How to craft an impactful Instagram bio for business (+ examples)

While your Instagram content might be what draws someone over to your profile initially, your Instagram bio is one of the major components that will keep them there—and maybe even earn your brand a follow.

Think about this: if you like a photo or video on Instagram and then go to the profile and their bio is completely blank (or lacks vital information) you’re going to immediately lose interest or think the account is a fake and leave. No follow and no looking back.

Others do the same, so it’s important to fully optimize your Instagram strategy—bio and all.

Table of Contents

• What is an Instagram bio?
• Why an Instagram business bio matters
• What to put in an Instagram bio
• Tips for writing the best Instagram bios for business (+ examples)
• Create a compelling Instagram bio for your business

What is an Instagram bio?

An Instagram bio is a description of your business that sits at the top of your Instagram profile. It can only be up to 150 characters, so you want to be concise, sharing what your business does and who it serves in as few words as possible.

Take a look at our own Instagram bio to get an idea of what this might look like:

We’ll get into each of these more thoroughly later, but our full bio includes:

• Our Instagram handle
• Our brand name
• Bio description
• Bio link

There are a few more things you can consider including within your own bio to further share what your business does.

Why an Instagram business bio matters

First of all, why does your Instagram business profile bio matter so much? As simple as it may seem, an Instagram bio plays a critical role in establishing your brand presence. It shows people who you are and what you sell. You can also use the same space to tell them why they should care about your business and its offering.

In many cases, your Instagram profile may be the first point of contact whether someone finds you through an Instagram hashtag or by clicking through from a paid post or sharing on Stories. Your bio is an important first impression while clarifying why they should follow you.

That’s why you should focus on creating an Instagram business bio that effectively portrays your brand personality and establishes your unique value proposition. In other words, it should factor into your overall Instagram business strategy.

What to put in an Instagram bio

Writing your Instagram bio for business is one key part of creating the perfect Instagram business profile. Here are the essential elements that go into your Instagram bio:

1. Name and username

Your Instagram username is your @handle and your Instagram identity. It’s a part of your Instagram profile URL (instagram.com/myusername) and holds a prominent location at the top of your profile page.

On the other hand, your name is your real or full brand name. Depending on data sources like audience and keyword research, you may know of abbreviations or name variations commonly used for your brand name. You might consider using those in one spot in your Instagram bio, such as in your username.

For instance, in the following Instagram business profile example, the username for Sprouts Farmers Market is just @sprouts but the name section has the full name of the business.

2. Profile photo and branding

This should be relevant to your brand’s visual identity. Best practices dictate that you should use a high-res image of your logo in order to improve brand recognition and keep all of your social media profiles on brand. However, solopreneurs and public figures often use headshots, and that’s a perfectly acceptable alternative.

For brands with a widely-recognized visual identity like National Geographic TV, the iconic yellow rectangle logo makes for a great profile photo.

Another way to brand your Instagram profile is through your Instagram highlight covers. While not necessarily a part of your bio, these still show up at the top of your profile and give you an opportunity to inject even more color into your Instagram.

3. Instagram bio copy

This is the section under your name, where you get to express yourself (or in this case, your brand personality). You have 150 characters to tell people what your Instagram profile is about, what your brand offers and why they should follow you. So you don’t have much to work with, which makes it even more crucial to plan ahead and perfect your Instagram business bio.

Here’s an example of great bio copy from BarkBox. They start with a simple sentence that explains exactly what their business does. They tag their parent company. Then they even include a couple of hashtags that BarkBox customers can use when showing off their boxes.

4. Bio links

This is the only section that allows you to add clickable links on Instagram to your website, so make sure you use this space wisely. While you can always add a URL to your homepage, you can also add up to five links more frequently by posting new products, new content, new projects and more.

Many brands use a link-in-bio tool to maximize the five link limit by taking the user to a landing page with shortcuts to featured content and product pages.

5. Category

Instagram also allows you to specify which category your brand falls under—whether you run a restaurant or a media and entertainment company. This shows up right under your business name if you choose to enable it, so it helps free up space in your Instagram bio for other important details.

As we can see below, Bloomscape has selected “Patio/Garden” as their brand category.

6. Call-to-action and contact buttons

You could further free up space in your Instagram bio if you make the most of the call-to-action buttons available for Instagram Business accounts. This allows people to take action straight from your Instagram profile when on the mobile app, making it easier for customers to convert on actions—from buying tickets to booking tables.

Keep in mind that these are only accessible on the mobile app, and they’ll look something like the “View Shop,” “Message,” and “Call” buttons below:

Tips for writing the best Instagram bios for business (+ examples)

Now that you know what goes into an Instagram bio, let’s take a look at tips on how to write the best Instagram bios for business.

1. Know what your goal is

Since you have to stay within the 150-character limit, it’s crucial that you have a clear sense of direction when writing your Instagram bio. Knowing exactly what you want out of your bio will help you narrow down what to say.

For instance, you could simply use it to convey your brand’s personality and announce your Instagram presence. You could also use it to promote your latest products and offers or inform people about what your business does. If you do promote sales and recent products, be sure your team is ready to regularly refresh your Instagram bio and ensure this info is up to date.

Some businesses also use this section to express their brand mission and what they stand for. Check out the following Instagram business profile example from Grove Collaborative. The company’s bio tells us a little bit about what the business sells and what its overall mission is.

Here’s another great example of a basic bio that’s straightforward and explains exactly what the company (Slack in this instance) does:

2. Let your brand personality shine through

Make the most of your Instagram business bio to express your brand personality. This includes the language and tone you use or what you say, in general. For instance, Reese’s uses a fun and friendly tone in its bio while using the opportunity to establish its brand authority.

Some businesses may also add relevant emojis if that kind of approach fits the brand personality. But note that special characters and emojis may not translate well on a screen reader. Be sure to keep accessibility best practices in mind for all your followers and avoid filling your entire bio with characters that are hard to read or understand for customers using screen readers.

3. Include relevant hashtags and profile links

Instagram lets you add clickable hashtags and profile links in your bio. So make the most of this to direct customers to your other Instagram handles or to relevant, tagged content.

The option to add profile links is great for businesses that manage multiple accounts. See how Madewell added a link to their Instagram account for menswear.

Brands can also take a page out of Weezie’s book, tagging the accounts of their founders as well as their brick-and-mortar store (ideal when you have two different social media strategies for your retail versus ecommerce avenues).

As for hashtags, adding them to your bio will let you direct your audience to stunning tagged user-generated content. You could use a branded hashtag to collect user-generated content like Cupshe. The swimsuit brand included several hashtags they track for content to feature on their own account.

4. Make sure it’s easy to read

As mentioned earlier, your Instagram bio should be able to convey what your business does or what it offers. So it’s crucial that people can easily read and process the information without too much trouble. Formatting such as line breaks and spacing makes it easier to read and emphasize important information at a glance.

You could use a pipe or vertical bar character to space out your info like in the following Instagram business profile example from Leder Games. They used the symbol to separate their most popular game offerings.

You could also use line breaks to style your info in a list format. See how this bio skillfully uses lists, incorporating emojis as a kind of bullet point.

Keep in mind that these characters and line breaks will factor into your total character count. So make sure you use them sparingly and strategically to avoid going over the character limit. You could also test different formatting to see how they impact your overall profile engagement. Use a tool like Sprout Social’s Instagram analytics suite to measure how your profile engagement changes as you update.

5. Include a compelling call to action

While the call-to-action buttons frees up a lot of space in your bio, it doesn’t hurt to get more direct with your CTA. Make sure people know exactly what they need to do when they visit your profile by including a CTA in your bio.

Get very specific with this depending on the goal of your Instagram business account. You could invite them to visit your website, shop your feed, check out your latest blog post, download your new guide or even share their own photos using your branded hashtag. If you want to grow your Instagram following, you could even add a CTA to “follow us” for your regular content such as daily recipes, fashion updates and so on.

For example, Ahrefs uses their bio text to create a CTA that points (literally, thanks to their use of emoji) to their latest feature release.

Dress Up uses its bio to direct people to sign up for SMS marketing messages by offering a discount right inside the bio. This is a great way to get people to take immediate action and increase your text marketing list.

Create a compelling Instagram bio for your business

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