How to Craft the Perfect Instagram Bio for Your Business

Instagram bios are limited to 150 characters, a few action buttons, and a single link. Your profile page has to say a lot in a small amount of space, so it’s important to carefully consider how you use it.

Anyone can add a business address and some contact information to an Instagram profile. But when you’re one account among millions, a unique Instagram bio gives you a better chance of winning over potential followers.

The content of your Instagram bio will depend on what your business does, the tone you want to set for your account, and what you hope to achieve by using Instagram for business.  Here’s our guide to creating a bio that works for your brand.

Know what to put in an Instagram bio

Your Instagram profile should reflect your brand’s unique personality, but there are key elements that every business account profile should have.

Your Instagram bio should include:

• A link
• A short summary of what your business does
• Action buttons (Message, Book Now, Contact, etc.)
• A profile image

Your profile image will be cropped to a small circle. Make sure you double-check how the photo appears, so you don’t end up with an awkwardly cropped photo or a profile image with text that’s too tiny to read.

Write a great Instagram bio

Here’s where those crucial 150 characters come into play. How do you win people over with such a small amount of text? You could spend all day looking at templates and Instagram bio ideas and still miss the mark for your target audience. A great Instagram bio is unique to your brand.

Show off your personality. Is your brand funny and playful, or is it more serious and informative? Use your Instagram bio to set the tone for your content. For small businesses, this might mean sharing your company’s mission or brand values. If you’re focused on selling on Instagram, your bio could be your elevator pitch. It depends on what you hope to achieve by using Instagram for business.

Your unique Instagram bio should tell current and potential followers what you do, sell, or share on the app. Take a look at this Instagram bio example:

Think about what action you want people to take when they visit your Instagram business profile. Guide people to visit your physical store, check out your website, or follow you for specific information. You can use direct calls to action, such as “follow me for more reading recommendations,” or simply tell people what you post about. For example, Dr. Joshua Wolrich says, “fighting weight stigma and #nutribollicks,” which gives you a clear idea of what type of content he shares.

There’s no such thing as a perfect Instagram bio. Focus on providing a concise preview of who you are and what type of content you produce.

Make the most of your Instagram bio link

You only get one clickable link on the Instagram app, so think about how you want to use it. Decide whether you want to change the link frequently or keep a static link.

Changing the link often allows you to send people to specific content. Many bloggers use this tactic so they can link people directly to their most recent article. Static links are lower maintenance, but you can only send people to a single landing page.

There are many link-in-bio tools that give you the best of both worlds. For example, Start Page from Buffer is a beautiful, flexible, mobile-friendly landing page that you can build in minutes and update in seconds. It opens up to your own, customizable list of links, images and videos. This tool maximizes the limited real estate that is available.

Use Instagram action buttons

Action buttons are only available on Instagram business accounts and are a great way to sneak in more clickable elements beyond your single Instagram bio link. To add action buttons, go to your profile, tap “edit profile,” and scroll down to Action Buttons.

Your action button options vary based on your business type and partners. For example, restaurants can add an Order Food button but will need to have a partnership with a food ordering service, such as Grubhub, Postmates, DoorDash, etc. Meanwhile, a hair salon will see options such as Book Now, and an online shop could use View Shop.

If none of the industry-specific options work for your business, you can always use standard buttons such as Contact, Email, and Message.

Take advantage of extra options

Now that we’ve covered the must-haves, let’s explore how you can add a bit of spice to your Instagram bio to make it stand out.

Creative formatting

If you've ever wondered how to space your Instagram bio, you're not alone. Formatting a bio is tricky, particularly on the mobile Instagram app, but there are ways to change up the format by adding line breaks and breaking up text with emojis.

To add line breaks in your Instagram bio, you’ll need to edit your profile on desktop. Log in to your account, click the “edit profile” button, and scroll down to your bio. From there, type your bio as usual and just hit the enter key to start a new line.

Emojis are another great way to break up blocks of text in your Instagram bio. If you’re short on space, emojis can also help convey information in fewer characters. For example, a flag emoji tells people where you are from or based with just one character. To add emojis, edit your profile from the mobile Instagram app and use your emoji keyboard. Pro tip: Add line breaks on desktop first, then use emojis to highlight each line.

A note about Instagram bio fonts: while it’s possible to change your font, we don’t recommend it because it makes your profile less accessible, which narrows your potential audience. Instagram font-generator tools change the look of your text, but screen readers often can’t decipher the font. Screen reader programs read text out loud for visually impaired users, so if you use an unsupported font, your profile content won’t be accessible to everyone.

Category and business address

Instagram business accounts have the option to add a category or industry, as well as a business address. Depending on what type of business you are, these additional elements could give potential followers more context.

Adding a category or industry can help clarify what you do. Plus, categories save you space in your bio — when you already have “Coffee Shop” listed as your category, you don’t need to explain that in your bio text.

If you have a physical location, it makes sense to include a business address. However, if your business is online-only, there’s no need to crowd your bio with the address of your warehouse or PO box.

Branded hashtag

If you want to make user-generated content (UGC) part of your Instagram marketing strategy, including a branded hashtag in your Instagram bio will make your life a lot easier. We include #BufferLove in our Instagram bio to encourage our fans to use the hashtag when posting about us. This way, we can easily search the hashtag to find UGC to feature on our account.

Branded hashtags are also a great way to build a community because people can follow hashtags just like accounts. The International Association for Premenstrual Disorders (IAPMD) encourages people to use #PMDDPeeps to share their PMDD stories. Not only does it give them easy access to content they might want to reshare, but it also helps connect people who deal with PMDD.

Don’t rely on your Instagram bio to do all the work

Crafting a unique Instagram bio is just the first step. Once you’ve optimized your Instagram profile, it’s time to work on your Instagram marketing strategy. With Buffer, you can schedule posts and Instagram stories, reply to comments, and even build custom reports to monitor your progress — all within the Buffer platform. Get started with a free trial today.