17 Feb Instagram Bio Tips
Instagram Bio Tips
From a viewer’s perspective, only allowing 150 characters in an Instagram bio sounds great. The text will be short, sweet, and to the point. From a business perspective, it’s a little trickier.
Because Instagram puts a limit on how many characters can be in a bio, business owners have to come up with alternative ways to brand. The bio is the first thing to the eye when visiting a new page, so it’s important to cover all of your bases and revamp your text in any way you can. Consider what information is most valuable to your company concerning a potential customer!
What services do you offer? How can they reach you?
To help you move past the bump in the road that is the 150 character limit, we’ve put together a small list of ways you can make the most of the characters you DO have in your Instagram bio.
Line Breaks
Without line breaks, a small amount of information can easily look cluttered and difficult to read. To eliminate that, you’re able to edit your bio on a computer to customize your text better. Because Instagram only allows 150 characters per bio, view this as a way of cheating the system. When editing on a computer rather than a mobile device, you can space out your text by incorporating line breaks.
Hashtags
Using hashtags in your bio can be a great way to organize content that is repetitive for your followers. That being said, make sure that the hashtags used are branded hashtags. In other words, it’s best for the hashtags to be uniquely yours, whether it be a slogan or a campaign name. Your profile can’t be found based off of a hashtag in your bio, but it does organize your branded content so that new followers can see what’s happening.
Emojis/Special Characters
While it may look as though emojis and special characters are just for the aesthetics, they also hold a greater purpose when writing a bio in 150 characters or less. Just like the line breaks these details can reduce clutter and put space between your text, but can also take the place of words that are contributing to the overall character count. For example, if you were to list your business’s email address, instead of typing it out, an envelope emoji could be used. The same goes for a telephone number or location, where a phone or push pin emoji could be used instead. In addition to this, there are also special characters that you can copy and paste from Microsoft Word to have the same effect. This can be done by simply going to “Insert” followed by “Advanced Symbol”.
Name Field
The name just before your bio might seem like the smallest detail, but it is actually one of the ways that you can be easily found on Instagram. The name field is searchable, therefore it’s important to make sure you have a searchable keyword in the title, whether it is already in your business name or you have to add it afterwards. The word “salon” is more than likely already in your business name, so it probably isn’t necessary to add anything else, but this is your reminder to optimize the name field if you have not already done so.
Website link
Instagram doesn’t allow you to have a clickable link in your posts, so it is beneficial to have one in your bio for both accessibility and exposure. Listing your website homepage is the best way to do this, because it is the link that isn’t changing. Without an obvious way to learn more, your chances of turning a follower into a lead are much lower.
Key Takeaways for Your Salon
- While Instagram may limit you to only using 150 characters to customize your bio on your mobile device, there are plenty of ways you can optimize this space: line breaks, branded hashtags, emojis/special characters, the name field, and your website link.
- Emojis and special characters aren’t just for the aesthetics. They can also be used to space out your text and take the place of longer words.
- Your Instagram name may be short and sweet, but it is searchable. It’s important to make sure you optimize this space to have a relevant keyword, if one is not already there.