TIPS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR INSTAGRAM FOR PERSONAL BRANDING
SELF-AUDIT
If you are interested in growing your professional profile or establishing a personal brand, reviewing and optimizing your social media profile is an easy and immediate place to start. Social media has become the first place people go to look up and learn more about others. Many times your profile is people’s first impression of you. When looking through your profile, try to see it through the eyes of brands, industry and potential audience and don’t be afraid to ask trusted peers for their opinion. There are many tools available to help clean up and streamline your profile; you can use the archive tool to hide old posts without deleting them permanently, you can edit captions and reorder your feed.
PROFILE
Switch your Instagram to a “professional” account. Found in Settings and activity > Account type and tools. This will give you access to advanced data and analytics for your account, posts and following. Beware of setting your account to “business” as it restricts access to some creator tools as well as commercial music.
HANDLE
Your @ should be simple, easy to read and related to you like your name or business name. Including a niche indicator can also help with searchability eg. @johnsmithdrinks or @johnsmithbartender.
NAME
Make sure the name in your profile matches the name you go by. This along with your handle is the most searchable feature of your account and makes it easier to find and confirm that it’s you. Add a field or niche indicator as keywords as it can also help with searchability eg. John Smith Bartender.
PROFILE PICTURE
Your profile picture should be a clear, high quality picture of yourself. Try not to change it too often as it can help build familiarity and recognition with your account.
BIO
You have 150 characters to leave an impression. Include who you are, what you do, where your located and any accolades. You can @ mention your bar or separate business. Make sure to link your website, LinkedIn or other relative links using the links feature. You can also add an email button.
STORIES & HIGHLIGHTS
Stories are great for day to day, casual and interactive content. You can use highlights to organise and showcase expired stories on your profile into archives for travel, events, recommendations etc.
FEED & PINNED POSTS
High quality content should be posted to your feed. This doesn’t mean every post should be shot by a photographer or with a professional camera, photos and videos taken on a phone are just fine. Quality is determined by the content itself. Does it provide value to an audience? Is it entertaining, helpful, interesting or educational? Your pinned posts should be your most impressive or important content for example; competition wins, recent events or travel, content that has performed well or anything you want someone to notice first when landing on your profile