Social Media Bios
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Your social media bios are extremely important. They are the first impression that your followers, and potential clients, have of you and your brand. If you want to improve your social media connections, then you need to make sure that your bio is promotional, whilst also being captivating. It should honestly and succinctly highlight your skills, strengths and career highlights, as well as tell the story of your business.
Here are seven simple ways to create an effective social media bio.
Identify Your Target Audience
Before you even start writing your bio, you need to identify your target audience. Not only will this determine which social media platform you are using, but it will impact the way you write your bio.
If you haven’t identified your key target audience, then chances are that you are simply writing to the masses. With a large number of people and profiles on the internet, this risks you being completely overlooked.
Once you know who it is that you are trying to target, try to identify what it is that they find important. What might they be looking for? What service/product/experience do you provide that they might be interested in? This will be the main reason why they connect with you.
Be clear and concise with your business description, so that it is immediately obvious which markets you cater to. What does your business have to offer? Clearly state the benefits and value that it offers clients and how you are able to problem-solve.
You also need to have a clear idea of how your target audience functions. Try to put yourself in their position and think about how they might interact with your business. Try to identify how they spend their time, particularly on social media, and then consider the best way to position and advertise your business skills on each type of network might be. If you craft your bio correctly, you stand a much better chance of being noticed by your ideal client.
Have A Clear Message
The next step is to make sure that you are sharing the right type of message with your audience. Crucially, each social media platform caters to a slightly different market. This means that if you have done thorough research into your target audience, you will be using the most relevant social network to your business. Depending on which one you are using, the tone of your bio will need to be slightly different. If you have several accounts across different social networking platforms, you will need to tailor the bio on each one to make them more specific, and successful, to each type of audience. Whatever message you are trying to share on your profile needs to be short and engaging.
“You have limited time to capture and maintain the attention of your audience, whatever social media platform you are using,” explains Emma Allen, a marketer at UK Writings. “People are busy and there’s always another profile waiting to be discovered. Anything that is really important should be at the top of your bio. Make sure that you are really clear about what it is that your followers or clients are most likely going to want, need or like. Address those needs directly. If you have case studies, portfolios or examples of your work, make sure you share them. It might be a link to a website or service, but it needs to be easy to find and access straight away.”
Avoid cluttering your bio with jargon or industry-speak. You need to ensure that you are talking directly to your target audience. Similarly, you might want to include keywords that your target market might be using, or hashtags, in your bio. This will help your profile to be more immediately relevant.
Remember, your bio isn’t designed to be static. You can update it to reflect your talents, skills, and relevance to your industry, as well as your target audience. Most importantly, it should be credible, relatable and concise.
Tell Your Story
Storytelling is a powerful tool. If you want to captivate an audience then you need to tell a powerful story skillfully. What is the story behind your company or business? How was your company established? What hurdles did you have to overcome along the way?
Audiences love to hear the story behind the company or organization. It adds an important human element to your brand, which in turn, helps to attract the readers’ attention. It can be the difference between a reader simply skipping over your profile, or being drawn in. A well-told, engaging story can help you to connect with your readers by drawing on their emotions.
By sharing your story with readers, you are also opening up the opportunity to create a conversational situation. If you use this storied opportunity well, it can allow you to create more meaningful relationships with your clients. This is because, by sharing your story, you are enabling your readers (and potential clients) to feel involved and as though they are a part of the process.
Your bio provides you with the opportunity to transform your experience into an appealing, vibrant profile. When you write about your skills and abilities, make sure that these are authentic. Try to zoom in on what makes you and your business unique. This will help you to create a bio that is immediately captivating and memorable.
Share with your audience what it is that your business offers that no-one else does. What makes you stand out?
Make sure that if you are using multiple profiles on different social media platforms, that there is consistency between them. You will need to tweak them slightly depending on the platform, but the core message and brand image should remain consistent across all platforms. Similarly, make sure that the bio is relevant and speaks directly to the different types of followers that you have on each social network.
Above all, aim to be honest and transparent in your actions. Your followers and clients will be far more likely to want to keep engaging with you and your business if they feel that they can trust you. By being open and honest, you will be able to create that trust, which is at the heart of all successful business relationships.
As well as establishing your business, you also need to try to connect with your audience on a more personal level. People are always interested in finding out more about you, the person, not just the business.
“Most people have hobbies and things that they are interested in outside of work,” says Bryan Sullivan, a business writer at Academized. “Readers and social media followers, in particular, love to find out about the real you and the things that you enjoy. Try to add in one of these human connectors into your bio. It might be that you confess your love of animals or coffee, or that you are a runner or a book lover. Whatever it is, adding in these little pieces of revealing information, instantly allows followers to identify who you are. They can easily identify shared interests and that helps to create commonality. It is crucial in helping to attract audiences and may well help you to reach followers who might not have been initially targeted by your business, but who find you personally engaging, and who go on to become clients in the future.”
Many people include a hobby in their profile to create this personalized touch. Anything from painting to reading, to sports or knitting. You could try to share a funny story or an insight into where you grew up or your childhood. Many people write about their favorite beverages or foods. For example, you could tell your followers what your favorite café or restaurant is. Alternatively, you could share an adjective that you think best describes you and why. This is the part of your bio where you can have some fun and let your personality shine through.
Be Concise And To The Point
As mentioned earlier, people are busy, especially when it comes to the online world. The average attention span of most readers is only 8 seconds. This means that you only have a crucial few moments in which to capture their attention and make them want to read on and hopefully follow you.
When it comes to social media profiles, less is definitely more. If you have a lengthy bio, you need to edit it. Be ruthless and get to the point. You want to capture your readers’ attention straight away. Whatever information is not necessary, cut it.
If you are stuck on how to keep your bio short and succinct, try creating some lists. What are you top three target markets? What top three skills do you have? What are your top three strengths? What are your three favorite hobbies?
Starting with your name, add in a job description, state your target markets and then add some personalized details, such as any specific skills, strengths or hobbies you have. The key is to remember to keep the bio upbeat and energetic, whilst still providing the relevant information your target audience needs and wants from you.
Using Different Social Networking Platforms
You now know the basic outline for creating an appealing, fun and captivating bio. Next, you need to make sure that you are tailoring the generic bio to each social networking platform appropriately. This will enable you to target audiences more carefully, as well as help you to achieve greater success on each platform in turn.
Treat Instagram like a shop window. It should provide readers with a basic outline of who you are and what your brand is all about. You only have 150 characters, so you want to make your bio compelling and encourage readers to take any action, such as following your profile or clicking on your link. It can be particularly useful to include a relevant hashtag, followed by your call-to-action.
You have 160 characters in which to capture the attention of potential new followers. Essential details to include besides your name, are your username, your location and a link to your website. Your bio needs to be punchy and you should include any additional handles or hashtags too. Twitter is a good platform to include more personalized interests in your bio. Start to grow your real twitter follower count today.
This platform is best suited to more serious business markets. Your bio on LinkedIn allows you up to 2,000 words to share your skills, work history and all the unique talents and experience you have which set you apart from others in your industry. Treat your LinkedIn bio as a summary section. You want this to appear as professional as possible – whether it is your personal one or your company page. Not only will you be gaining followers, but you may also be attracting recruiters.
Make sure you invest time in your ‘About’ section. You should include key information about the company, such as opening dates and mission statements. Make sure that you also include all the relevant information, such as a website link, phone number and email address in the ‘contact’ section. Finally, use the ‘more info’ section to outline more information about the company itself and its services or products.
Conclusion
To create a powerful social media bio for any social networking platform, ensure that you accurately provide information about who you are and where you work. Clearly identify what you do within the business and provide information so that people can contact you.
Once you have clearly identified the target audience you are hoping to reach, check that the tone of your bio is accurately aimed at them. Remember to include any relevant hashtags. Finally, don’t forget to include a personal fact about a topic or hobby that interests you, to create a more meaningful connection.
Keep it short, to the point and upbeat to grab the attention of new followers and potential clients.
