9 Elements of Your Instagram Bio

Your Bio should define you in the simplest way that communicates your personality and value. Except you are Mark Zuckerberg, where your name is already strong, you may want to do better. Look at the bios of Kim Kardashian, Richard Branson, My Bio (check out my press kit). Let the message me consistent. On all your platforms, you should have a consistent bio.

Something that pitches who you are to anyone. I call this your unique value proposition: 

Value Proposition simply means – what do you do to help people? What do you offer that takes people from where they are now to where they want to be? or gives them something they want to have? 

It is simply: Tell me what your brand is about. It consist of 3 things Who, What and Why. I help _________(who) _______________(do what) by ________________(how) because____________(why).

There are 9 parts of a bio:

1. Your handle. It can be whatever you want to be known for.

2. Your profile picture, something strong, a picture you’ll be proud of. Something recognizable. I always think if Obama sees my profile picture would he take me seriously? If you don’t have a professional picture, use your phone to take amazing pictures. If you don’t like the background, use remove.bg to remove the background.

3. Your subtitle: this part is supposed to be for your name (especially if it’s different from your handle). It is also the searchable part of Instagram. You can use this to your advantage by adding your code area. Eg you can see branding whiz in mine. It just means if people search for branding, they’ll find me

4. Who you are: Is a chance to show off your value proposition

Tell me what your brand is about. It consist of 3 things Who, What and Why. I help _________(who) _______________(do what) by ________________(how) because____________(why).

You can even ignore the Why part. But it’ll let people know who you are and what you do

5. This is the inbound link on IG. You can link to handles you are associated with. E.g. if you have a business on IG, tag the business page. If you work in a company that you are proud of, add them, or use hashtags with your brand keywords. Your keywords are ideas or topics that define or serve as unique identifiers for what your brand/content/topics are all about. They often constitute the search queries of your audience. When your target is searching for solutions to their problems, these are the “key” words they use. It could be fat head keywords (broads and not as specific)eg clothes, pepper, social or long-tail (specific phrases) eg best organic clothes in Africa. Search engines filter search results based on “keywords”. Your audience may not know your name, but when they search the keywords describing their problems or potential solutions, will you pop up?

6. Your link in bio (outbound link): Links that link outside of Instagram. Use link-in-bio platforms so you can create an amazing link in bio that links to multiple pages. Use Linktree, Tap link or any of those platforms. Of course, I’ll recommend http://pages.disha.ng because that’s what I use. It works for me. Even better, I can use images, videos, etc. You can also check http://inspo.disha.page To see amazing pages people have created. It gives more life to the single link most social platforms provide in your bio.

7. These are contact details if you have a business or creator account. Put only information you are comfortable being contacted on.

8. Highlights: Use highlights to give people insights around what to expect, who you are, what you are about. One of my fave highlights is @dianagetssocial highlights and of course, I love my highlights 💃🏽

Tom Ross has great highlights too. They tell you what to expect from the feed.

9: The first 3-9 posts in your Feed, IGTV and Highlights… they say so much about you.

These 9 things put together, come together to determine if someone follows you or not, if they spend time on your page or not. There’s a reason the follow button is in the center of these things. You’ll see them before you press follow, make these 9 elements count.

[Download this free resource on Social Media Mistakes and How to Avoid Them]