Are you a creator or own a business account on Instagram? We got your answer. It doesn’t matter whether you are a professional creator or a business owner. The goal is to increase sales and followers. Instagram is one of the world’s second-largest social media platforms after Meta (previously known as Facebook). Instagram has over a billion active users a month.
Users use Instagram to share their photos, watch videos and follow their favorite social media influencers. As a creator or a business, Instagram can be useful for you in many ways. Instagram can help your business gain more online visibility, sales, revenue, and others, depending on your needs.
If you are using Instagram to market your business, you should know that your competitors are also present on the same platform. They are also using Instagram to reach the same target audience you are trying to acquire. Here’s the question – how to stand out and reach more users than your competitors?
You can simply reach out to more Instagram users by optimizing your Instagram profile. This will help you gain more online visibility.
There you go! In this article, we will explain to you how to optimize your Instagram profile. We will share the best Instagram profile optimization strategies with the best explanation. We are here to assist you in optimizing your business or creator profile in a few steps.
Continue reading ahead to check out how to optimize your Instagram profile in 2022.
Why Optimize Your Instagram Profile?
Do we really need to optimize our Instagram profile? We often ask this question to ourselves while promoting our products and services on Instagram.
And, the answer is – Yes. Of course, we need to optimize our Instagram profile to get effective results. With time, getting noticed on Instagram has become quite challenging as your competitors are also on Instagram. It has become essential to optimize your Instagram profile to stand out in your target industry and be seen by more users.
Besides getting good results compared to your competitors, some statistics show why you should optimize your Instagram profile. Have a quick look at Instagram stats.
- Instagram has around 1.39 million active users as of October 2021. Optimizing your profile with the right SEO tactics can lead to massive success.
- According to a report by Statista, 32% of Instagram users are aged between 25 and 34 years, as of October 2021.
- As per Oberlo, users spend around 53 minutes per day on Instagram. This number will gradually increase with time, as people are using social media more.
- Here is one of the best statistics for business owners. 83% of people are using Instagram to discover more products and services. This shows that Instagram is a great platform to sell your products to your targeted industry.
Now, you must have understood why you need to optimize your Instagram profile. Read the following section to know how to optimize your Instagram profile in 2022.
How to Make Your Instagram Profile Look Good
Optimize Your Instagram Bio
Instagram bio reflects a lot about your business and profession. We always introduce ourselves to everyone with a short introduction. Our Instagram also needs to do the same. Instagram allows us to write a 150 words bio to introduce our business to our followers. Writing an interesting and intriguing bio for your Instagram profile would be best.
Your bio should be interesting, easy to read and understand. It is really important to have a good bio because many users look at our bio before looking at the content. Everyone wants to know what services you offer and your unique selling proposition. And, your Instagram bio should explain everything in 150 characters. You have to use this space wisely and write a compelling description.
Here are a few things you should keep in mind while writing a bio for your Instagram profile:
- One line introduction about your organization
- What kind of services do you offer
- List your interests (For creators and professionals)
- Include your contact information to let them easily reach you.
- Add a power CallToAction
Username & name:
The second element of your Instagram bio is your Instagram username and name. Choosing or creating Instagram’s username is as complex and important as naming a child. Your profile is discovered by your username. So, a username is considered the lifeblood of your Instagram account. Your Instagram name clarifies your identity to a visitor. If you are a business, your Instagram username and name should be the same as your business’s name. Moreover, if you are an individual, your username should be your real name or the name you would like to be called. You can also use a shortened version of your original name. Create or choose your username according to your content strategy and targeted audience. Your username should reflect your content.
Profile Photo:
A profile photo is the very first element when it comes to any social media account. Specifically, If we talk about Instagram, the profile photo is considered as the first component of Instagram bio. The profile photo must be attractive and persuasive. Profile photo defines the 3 W’s of your business. What, why, and who you are. The very first thing that attracts visitors is your profile photo. Profile photos should be professional. Profile photo must have your brand colors. Profile photo should look attractive even when it is minimized. If you are a business, your profile photo should be your company’s or business’s logo. But if you are a single person or influencer it should be your picture.
When a visitor looks at your profile, your profile image is the first impression that tells all about the purpose of your Instagram account and why you are here. Your profile image should fit with your overall Instagram aesthetic. Always keep your profile picture up to date and evergreen. It doesn’t look professional if it’s summer and your profile picture is showing you up in front of the Christmas tree. Your profile picture should have a perfect size. The perfect size for an Instagram profile picture is 110 x 110 pixels.
Keep in mind that your Instagram profile picture is all about showing off your brand and personality. For instance, if you are a photographer then you should be holding a camera in your headshot.
Write a Great Bio
The third element is a bio of 150 characters written under your username. A fine-tuned bio briefs visitors about what you are and what you do. After reading the bio, the visitor will understand completely all about you and your business. Think that your bio is your business pitch. You have to pitch your business in 150 characters. A bio can be in the form of a few sentences or the form of bullet points. Try to make these 150 characters enough attractive and persuasive that the visitor must follow you.
Be minimalistic: You must have to keep in mind that your bio should be optimized and minimalistic. Never create or write a messy bio. A bio should be simple and clear. Only use the words that are enough to make sense to a visitor about your business. Never flood your bio with useless keywords.
Add your profession and service: A niche is a specific topic or service that a company specializes in. For example, if a company provides legal services, it may have a niche in family law. If they provide accounting services, they may specialize in tax preparation. Niches are often determined by the skills and expertise of the company’s employees and its customers’ needs.
Add Key Skills and Experience: Utilising your skills & experience can help you to have a professional and trustworthy brand, increased confidence from your target audience, and an understanding of the services you offer.
Use humor to transform your brand voice: It’s important to use your brand voice on social media to increase brand recognition. Plus, a little humor will help your gifters personalize their following and make it feel more personal.
Credit: www.oberlo.com
Personal interests/Hobbies: Building a relationship with your customers is very important. Share some of the things that interest you to come across as likable and engaging; your hobbies, interests, etc.
Your official business website
The fourth element that your Instagram bio must-have is the link to your official website. Probably, all of you may know that, if you add a website’s link or any link to Instagram’s caption, your visitors will not be able to click on it. Instagram allows you to add the link in your bio. That’s why the link to your official website matters a lot. If your business doesn’t have a website then it leaves a message to customers that your business is stuck in the dark ages, you are not available anymore, or maybe people don’t like your presence.
Add a Tagline
A tagline is the fifth element of your Instagram bio. I will not be wrong if would say that your tagline is a summary of your business. A tagline allows you to tell your visitors about your business in a short interesting and provoking line.
Link Other Social Media Platforms
It is very much important to link the other social media platforms your business has. You can provide the links to your social media accounts in the bio. Instead of providing descriptions about your other social media platforms just add links to bio. This will help your visitors to explore your business thoroughly.
Use Emojis
You know a single emoji can define the personality or tone of your business or profile. More excitingly, you can also add emojis instead of using keywords. Emojis will help your Instagram bio to look more attractive and persuasive.
Add line breaks to your Instagram bio
Adding line breaks to your Instagram bio helps to clean up your bio. Probably, it would be hard to read text when there is no line break, or maybe sometimes it looks messy. By using line breaks, your Instagram will look more blazing.
Include A Compelling CTA
CTA “Call to Action” is the digital method of asking for a sale at the end of your bio. It is very important to add a call to action because if you don’t add, your sales and bio are incomplete. A strong CTA is a very powerful tool to persuade people to respond. Furthermore, appealing call to action not only persuades people as well as it also tells them about what and how to do. Call to action will be your email, contact number, or a link to your website. Words or phrases such as “Shop Now”, “Register Now”, “Visit Now”, are fabulous CTA’s that you can use to attract visitors to make sales and Instagram’s bio charismatic.
How to Create a Strong Instagram Call to Action
Your call to action will decide whether users will take any action or not. Call to action is what you want your users to do by visiting your landing page. You can add CTA to your Instagram profile bio. In addition, you can add CTAs to your Instagram posts. Your specified action could be submitting the details, buying the product, downloading the coupon, etc.
Your call to action should be specific, simple, and single. You may benefit from adding CTA to multiple positions. Make sure to add a single CTA on your entire Instagram bio to avoid any kind of confusion. Otherwise, they won’t take the required Action.
You can include call-to-action like Get Started, Start a 14 Day Free Trial, Learn More, Start Your Free Trial, See Pricing, and many more. These call-to-action types compel users to tap on the bio link.
Use Hashtags
An Instagram post can’t be complete with hashtags. Hashtags have become an essential part of Instagram. They help you get more reach and impressions on Instagram. Hashtags are similar to keywords in search engine optimization. As keywords help you rank on search engines and drive more traffic. Similarly, hashtags are like keywords that help you rank on hashtag results and reach your content to more users.
Use Less Competitive Hashtags
We all know that we should use relevant hashtags in our Instagram posts. But still, those hashtags don’t drive better results for you.
Do you know the reason? No?
Because you are using highly competitive and difficult-to-beat hashtags. Many businesses are using the same hashtags and producing similar content. So, there are barely any chances of seeing some impressive results.
Use long-tail hashtags
What’s the solution? Simply start using long-tail hashtags in your Instagram posts. Long-tail hashtags are again similar to long-tail keywords. Long-tail hashtags are always less competitive as compared to short-tail hashtags. But, make sure that hashtags you are using are active have enough posts and engagement rate. Dead hashtags are never going to work for you.
Use branded hashtags
By adding hashtags in your bio, you can express your interests.
You can create your own business’s unique hashtag. Your profile will also appear against the connected hashtag. If visitors type a hashtag to whom your profile is connected, your profile will appear and there is a chance of having a new follower. Adding a relevant hashtag to your Instagram bio is recommended.
How to Optimize Your Instagram Profile For Business
Here are the best profile optimization tips to optimize your Instagram profile.
Turn Your Account Into an Instagram Business Account
Instagram offers many potential features to help businesses to grow their Instagram profile. One of their features that helps businesses is to create a business account. Instagram lets businesses create business profiles to reach their target audience. Business account is entirely different from a professional account. It offers many varied features that aren’t present in other account types.
According to Instagram, 25 million businesses have already created business accounts. They have got access to many promotional features and insightful analytics. It enables businesses to know their audience and create content accordingly.
Business accounts provide an excellent opportunity for social media marketers to increase the presence of their business on Instagram. With an Instagram Business Account you get these abilities:
- You can boost your post’s reach with ads.
- It offers you an analytical dashboard to keep an eye on the performance of your account.
- You can embed links to your Instagram store under certain conditions.
- It gives you features like Shoppable posts. You can directly sell on Instagram with your posts.
- You get the ability to partner with different brands and influencers.
- You have the option to verify your Instagram account.
- You also get the right to add clickable CTAs to your posts.
Instagram lets you easily switch between a typical Instagram account to a business account. Check the next heading to know how to switch your personal account to an Instagram business account.
How to Turn Your Instagram Account into a Business Account
Follow the given steps to turn your Instagram account into a business account.
Head over to your Instagram profile, and go to your Account Settings. Scroll down and search for the Switch to Business Profile option in the Account Setting. Now, click on it.
After switching your Instagram profile to a business profile, it will show you a prompt asking you to connect your Instagram account to your Facebook page. So, connect your Instagram page with your Facebook page.
After connecting your Facebook page, it will ask you to enter your email address, phone number, and business address. When you are done adding these, click on the Done button.
Post At Right Times
What’s the right time to post on Instagram? We know you have got this question many times and always struggle to find the answer. Let’s know the answer right here.
You can never find the exact time to post on Instagram. However, you can find an estimated time to post between. Now, it finds that estimated time. The estimated time also depends on your followers’ activity.
Instagram has an Insight section to see your followers’ demographics on Instagram. We mean their country, states, age group, and men-women ratio by demographic. Besides, this Instagram also tells you when your followers are most active on Instagram. You can see your followers’ activity by weeks, as well as days.
Data is an excellent option to go with. But, we wouldn’t advise you to rely on the data entirely. You should test posting multiple times and see which time slot is better for you. This way, you will find the best posting time for your Instagram account.
Post Savable Content
Did you know that the Instagram save button also increases your engagement rate? Yes, you heard it right. The Instagram Save button also helps in increasing your profile engagement rate. Along with comments, replies, and shares, saving the content improves engagement.
Instagram considers multiple factors while calculating your engagement rate. And one of them is Instagram saves. If you want people to save your content, you will need to create something that makes them want to visit that post again. Here’s the tricky part. You don’t know which type of post will get saved the most. You don’t know whether a single post will get the most saves or a carousel post. You have to keep testing and analyzing this.
Images that are educational, contain heavy information, share actionable tips are most likely to get saved by your followers or new audience. So, create something that people can’t resist without saving it for later.
A/B Test Your Instagram Bio
You don’t know which Instagram bio will perform better or which not. The only thing you can do is write a perfect Instagram description. Yet, it is essential to know which Instagram bio is performing well. Sometimes we come up with a good CTA to write in our bio, but sometimes not. A/B testing is the best method to go with.
A/B testing is the best method to know the effectiveness of your Instagram bio. A/B testing is also known as split testing. Split testing refers to creating two versions of the same thing and analyzing which one performs better. You can write different Instagram descriptions with the same intent and add both to your Instagram bio section for a particular span. Then, you can monitor which delivered good results.
Use Instagram Stickers In Stories
Instagram offers various stickers to make your Instagram stories more interactive and engaging. More than 500 million users use stickers on their Instagram stories every day. This helps you make your Instagram stories more interesting. On Instagram stories, you can add filters, location, and GIFs. Stickers are the best way to make your Instagram stories interactive. Instagram offers stickers like a countdown, quiz stickers, QnA stickers, and many more.
Optimize Your Profile For Search
Instagram search is similar to Google search. It shows the most relevant results to your search keyword. According to Instagram, multiple factors decide your ranking on Instagram search. The first thing that determines the search is the posts you already liked. Instagram shows profiles based on your activity.
Another thing that determines your Instagram search results are the keywords. For example, if you search SEO on Instagram, you will see profiles having the ‘SEO’ keyword in their profile bio or username. If you include relevant keywords to your Instagram profile, the chances of showing on top in the search results increase. Keywords matter a lot to show up in Instagram search results.
Reply to All Comments and Messages
Engaging with your followers is essential to growing and maintaining a good image on Instagram. When somebody likes or dislikes your content, they either leave positive feedback or negative feedback in your comments. Most creators don’t interact with their followers’ comments and direct messages; they simply ignore them.
You should try replying to all your comments and direct messages. It doesn’t matter whether they leave positive feedback or negative feedback. You should respond to them with all your heart. Hence, it will improve your engagement rate.
Here’s a quick tip. Not always reply with comments like “Thank You,” “Glad you liked it,” etc. Try to converse in the comment section. For instance, someone writes, ‘This is a great post. Love to see more content on SEO from you.’ You can reply to the comment with Thanks @mentionusername. Which tip did you like the most, @mentionusername?
This improves engagement rates and proves that your brand cares about them. You are always there to solve their queries as soon as possible. We know replying to each comment and DM would be time-consuming. However, it’s worth it to build good relationships with your audience.
Use Alt Text In Your Posts
Everything on Instagram is closely related to search engine optimization. You must have heard about image alt text in search engine optimization. With context to SEO, we add alt text to our images. Image alt text helps crawlers to understand the purpose of the picture. The same applies to Instagram.
Instagram also allows us to add alt text in our photos. Alt-text is a text that appears on the image. You will see the alt text when the image is not loaded because of a poor internet connection. Or when the user can’t see the image and can only read the text present on the image. The primary objective of alt text on Instagram is to make the platform more accessible for all users.
Conclusion
These are the 11 Best Instagram Profile Optimization Tips. This is how you can optimize your Instagram profile. Have you successfully optimized your Instagram profile? If you implement these tips perfectly, you will surely see better results. So, follow the above-mentioned Instagram Profile Optimization tips to optimize your profile. That’s enough for how to optimize your Instagram profile in 2022.
