus on their content and sharing it on social media. We agree that social media marketing is essential, which is why we often discuss this during our free webinar training. While that's vital for a strategy, they forget one little thing: the social media bio. Implementing a social media bio may not seem like a big deal, but it can help quite a bit. A business's bio helps grab the attention of users and helps explain what it is all about. It's hard grabbing a customer's focus on a small bio, but it's a necessity. Here's how to promote a brand with a new and improved social media bio:
Entrepreneur says to consider your audience and platform before switching up your social media bio. Thinking about your audience will help you figure out what to say and how to target the people in your niche.
Your social media bios shouldn’t be exactly the same on all platforms. Your audience will differ across social networks, so you need to create bios that are relevant to each. For example, your audience on LinkedIn will typically want to know about your professional accomplishments, including how many years your company has been in business. On the other hand, users on Instagram will expect your business to be a bit more personable and fun. So, be sure to study your audience on each platform and create a social media bio accordingly.
While each bio should cater to the specific platform and audience, remember that you need to keep your brand consistent throughout. Create a style guide that your team can follow. Include guidelines for images, colors and tone of voice to ensure brand consistency across multiple channels.
Consider which platform you're using when incorporating a social media bio. That will help you figure out how many characters you have to work with, as well as what you might want to include. Medium tells us more about this below:
Be aware of who your audience is and remember that it might differ between social media platforms. On Twitter and Instagram try to be more authentic and personal while on LinkedIn write a longer and more in-depth description of your professional achievements.
And know your limits:
Instagram bio: 150-character maximum
Twitter Bio: 160-character maximum
LinkedIn Summary: 2 000-character maximum
Facebook short description: 155-character maximum
Social Buddy offers two suggestions: Be authentic and think about your ideal follower. Based on these two factors, you can learn how to frame your social media bio. You should also take your follower's age, gender, and occupation into consideration when you work on the bio.
Be Authentic
Your Instagram bio should be authentic and, of course, accurate. Be true to yourself and the content you’re sharing – you don’t want to mislead users to get them to follow you, as that will only result in poor engagement or a subsequent unfollow. Use your bio as a space to introduce yourself to your potential new followers: tell them about who you are, what you plan to share on your Instagram, and what interests you.Consider Your Ideal Follower
To drive engagement and increase your number of followers, you should always be considering who your ideal follower is and what would interest them. If you run a business Instagram, your ideal followers are customers. The same way that a business accounts for their target demographic of customers, you should consider your target demographic of followers. Here are some questions you can consider:What are the demographics of your target audience? Think age, gender, occupations, education, and location.
What are their interests, hobbies, values, or lifestyles?
What personalities or attitudes do you want to attract?
What kind of person would be interested in what you’re sharing?
What drives your target audience?
If you fit into your target audience, what would attract you to follow a page or buy their products or services?Once you’ve asked yourself these questions, craft an Instagram bio that would appeal to that target audience. Keep them in mind, since they are the ones who will read your bio and decide if they should click the Follow button.
Medium says not to be humble about your achievements because sometimes that can help “sell” your brand and products.
Tell people about your skills and achievements, especially if we are talking about how to build a perfect LinkedIn profile. Think carefully — what sets you apart from others? A good bio section includes particular unique skills, hobbies or interests that make you stand out. Remember that this is a place to be self-promotional and give a reason for people to follow you.
Have you thought about using emojis? Entrepreneur says that using emojis will help your company stand out and engage your audience. Emojis add personality to a profile and make it stand out from the rest.
You may not associate emojis with professionalism, but if you want to stand out on social media, you need to use emojis in your bios. Not only will emojis help your brand stand out online, but they can also help you convey your message more effectively.
According to Vyvyan Evans, the author of The Emoji Code, emojis replicate characteristics of human conversation. He adds that “70 percent of the meaning of an oral conversation comes from nonverbal cues. Emojis add personality to the text and generate empathy among users.”
Take a look at the use of emojis from Outdoor Voices. It uses several athletic and recreational-type emojis to connect with its sporty audience.
But don’t just add an emoji for the sake of adding an emoji. Be sure to use emojis that are relevant to your business and your message.
Medium has some excellent examples of how to improve an Instagram account. They tell us that coming up with a visually appealing Instagram account can help boost sales and improve engagement.
Creating a visually appealing Instagram account with consistent style and clear message in the bio will increase your chances for getting into the Top of Instagramers and thus boost your Instagram account performance even more. Some easy ways to increase the visual creativity of your bio include using emojis, symbols or changing the font. Apps such as Kika Emoji Keyboard and Textizer Font Keyboards might be helpful here. Keep up with the social media hacks that can make your bio look more attractive. For example, impress you Instagram followers and create an eye-catching Instagram bio by boosting its visual appeal. You can easily add line breaks to your Instagram bio by typing the text (line breaks included) in any text editor (e.g. Notes app) and then copy/paste that text into your Instagram bio.
Adding hashtags to your Instagram bio is another way to improve a biography and make it stand out online. Social Buddy explains how using hashtags in an Instagram bio has many benefits. People can search and find you and also let others know you share the same interest.
Add Hashtags to Your Instagram Bio
A recent Instagram update now allows you to put hashtags in your bio. These hashtags are clickable, and will lead to that topic page just like any other hashtag. Unfortunately, adding a hashtag to your Instagram bio does not make your account searchable through that hashtag, nor will it place you on the explore page for that hashtag.Still, adding a hashtag to your Instagram bio can let others know what interests you, what kind of posts they can expect from your account, or could lead them to click said hashtag themselves. This last possibility is especially useful if you have a brand hashtag specific to your business. If you have a branded hashtag, add it to your Instagram bio to drive traffic and increase brand exposure to that hashtag and your business in general.
Search Engine Journal discusses the importance of a brand to have something to show and share. They go on to explain why having a complete profile, and bio heavily contributes to this.
Have Something to Show & Share
If you want to be worth following, there has to be some “there” there. You have to have some substance to your profile.Your best followers will be people who take the time to check out your profile before following you. They’ll want to see that there’s something worth following.
Make sure you have all of the following:
A complete profile. Fill in every field that applies to you. On most social networks you should try to make your bio tell a story. Intrigue visitors into following you. On Twitter, where your bio space is limited, use keywords that you want to be found for. Also, have an attractive, close up head shot (preferably shot by a professional) and a relevant cover image.
A valuable feed. Make sure your feed/timeline is always showing recently-shared, valuable content. Some careful users will browse a little way down your feed to makes sure your active and that they won’t be getting junk if they follow you. For social networks that allow a pinned post (a post that stays “sticky” at the top of your feed), make sure you always have your latest, most valuable piece of content pinned.
If you're ready to learn how to start an online company or improve the one you have, check out our free webinar training! We share many tips of the trade so you can gather all the information you need to develop a profitable business that's bound to excel online.
Sources: Entrepreneur, Medium, Social Buddy, Search Engine Journal
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