Best ideas for an Instagram bio, for a business

The best ideas for an Instagram bio, when the account belongs to a business, are not clever lines. They are four facts that fit in 150 characters: what you do, who it is for, where, and what to do next. What follows is a notebook, not an argument: ten small things observed this season on the profiles of florists, physios, ceramicists and restaurants, each one worth changing before your next post goes out.

What should a small business put in an Instagram bio?

1. The trade word comes first, and it is a noun. Open ten accounts of the same trade in a row. The ones you understand in one second start with the thing itself: florist, osteopath, sourdough bakery, wedding photographer. The ones you have to decode start with an adjective or a verb: passionate about, helping you, creating. A visitor gives your profile about the time it takes to read one line. Spend that line on the noun.

2. The 150 characters are a compression test for your positioning. Take the first sentence of your website's homepage and paste it into the bio field. If it does not fit once you have added a place and a next step, that sentence was never a positioning. It was a mood. It is also the sentence a generator reads first when it learns your brand from your site, and a line that fails the bio field fails there for the same reason: there is nothing specific to hold on to. Fix the homepage line and the bio writes itself.

3. Place is a keyword, not a courtesy. A physio in Leeds, a ceramicist in Porto, a bistro in Kreuzberg: the place word does two jobs at once. It tells the right visitor they can actually book you, and it tells the wrong one to keep scrolling before they message. Accounts that ship worldwide can skip it. Anyone whose client has to walk through a door cannot.

4. One next step, written as the thing the client does. "Book", "order for Friday", "see this week's menu" are next steps. "Link below" is a direction sign. The difference matters because the bio is read on a phone held in one hand, in the seconds between two posts. The visitor needs to know what happens if they tap before they decide to tap. If the positioning line is the part you struggle with, the structure that works for coaches, one client, one change, one observable method, transfers to almost any service.

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Nobody reads your bio to discover you. They read it to confirm what a post already made them hope.

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Where is your Instagram bio actually read?

5. Google reads it before anyone taps it. Search any Instagram handle on Google. The page title is the name field plus the handle. The snippet under it starts with follower and post counts and then, on most accounts, shows the bio text. That snippet is what a client sees when they look you up after a recommendation, before they open the app. Your bio's first line is, in effect, your meta description. A first line made of symbols and a slogan is a blank one.

6. The name field is 30 characters, and it is the field Instagram search weights. Type "florist" into the Instagram search bar. The accounts at the top carry the word in their name field or their handle; the bio alone rarely gets an account there. The name field is not for repeating your handle. It is for the trade word and, if it fits, the place. "Ruth Ames, florist, Leeds" is 25 characters and surfaces in searches the handle alone never would.

7. The bio is read after a post, almost never before. Nobody opens a profile cold. They see one post in a feed, a saved recipe, a photo a friend was tagged in, and then they tap the name. By the time they read your bio, they have already formed a hope about you from a single image. The bio's job is to confirm that hope in one line, not to start from zero. It is also why the first posts of a new account get read weeks later, on the profile, with the bio sitting right above them.

8. The circle next to the bio does more than the bio. The profile picture shares the same screen, and it is the only element that follows you into every comment and every notification. A bio can be perfect under a picture that turns into a grey oval at feed size. The 32-pixel test decides whether the name gets recognized at all. Fix the circle, then the line.

Which link and buttons belong in the bio?

9. Five links are allowed. One is shown. Since April 2023 an account can add up to five links, but the profile displays only the first, followed by a count of the others. Almost nobody taps that count. The first link is your only link. Make it the page a new client needs, the booking page or this month's menu, and change it when the season changes, rather than sending everyone to a homepage that asks them to choose again.

10. The category label and the contact button already do part of the work. A business account can display its category under the name, "Physical therapist", "Restaurant", "Florist", and a contact button next to the follow button. When both are on, a bio that opens with "Physiotherapist, DM to book" spends 27 characters repeating what the screen already shows. Turn the label on, check that the button works, then give those characters to the one detail that is yours alone: the method, the specialty, the neighbourhood, the day the market stall is out.

Bio ideas by what the client buys

Three bio shapes keep appearing on accounts that turn profile visits into bookings, sorted the same way a profile picture is: by what the client buys. The lines are illustrative. Keep the shape, change the facts.

When the client buys a person, a therapist or a consultant, the bio leads with the person and the method: "Osteopath in Bristol. Back and neck pain for desk workers. 45-minute sessions, first appointment this week. Book below." When the client buys an object, the bio leads with the object and how to get it: "Hand-thrown stoneware, made in Porto. Small batches, shipped across Europe. New pieces every first Sunday of the month." When the client buys a place, the bio leads with the place and the moment: "Bistro, 30 seats, Kreuzberg. Lunch Tuesday to Saturday, dinner Thursday to Saturday. This week's menu below."

Each of these lines only works if the last nine posts under it show the same trade, the same place and the same specialty. A bio that promises "back and neck pain for desk workers" above a grid of motivational quotes is a promise the feed breaks in one scroll. The posts have to keep saying, in images and captions, what the 150 characters said once. That is what a steady week of Instagram posts generated from your own website and brand is for: the same trade word, the same place, the same next step, repeated without you retyping any of it.

Change one thing in your bio this week. Then open your profile the way a stranger does, from a post, and read the line above the grid.