Social media has quickly become a lightning fast marketing tool for businesses and entrepreneurs. Just like if you walk into a store for the first time, someone’s social media presence is the first thing everyone sees today. A 2012 study found it only takes a person two-tenths of a second to make a judgment of your brand or bio. It can literally take only a split second to make or break your social media presence!
The small bio space on platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook is the place to tell your audience who you are and what you do; show your storefront, as it were. Creating the perfect bio may seem like a snap, but a lot of thought should go into it, especially with the limited space. Here are a few tips on how to write a short bio and make a good impression.
7 Tips on How to Write a Short Bio
1. What’s in a Name?
Whether it’s your real name or business name, being consistent helps others find you. If you use your business name on Facebook but your real name on Instagram, it’s hard for people to search for you. It also makes sure people don’t think they’re looking at an imposter or dummy page.
A bigger reason for consistency is many social platforms use name and username in their search algorithms. It doesn’t have to be all serious, however. You can still add some fun and humor into your name bio or username. Adding your interests or using a play on words with your name bio will make your profile stand out from others.
2. Show Off Your Skills
One of the top five rules of writing a bio: don’t be humble. You want others to see what you are about. When writing your bio, ask yourself: what makes you stand out from the crowd? The answer will help you write that perfect bio. You want to use the space allowed to showcase your interests and achievements, especially even if you are building a LinkedIn bio.
On the flip side of that, you don’t want a laundry list of your life story. Most platform bios don’t even have the room for that. Brevity is key in how to write a short bio. That’s why sitting down and really thinking about makes you unique is important.
3. Be Natural, Be Creative
While some might see brevity as impossible to create the perfect bio, it’s can be actually be freeing. Take some time a do a bit of research into your favorite authors’, actors’, and musicians’ social media bios. Some are straightforward, like Stephen King’s Twitter page. Others use their personality to show what they do, like Ellen DeGeneres’ Twitter.
You’re going to be showing your followers a bit of your personality and humor in your posts. Showing it in your bio is a good way of helping you stand out. Having a funny bio like Ellen DeGeneres’ is like rolling out a welcome mat. It will set your followers at ease and want to interact with your pages – and you – more.
Another way of getting creative is using emoticons or different formatting to have a more aesthetic quality to your pages. Instagram allows you to change the formatting on your bio and add emojis and line breaks to space out text. Twitter allows different formatting, line breaks, and header images to promote special deals or a new product coming out. The possibilities are just about endless.
4. Link Your Pages
Social media may be where you interact with your followers the most, but they are still platforms. They’re like those big “DETOUR” construction signs: “this page is cool and all, but if you click over here, you’ll get more of what you want.”
Link your website to your bio. Use hashtags of your company or business. Some small business owners will even put their emails in their bios for faster, more personal contact. You could use either a personal or business email; whichever you feel more comfortable with. It’s all up to you, but using your bio as a one or two line “Contact Me” page will add to the quality.
5. Use Keywords…
You know how a lot of tips to utilizing Google are about how to use keywords correctly? There’s a reason for that. A search engine algorithms are based on being able to find frequently used keywords. Hashtags work the same way. By utilizing specific keywords in your bio and hashtags, your pages and website will be easier to find.
What kind of keywords could you use? For starters, think of what core values you or your business revolve around. The values you have and the values your audience has can make for great keywords your bio.
…But Avoid Buzzwords
However, there are keywords that will bore the audience and need to be avoided. LinkedIn has a list of 10 overused words in 2017:
- Specialized
- Experienced
- Leadership
- Passionate
- Focused
During their research, LinkedIn found the reason many people use buzzwords to describe their values and personalities is for the ease and appearance. Many people thought that using buzzwords such as these also associated you with certain group or industry. While that may be true in some cases, in reality, they are more like radio static than anything helpful. Get creative and find new words to describe yourself.
6. Consider Your Platform
Depending on the platform you’ll be using to write your bio, you’ll have to consider the character or word limit before writing it. Most platforms have a small character limit, around 160 characters. Some have something around 2,000 to go nuts in and be more detailed. Here’s a list of the more popular platforms and the character limits they have:
- Instagram bio: 150 character maximum
- Twitter bio: 160 character maximum
- Facebook short description: 150 character maximum
- LinkedIn summary: 2,000 character maximum
As you can see, there’s not a whole lot of space to play around with. However, some research into how celebrities, politicians, and CEOs utilize the limits of their platforms will give you some ideas.
7. Call Your Followers to Action
When writing a bio, be sure to include a call to action. This is where linking to your website comes in handy because your call to action can be many things. An author can tell their fans to get updates on book releases and tour dates. Musicians can give their fans a link to buy concert tickets. Even bloggers can call their audience to find the latest recipe or buy a new product with a call to action.
It’s not even that hard to do either. URL shorteners like Goo.gl and Bitly.com will help you create custom short links to help you share links to your bio. The link doesn’t even have to be to your homepage; it can be a special promotion, the latest newsletter, or any updated content.
To Recap
There was a lot of information to take in. Let’s do a quick recap of everything:
- Keep your name consistent between all your pages
- Show off your skills, but keep it short. Brevity is key.
- Be yourself and be creative! Your audience will appreciate seeing a more human side.
- Link your homepage or blog to your bio.
- Use Keywords to make yourself more searchable, but be creative with them. Buzzwords are nothing but static sound.
- Consider the character limit of your media platform when writing your bio.
- Call your followers to action.
While writing your social media bio can be easy, a lot of thought has to go into it. It takes less than a second for someone to make a snap judgment on your business and your social media platforms are the storefront. You have to make the best first impression you can. Hopefully these tips you put on the path in doing so!
Do you have any helpful tips or tricks for writing the perfect short bio? Comment below with anything that’s worked for you!