Social media is now the way the world sees you and your business first. In fact, 70% of people use social media to research brands and businesses before they buy. Keeping this in mind, you need to put your best foot forward. We’ve created a guide to a great Instagram profile that will maximize your impact on potential customers and make you easier to find.
1. Public (Not Private) Profile
By default, your Instagram profile will be public — meaning anyone in the world can view your profile and posts on Instagram.
If you’re creating an Instagram profile for business, then that’s what you want: You want anyone to be able to view your posts and follow your brand if they want to. (Otherwise, if you keep your profile private, anyone who visits your profile won’t be able to view your photos, which could deter them from following you.)
If you’d like to keep it private and only allow followers who’ve been invited by you or approved by a manager in your company, go into settings under “Privacy.” Here you’ll find options for making everything from the photos on your profile to the tags on each photo either visible only to followers or visible to everyone on Instagram.
To ensure your profile is public: Open “Options” (the gear button on iOS, or three dots on Android) and make sure “Private Account” is turned off.
In addition to this, if you are in direct selling, we recommend making your profile a professional profile, versus a personal one. After choosing a professional profile, we recommend you choose a business profile instead of a creator profile. From there, choose the subcategory of ‘entrepreneur’. This will keep your profile compliant with direct selling regulations and allow you to access more audios for reels.
2. Recognizable & Searchable @Username (i.e., Handle)
The first thing you want to do when setting up your Instagram account is choose a username that is recognizable and easily searchable, like your business name. If your business name is already taken as a username, try keeping your business name as the first part of your username so that people searching for your business are more likely to come across your account. For example, the Australian activewear line Lorna Jane uses the username @lornajaneactive.
When choosing a username for your Instagram account, it’s important to keep in mind that spaces are not allowed in usernames. If you have multiple words in your business name, consider using an underscore instead of a space between words (e.g., @lornajane_active).
To edit your @username: Go to your profile page and click the “Edit Profile” button to the right of your profile photo.
Next, click on the text or open space to the right of the person icon and enter your desired username.
3. Easily Searchable Business Name
Next, make sure to add your full business name or the main idea of your business to the “name” section of your profile. This will appear under your profile picture and under your username in search
If you are a local business, be sure to add the city or town where you are located in the “location” section of your profile.
4. Instagram Profile Picture
When creating your Instagram profile, you’ll want to make sure that you’re taking advantage of the space you have available.
Your profile picture is one of the first things people see when they visit your Instagram profile, as it’s displayed prominently in the top right-hand corner. It should be something easily recognizable — something that’s on-brand with your other social networks.
For most companies, this will be your company logo.
Now, notice that your profile photo is a circle. That wasn’t our choice; Instagram actually crops your profile photo into a circle (110 pixels in diameter) when you upload it to the app.
You don’t have to create the circle image yourself. In fact, since you’ll have to crop your photo into a circle in the app, you’ll ideally want to upload a square photo with your logo in the center, placed so that the corners of the photo can be cut off without a problem.
For reference, keep in mind the minimum profile picture size for Instagram is 110 x 110 pixels — a perfect square. Don’t deviate too far from this minimum; staying below 200 x 200 is ideal.
5. Link in Your Bio
One of the biggest frustrations people have with Instagram—especially businesses—is that it isn’t exactly a great platform for driving traffic away from the app to a website, a Twitter page, or somewhere else. That’s because clickable URLs aren’t allowed anywhere except the single “website” box in your bio.
That’s why you’ll want to add a link to the “website” box in your business’ Instagram bio. This makes it easy for people to go straight from Instagram to your website, blog, or a specific campaign.
One sneaky way to get people to click the link in your bio? By referring to that link in individual photo captions. Ever seen captions that say something like “Link in bio”? They’re trying to direct you to their profile page so you click the link in their bio.
Engage users by updating that URL frequently to point to your latest blog content, YouTube video, product, or offer. For example, are you running a contest, or want to increase subscribers to your blog? Just change the link, and then post a photo that mentions the new link in its caption.
If you’d like to learn more about best practices for you and your business on social media, be sure to give us a follow on Instagram!
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