Did you know over 25 million businesses are now on Instagram? What does this mean to you?

This means if you are using Instagram to sell products and services, you need your account to stand out as much as possible. It could be the vital difference between making a sale and losing out to one of your competitors.

You may be focused on taking the perfect photos to post, but don’t forget your profile! Your profile on Instagram is valuable space you can use to promote your brand and showcase who you are.

We’ve put together five top tips for making the most of this prime real estate for your brand.

1. Convert your account to a business profile

The first thing you should do if you haven’t done so already is to convert your Instagram account to a business profile.

Why should you do this?

Converting your account will let you put a business address and a contact button on your profile. This not only makes it easier for prospective customers to reach out to you but also makes your account look much more professional. 

There are two other benefits to converting your profile. You can access account stats so you can see which of your posts are the most engaging, as well as tag your products in your posts. Instagram shopping FTW!

Some social media scheduling platforms like Hootsuite will only let you schedule posts if you have a business account.

To convert your account, go into your Instagram account settings, select account and choose switch to professional account. You’ll need to connect your Facebook company page with your Instagram account to make the switch. If you don’t have a Facebook page, you will not be able to change to a business profile.

2. Pick an on-brand image

Your profile photo is one of the first things that identifies your brand to people. It’s not only visible on your profile, but when people see your posts and stories. Don’t just leave your profile photo as the default grey circle!

Choose an eye-catching and colorful image to represent your brand. This will ideally be your logo, but there may be some circumstances where a photo of you works well. 

Try and ensure your logo is in the centre of the image you upload, as Instagram will cut the corners off so it fits into a circle.

The minimum profile photo size is 110 by 110 pixels, but the larger the photo you upload, the better. This is because your photo will be more high-res and look better quality.

Our top tip is to change your image out regularly to keep up with seasonal changes and trends. For example, you could upload a festive version of your logo for Christmas as well as an updated one for events like Pride Month or Black History Month.

3. Perfect your bio

You have 150 characters to showcase your business on your profile, which is about 30 words. 

You need to make sure every single character counts!

What do you need to feature in your bio? Things you need to mention include: 

• What your brand is about
• To establish your brand’s unique selling points 
• Provide a call to action to encourage your customers to carry out a specific task, like visiting your website, emailing you or buying your products online

This seems like a lot to fit in 150 characters… but don’t worry, it is possible! Just take your time writing it and don’t be afraid to amend it if you don’t think it is quite right.

You can link to hashtags and other accounts in your bio too. This is perfect if you have a brand hashtag you want to promote or you have other brand accounts you want to encourage people to visit.

Did you know you can also use emojis in your bio too? Emojis are a great way to add a splash of colour to your profile and increase engagement. By using emojis, you can increase engagement on your profile by nearly 50%!

Some emojis may not be supported on certain mobile phones, so bear this in mind when choosing which emojis to use.

4. Feature a link to your website

The website section of your profile is the only space in your bio where you can add a clickable hyperlink. You can use this to drive traffic to your website and increase conversions.

There are a couple of ways you can hack this section of your bio to make it really useful. Here are some of our favourite things you can do:

• Update the URL regularly to link to your most recent blog or latest product range
• Use a campaign URL so you can track how many people visited your website from your Instagram profile in Google Analytics. You can use a link shortener like Bitly to mask the link
• Use a link-in profile tool like Linktree to showcase multiple website links

5. Showcase your story highlights

Instagram Stories only last 24 hours, but you can promote your favorite stories underneath your bio for as long as you like, so your visitors can dip in and out of them!

All you need to do is post a story as normal, view it, and then you can save it as a highlight. You can save your highlights in multiple folders, and also add a colorful cover to each one to entice your profile visitors to check them out.

Use your highlights to showcase your product range, show off user-generated content from satisfied customers and tell exciting stories about your brand.

We hope you enjoyed our tip five tips for spicing up your Instagram profile! 

Our final tip is you can change your profile as often as you like free of charge, so make amends regularly and see how your visitors are responding to them. 

If your visitors don’t like your profile or you are not getting a lot of engagement, try making some amends and see if this has an impact.