Set up and optimise your account
To stand out from other travel Instagram accounts and grow organically, people need to understand who you are and what your account is about at a glance. You only have a couple of seconds to get their interest.
Let’s take a look at how you can optimise your profile to capture your audience’s attention.
Get your worksheet ready, and let's get started :)
Here's a little visual explication of the various elements on your profile. Each number relates to the sections below.
1 - Your username (or handle)
Your username is the name used on the network: @name. It’s what people see at the top of your page as well as when they search for you or keywords that relate to your account. So, unless you’re a celebrity or use your own name as a brand, your username should reflect what your account is about.
You can start by asking yourself the following questions:
- is your current profile name relevant?
- is it catchy?
- is it easy to remember?
- will people understand it?
Your username must contains only letters, numbers, periods and underscores, no spaces. It should be short: 2 to 3 words max.
Don’t worry, you can change it at a later stage if you need more time. Just note that if you change it for a new one, you’ll vacate your current username, and it will become available to other Instagram user.
It’s a good idea to keep your handle consistent across all your social media platforms. But it can sometimes be tricky to find a good username available. So if your preferred one is already taken, or if you’re a business and your Twitter or Facebook handle is already taken on Instagram, try simple variations: add your domain name, a prefix, a symbol (“.” or “_”), your country...
2 - Your profile picture
As an Instagram user, you probably know the importance of a good profile picture. It appears everywhere, in the search results and just above all your posts. It also makes it easy for people to identify you.
Here are some guides to create the perfect profile picture:
- Don’t be afraid to show your face. People will be more likely to connect.
- The profile picture is pretty small, so keep it simple and uncluttered.
- Show your personality, and what makes you unique.
- Choose a photo where the subject is in the middle as Instagram will crop it into a circle.
- Don’t be afraid to use bright colours.
- Using other social networks? Make sure your picture is in line with your other channels. It’ll make it more consistent and easier for people to understand that they are talking to the same person. It’ll also help build your brand identity.
3 - Your name & 4 - Bio
Your name and bio appear under your picture on your profile and under your username in the search results. They tell people who you are and what you do. They will use it to determine if they want to know more about you and your account.
They also play a crucial role in the way people find you on Instagram. For that reason, they should both be “SEO friendly” meaning that they should contain words that your audience is likely to be searching for.
> Remember your target audience from the first section? Open your worksheet, and take a few minutes to think about the words they are likely to search, and write them down in the bio and name section.
- Your name:
You should include your brand name or information about your brand. But don’t stop here, use the 30 characters to describe what your account is about.
Saltinourhair, use "Hannah & Nick - Travel Couple". You instantly know who they are (they start building a relationship with you), and you know what their feed is about.
- Your bio:
Use the keywords you just defined to describe who you are, what you do, and more importantly why people should care. Try to add details that would validate that you’re an expert in your domain.
You can also use emojis to add some personality.
Make sure you include a call to action to send to a link you want to promote (see more information re. link below)
PRO TIP
Formatting can be tricky in the Instagram app. Most of you should now have access to easy formatting in the edit section. But if it doesn't work here are 3 tips to help you:
tip #1 use the Note app on your phone to write your bio, include emojis and line breaks using your return key, then copy & paste it into your bio and save. This should work most of the time.
tip #2 if it doesn’t work, use the Facebook app, click on update status, write your bio. Now you just need to copy and paste it to your Instagram Bio, save and voila!
tip #3 Otherwise, you can also edit your caption directly on desktop.
One of these options should definitely work! 😄
5 - Link
You can only have 1 link on your profile, so make it count. Change it as you go based on the most important page you want people to visit. You might want to promote your most recent blog article, drive people to your other social networks, sell your products on an e-commerce site...
We find it helps if you explain why people should click, so have a clear call to action as part of your bio. You also increase your chances of people clicking if you have a content upgrade or a free gift, which is also a great way to increase your email list!
We like to use bitly to shorten links and customise the new url to make it obvious and track the number of clicks on bitly (for example “http://bit.ly/explore-great-barrier-reef”).
Lastly, don’t forget to refer to that link in individual photo captions: “Check link in bio!”
As an example: let's take a look at an old version of our account:
Our name and bio above were too similar and not adding much value to our target audience. At that time we didn't know who they were and that keywords/SEO were very important in our bio.
No call to action was pointing to our link and explaining benefits, the reason why people should check it out.
Since we're focusing more on travellers who love nature and are looking for inspiration, it made it simpler to update our bio and make it more enticing (see our current bio on instagram.com/lebigtrip). By making it clearer for people who checked out our account we made it quicker for them to understand what Le Big Trip was about, which in turn helped them confirm if they wanted to see more and be part of our community.
A question we often get asked:
You might be wondering whether you should set up a new account or use your personal one? Well, both can work. It really depends on what you want to share:
- If the type of content is completely different and unlikely to interest your current followers, then creating a new account would be better.
- Otherwise, you can keep your existing one and leverage its following. In that case, just do a cleanup by removing the posts that you think are less relevant a bit later.
We’ll take you through this in more detail in another module. We have so much to share with you!! 😋