Hey Rising Tide friends. My name is Molly Balint And I’m the owner Farmhouse Creative Marketing, and I am also one of the TuesdaysTogether leaders in Bel Air, Maryland, and I’m coming to you today from my home / office / homeschooling room. I live on my family’s farm in Maryland, and I have my husband and I have four girls, and a little flock of sheep, and two labradors, one of whom is asleep in my office and hopefully won’t be snoring as I talk to you.
But anyway, I work as a social media coach and an online educator and I help small business owners learn how to use social media to tell their story and to build community and to connect with their customers.
So, today I’m talking to you about one of my favorite things to talk about which is your Instagram profile and I’m going to be telling you about the six keys to a really irresistible Instagram profile and one that will convert people who are just popping over to check out your account into followers, and then hopefully eventually into clients and customers.
So, if you think about Instagram profile, really, it’s kind of like the business card for your business. It is sort of like the gateway of your business that people are going to see first before they decide if they’re going to follow you or follow your account or eventually become that client and customer. So it’s really important to have a very clear and a very enticing and irresistible Instagram profile.
And if you kind of think – I always tell people, like, think about your own habits on Instagram. So if you are in your notifications and you see a like or a comment or a follow from an account you don’t recognize, the first thing we all generally do is we, like, click over to that account to check them out. So that’s why this profile is so important, just as much as your photos and your captions and the hashtags you’re using, having a really solid profile is really important.
So, let’s get started. I’m going to talk to you about the six things that are the most important parts of your profile and what you need to do for each one.
1. Profile Picture
So, the first thing is your profile picture. So, I always tell people, you know, we probably all heard this saying that businesses, or that people, do business with people. So, ideally, you want your profile picture to be of your face.
So, be brave, get your face out there, get someone to take a picture for you, whether it’s professional, whether it’s your kids doing it for you. Ideally, you want to have your face. People want to know who it is behind the business. They want to know who they’re talking to when they’re in the comments or where they’re in the captions with you. People do business with people.
So, ideally I always tell people my number one choice and ideal option is to have your face as your profile picture. Sometimes that’s not the case, even on my account. I show my face a lot in my feed but my actual profile picture is of my logo. So if you’re using your logo, that’s fine, but there’s a couple things you need to think about.
You want to make sure that you have a logo that’s simple and easy to read because that circle really is kind of small. So when people are looking at it, whether it’s in their notifications or in their feed or whether they’re coming to your profile you need to make sure that you have a simple logo.So sometimes that may mean you need to like remove elements of your logo, maybe if you have a lot of text around it, or a lot of detail, or even like scripty text, which is hard to read when it’s small, you want to make sure that your logo is simple easy to read and shows up well in that small circle.
So, those are the two options in the two things that I generally recommend–either your photo, a photo of you, or your – maybe of your family, if you’re a family business and then if that doesn’t work for your business, then a logo, but make sure your logo is super clear and easy to read.
2. Your Username
So, the second part of your Instagram profile that’s super important, and sometimes a lot of people don’t know about this is – is your username. So you have your @, like your account name, which you know, like for me, it’s @FarmhouseCreativeMarketing and if I was telling somebody like the URL for my account and how to find me it would be @FarmhouseCreativeMarketing.
However, that username line is the only part of your Instagram profile that’s searchable. So, this is really important because that means that when people are coming to Instagram and they’re searching for someone like you, or for your services, or someone in your area that offers what you offer, or they’re looking for the products that you create, that is where that searchable part of your Instagram profile becomes so important.
So, maybe you are an Instagram guru. Maybe you are in a farmer’s market in a certain part, certain location, a town, or a city. Maybe you are a watercolor artist, or a lifestyle photographer. When you’re writing out your username and you’re deciding what to put in that line, think about what it is a customer coming to Instagram and searching would be searching for? So things to think about would be location, specifically what it is that you offer, and that sort of thing. You don’t have a lot of room there. You only have 30 characters. So a lot of times I’ll tell people to just like sit down with a pencil and paper and just start brainstorming, brainstorm some of those keywords, test things, put them in a character counter. See if it works, see if it fits.
But a lot of times people make the mistake of making that username the exact same thing as their account name when they’re not, they’re losing all that valuable search juju that they could be having on their account if they were using that username line as more like a search line and helping people find their account. So that’s really important. So that’s number two.
3. Instagram Bio Power Statements
The next thing I want to talk about is your actual Instagram bio, so the part that you’re writing out. And I always tell people if you look at the way like Instagram profiles are set up now a lot of times when someone clicks over to your account, whether they’re coming in from your website, or another social media profile, or from a like, or a comment, or that sort of thing, a lot of times your full profile, or your full bio, you have to click “read more” to see the whole thing.
So, I always tell people that those first few lines are really important. And so the way that you take advantage of that is by writing something called a “power statement”. It’s a really clear statement that tells exactly what you do. Usually they start like, “I create,” “I help,” “I teach,” “I make,” “I grow,” maybe it’s “we” if your company is more than just you or your business is more than just you.But when you start with that power statement, you tell people exactly what you do.
You only have really a few seconds to make an impression on people when they visit your Instagram account then and they are going to decide what it is you’re about, what it is you’re posting about and they’re going to be asking themselves what’s in it for me. So you want it to always err on the side of clarity.
So, number one is a great profile photo. Number two is a power statement.
4. What Makes You Unique?
The third thing you need in your Instagram profile is something that makes you unique. So, maybe what makes you unique is the practices that you use. Maybe you use sustainable practices in your business. Maybe it’s the way your company gives back or your business gives back. Maybe it’s something really fun that’s about you because you really are the face of your business. Maybe it’s that you are a crazy cat lady, or maybe it’s you are balancing, you know, being a parent and owning your own business, or maybe you left a nine-to-five to do something on your own.
So, think about what it is, whether it’s your products and how you make them, or something about your personality that’s fun that people will connect with. Think about what it is that makes you unique and-and make that the next part of your Instagram profile. That’s really important.
5. Call To Action
Alright, so the last thing that you need is a really clear call to action. You have the–at the, below your Instagram profile, you have a link and you can link that to your website, to an email newsletter, to your Facebook group, to a discount code or something like that.
You need to make sure in your Instagram profile you’re answering the question, “Why should I click?” So you want to tell people what it is that they’re going to get when they click on your link. So maybe it’s “grab our discount code,” or “join the community,” or “get on the list,” or something like that or maybe you’re pointing them to a recent blog post.
Make sure that you add some sort of call to action, even adding, like, emojis and stuff to it to point people to that link and to let them know why they need to click on it. Don’t just leave your link there hanging out in thin air. Tell people exactly what they should do. Create a really clear call to action and why they should click.
6. Line Breaks and Emojis
And then the last thing, I just mentioned it, is line breaks and emojis. So, once you’ve crafted your-your Instagram profile, you’ve made it all fit with your character count and the little space that we have to create our Instagram profiles, it’s time to go back and sort of make your account or your profile visually pleasing.
You want it to be clear. You want it to be able to be looked at and people can quickly grab the most important information. So, a lot of times the way you do this is by adding those line breaks and those emojis.
So, there’s lots of apps out there that you can use that will help you craft your paragraph. One that I always recommend is captioner.me but there’s tons out there. Caption, the word caption, ER, dot me. You can do it in your phone, in the notes app in your phone and copy and paste it but by adding those line breaks, like put a line break between, you know, write your power statement, something that makes you unique.
Maybe you need to add your location because you’re location-based, it’s also really important, and maybe your call to action comes next. By adding those line breaks, you’re making it easy to read your account, to figure out what exactly it is about you that’s important.
And then the other thing that you can add are emojis. We already have, like, so much limited space in our Instagram profiles that sometimes a great emoji can speak for you. So if you can’t fit in all those things, maybe you can find an emoji that will take up a lot less space and a lot fewer characters and can help illustrate and tell your story in your profile.
So, those are the six keys to a great Instagram profile. Having that great profile picture, whether it’s of your face or whether it’s of like a simplified version of your logo, taking advantage of the username and having searchable terms or the terms that people would be searching for if they were coming to Instagram to find a business like yours, having a really great power statement that says exactly what it is that you do, and a clear call-to-action to click on your link.
So guys, thank you so much for letting me be here with you. It really was an honor. I love talking about this stuff, and I love helping people, so I’m glad to be here. If you decide to take a look at your Instagram profile and give it a little bit of a makeover, please let me know. Take a screenshot of it before you do it, before you make your changes, make your changes, and then take another screenshot and share it with me.
You can share it here in the comments, or if you want to send me a message, a DM on Instagram, I’m Farmhouse Creative Marketing. I would love to see it and just chat with you about it. So, thank you guys. I would say to remember to give yourself lots of grace during this time. That is definitely what I’m learning: giving myself grace, my children grace, other people grace, but I hope that you are taking care and staying well. Thanks guys for letting me be here and I will talk to you soon.
