67. How to write a professional bio for social media
What should i write on my social media business profile?
When potential clients find your content on Social Media, having a professional bio will help them quickly decide if the content that you offer is something that interests them and whether they want to follow you or connect with you.
This is the first step into establishing a relationship with potential clients.
Most Social Media profiles offer only a limited amount of characters to explain what your business and your brand are about.
For this reason, you need to be very purposeful and direct on what you write, you can’t afford to waste a single letter.
USERNAME
You have a couple of alternatives on choosing your username, remember that the sections of username and Header are searchable.:
Username - let it be your business or Personal Brand name, preferably the same as your website name or close enough.
Username - let if be your business name + what you do or use a description of what you do.
For example:
Username: Popp_Gardendesign - use the Header to expand your name or what you do
Username: Realestate_city - then use here your name or business name as the Header
The length of the username on different platforms tends to be limited depending on the platform. A best practice would be to select the same one across platforms, so stick to the shortest possibility that makes sense.
PROFILE PHOTO
There are two options on what to use as your profile photos: a Logo or a Portrait, but when to use which.
WHEN TO USE A LOGO FOR YOUR PROFILE PHOTO:
Use a logo, if you are a larger business with several owners or partners, where it will be nearly impossible to see everyone in one photo.
WHEN TO USE A PORTRAIT AS A PROFILE PHOTO
Use a photo of yourself preferably if you have a Personal Brand driven business, where the main product or service is delivered by you.
Yes, even if you sell physical products it is ok to use a portrait as your profile photo. - people can connect and get to know the person behind the products.
If you decide to go with a portrait photo (which you know that I obviously would recommend), use a professional looking one. Most of these profile photos are so small that are hard to see, so a headshot (Head + upper part of the torso) is best, something simple and with contrast from the back.
PLEASE…. Don’t use blurry images, images cropped where you can still see someone standing next to you or from holidays (unless you are in the vacation, travel business) it doesn’t look professional. Avoid images where you can’t see the face, or where the subject is so small that it can barely be seen.
If you are doing this for business, you have nothing to hide and only to gain (trust) from showing yourself with your face.
WHAT TO WRITE ON THE BIO FOR BUSINESS
My suggestion is to always go short, as short as you can including all the most important elements of your products or services.
The reason for doing this is that Social platforms often have a limited amount of characters you can use to write your BIO. If you optimize your bio to be short and on-point it will work then for the Social Platforms in which the amount of characters is shortest, like Instagram or Twitter.
You can then use this as a basis and “expand” yourself when repurposing for other platforms in which you are allowed to include more characters.
Here are the character limits on some of the most often used platforms:
Instagram bio: 150 characters
Pinterest: bio 160 characters
Twitter bio: 160 characters
Facebook page description: 250 characters
About us/Summary: 2000 characters
Using those short amounts of characters and still communicating what you do is not easy, literally you should not waste a single character. For that reason, it is important for you to use SEO tactics and keywords that will help your ideal clients find out and immediately connect with your offer.
What needs to be included in my professional social media profile:
Who are you?
Explain who you are. Use this strategically. If your Username is your name, then don’t repeat your name in the profile header, instead, use it to indicate what you do. If your username is related to what you do, then use the profile header to write your name.
Who do you help?
State it clearly, who is your niche, your ideal client, your target market. Who are the people or business that you work with. When they visit your profile and read this, they will immediately feel “spoken to”.
How will you help them?
What is the benefit of your potential clients working with you? How are you helping them? What will they accomplish? What will their WIN be?
What can they expect?
When they stick around in your account and decide to follow you, what can they expect? What kind of content or information will they be seeing from you?
Experience and/or Social proof
Is it possible to include your experience or social proof in your statement? Like X amount of years in the field, helping customers do xyz or X amount of satisfied customers.
Call-to-action
And last, make sure to offer people visiting your profile a way to be part of your community, benefiting from your knowledge and joining your email list. Add a call-to-action at the end of your profile with a link to a no-cost resource, your website or any other location where they can further connect with you.
You might not be able to include everything that you want, do you best and choose what is most relevant in your case. I think I have changed my profile description a thousand times, always trying to optimize it and refine it.
Notice that on Instagram you can change the description as often as you want, but your header and Username not, there are limits for how often you can do it.
Depending on the Social Media platform you are using, there will be more or less opportunity to include links. On Instagram for example, you can only use one link. This is kind of tricky if you want to give your potential clients a couple of different options to get in touch with you.
There are external link providers that make it easier for you to create a menu of links. I will list a few below, but as things change with time, make sure that the one you are using is compliant with privacy laws as required in the countries where you do business:
www.Linktr.ee is the most widely used and it gets the basic job done for free. You can’t customize much, but that’s the price you pay for using the free version. You can upgrade to a paid version to get more customization and functionality in the area of analytics as well. It is flexible, once you create the links you can switch them on or off, depending on what you have going on in your business and you can easily drag and drop to change the order.
The planning tool, Later, has its own menu of links: Linkin.Bio (you need to have an account and a certain level of subscription to use it). It is nice and allows some customization, but it depends on the level of plan that you are at. Here, you can also customize the order by dragging and dropping and also switch on and off certain links.
The mobile App Unfold from Squarespace also offers the possibility to create a Menu of links called BioSites. You have to create it directly on the mobile app. It’s easy to use, but not very flexible. You can’t switch links on and off and if you want to change the order, you would have to delete them and re-create them in a different order.
Creating your own Landing Page with a list of menus on your website is also a possibility. If you have the ability to create a custom one on your website that would probably be the most elegant solution.
As a big Squarespace fan myself, I created mine on my own site, you can check it out here Squarespace Link in Bio, if you have also a Squarespace site, and would like to do the same, I used BIG CAT CREATIVE YouTube Instructions to create it: HERE
Writing a good professional bio for your social media platforms is only one of the many pieces of the puzzle. WHAT you write in there needs to be clear and strategic, if you want your ideal person to feel connected.
If you are lacking the strategy part, I invite you to download this Personal Branding Guide for 0€ to help you with clarifying other pieces.
Hi there! I’m Blanca!
I’m a Brand Photographer and Personal Branding Coach, helping female entrepreneurs to create a Personal Brand online that STANDS OUT.
I bring your vision to life, help you come up with one and take you by the hand into the online World if you need me to.