The Instagram biography is a profile's calling card. It is the first thing any user will see of your account and the first impression of you, your brand and your products. Therefore, it is essential for a company or personal brand to dedicate part of its efforts and logistics to creating a good Instagram biography.
First of all, we must specify what we consider part of the Instagram biography. Although it is usually called biography only the text that appears at the top of the profile, this is nothing without a good photo, name and user. In this way, we could say that everything that appears in this image is part of the Instagram biography:
Elements to optimise
First of all, let's talk about the photo, the avatar. If your profile corresponds to your personal brand, you should choose a photo of yourself, but if it is a company, as is the case with ours, the best option is usually the brand's logo. The photo will always appear when people search for our profile, when we upload a post or when we publish a story. It is important that it represents us and is identifiable. A black and white photo, for example, will always go much more unnoticed than one in colour.
Lo siguiente que aparece siempre junto a la foto es nuestro nombre de usuario. En nuestro caso, @occamagenciadigital. El nombre de usuario es único, no hay dos iguales, por lo que puedes tener problemas a la hora de escogerlo si, por ejemplo, quieres poner tu nombre personal. Es decir, que no contamos con todas las opciones posibles, como ocurre con nuestro avatar. Por lo tanto, debemos procurar, en la medida de lo posible, que nuestro nombre de usuario sea el nombre de la empresa, modificando algún aspecto para que aparezca lo más completo posible si es que ya está cogido. Puede funcionar añadir algún signo como un guión o barra baja en el final, aunque no es recomendable situarlo al principio. Es recomendable, además, que sea el mismo en todas las redes sociales que tengamos. Al fin y al cabo, es como nuestro DNI, la forma de identificarnos en redes sociales, única. Además, forma parte de la URL del perfil.
Once this has been achieved, some tips for designing a good username are the following, always oriented towards making it easy to remember and identify:
- Keep it short
- It should not be complex (neither to write nor to remember)
- It should not have too many signs or symbols; letters are always preferable to numbers
- It should be as similar as possible to the Instagram name.
The name is the next element to deal with. In this case, we can use any name we want, even if it is already repeated. However, as we have just mentioned, it is advisable that it is the same as the username to favour identification. In the event that your profile corresponds to a personal brand, or that you work with a pseudonym, you can include both, as the writer Francisco de Paula does, who is known as Blue Jeans.
The name will be one of the parts of the biography that attracts the most attention, as it is in bold and is the first thing that always appears. You can be as creative as you want with the 30 characters that Instagram gives you to create it. It is also vitally important because it is one of the search options that the Instagram search engine has, as well as audio, hashtag or place. It is therefore advisable that it is the most representative of your company so that, in case someone wants to find you without knowing your name or user, they can get a good result by just putting your name.
It goes without saying that to optimise your biography you should have the professional profile option. This will give you several advantages that go beyond the biography, such as access to insights and statistics. But, as far as the description of the profile is concerned, it allows you to tag your profession, as we saw in Blue Jeans' profile "writer" or in ours, "product or service".
Among the options Instagram offers are: Artist, Musician, Blogger, Clothing Brand, Community, Digital Creator, Institution, Entrepreneur, Writer, Blog Person, Product or Service, Gamer, Restaurant, Beauty, Food Business or Photographer. This is a good way to identify your profile as a kind of business, which broadly defines your account and orients the person who is looking at your profile for the first time.
Just below this classifying label begins the actual biography. 150 characters where you can define yourself in detail. What to say and how to say it. Here are some tips:
- Keep in mind that you are addressing someone, a particular person
- Say who you are and what you do: digital business, portrait photographer, drummer in a band, etc
- Add some specific information that is important and adds quality to the brand: Year founded, special achievements, awards...
- Practical information: opening hours and address.
- do you have a slogan? Include it.
- Use emoticons: they are eye-catching, lighthearted and, above all, very descriptive. They don't have to be informal, but give quick and visual information. Or you can also use them to show a certain informality, if that's what you want. Here are two examples of companies that use them in different ways.
- You don't need to put everything, you need to find a balance between defining yourself and not leaving a character free and piling it all up.
Keep in mind that the biography should explain to the person who reads it what kind of profile they have underneath. It is also important that the information is structured and organised. A profile that has a biography organised by lines is much more accessible to the eye than one that writes with sentences in a row and separated by dots.
It is advisable to include hashtags, whether they are your own or those of your guild. Remember that one of the search variables of the application are hashtags, so it is advisable to create your own so that people can tag you and search for your profile through your hashtag. The best place for hashtags is at the end of the biography, but not as the last thing to appear.
This place is reserved for a hook that links to the link, the link that Instagram allows you to include at the end of the biography. The most recommended place is a link to your website, but it can also be to your latest post, to a collaboration...
Finally, Instagram allows you to include buttons at the end with information such as contact, location, website or purchase link. The curious thing about this, and that you should also bear in mind for the other sections of the Instagram biography, is that the display varies depending on the device used. For example, these buttons are not visible from the computer, where they appear as a link, but they are visible from the phone.
In general terms, the most important thing to optimise your biography is that you use all the resources that the application offers to make your page and your content as specific as possible. Always remember that it is the first impression that a user has of your profile and that it can captivate or invite them to abandon your profile. Finally, remember to update it from time to time, new challenges, new schedules, new updates, or reformulate a sentence.
