Now You Can Seriously Revamp Your Instagram Bio

A few months ago, Instagram graced us with story highlights – those beautiful little circles that let us display our best and most interesting stories right underneath our bios. This month, we’re getting lucky yet again, with the opportunity to include live links to hashtags and other profiles.

While this change may seem inconsequential at first – it’s a big shift for businesses who have custom hashtags and affiliate accounts. Here’s how to make the most of Instagram’s ever-changing landscape.

Tips for Adding a Hashtag

In terms of how to actually add the hashtag to your bio, you’ll just need to click on ‘edit profile’ and type it out in the bio section with the ‘#’ icon in front of it. The only change Instagram has implemented is making these hashtags appear as clickable links within your bio.

When thinking about what hashtag to include in your bio, we’d suggest sticking to customised, branded hashtags only. According to Later, adding a hashtag to your bio doesn’t mean you’ll turn up in the search results for that hashtag. And you don’t want to be taking up any more space in your bio with hashtags that aren’t driving traffic back to your profile.

Tips for Adding Usernames

The ability to link to other Instagram accounts right from your bio will be an absolute godsend for businesses that have multiple branches/affiliate businesses/Instagram accounts. But if your business doesn’t fall into this category, we’d recommend steering clear of this feature.

Think of it this way, if someone arrives at your Instagram account for the first time, and they see another account linked in your profile, there’s a decent chance they could click on that profile and completely forget about returning to engage with your content. So, it makes sense to only link to those accounts whose success will be mutually beneficial for you. Save mentions of friends and businesses you admire for individual posts, not your bio.

Tips for Adding Story Highlights

Perhaps one of the biggest changes Instagram has implemented since the introduction of Stories, the ability to feature past story highlights on your profile offers enormous value for businesses. Firstly, it allows you to reuse valuable content and reach a much larger audience with it, and secondly, it provides a unique opportunity to convey key business areas quickly.

Style Magazines is doing this extremely well by displaying each of the editorial categories they cover with branded icons. People who visit their profile get an immediate idea of the content they deliver without having to visit their website or scroll through posts. Think about exactly what you want to communicate to your audience if this is the first time they’re encountering your business.

Quick tips for implementing story highlights:

• Make sure you stories are set to automatically save to your archive in story settings. This will let you show them in your bio at any point in the future.
• To add a custom icon, you’ll just need to make that icon one part of that particular story group. We’d suggest putting it near the end of the story so that audiences see more interesting content first,
• While it will make sense for most businesses to title their stories as key business areas, it might also make sense to include demographic or location-based terms such as men, women, Brisbane, Melbourne etc. Whatever you want to communicate first.
• You might also find it useful to display one story group as reviews of your business. Reviews are playing an increasingly important role in establishing trust in the digital world, and they’ll go a long way in the eyes of potential customers.

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