Your bio is the shortest landing page you’ll ever write. Someone has seen one post, tapped your name, and given you roughly two seconds and 150 characters to make the case. Most small business bios spend them on adjectives.
The bios that produce messages all do the same four things, in the same order.
The four lines
- What you do, in plain words. “Balayage & colour specialist” beats “creating confidence through hair”. Name the service someone would search for.
- Who it’s for and where. One line with your city or neighbourhood. This is the single most-skipped line and the one that wins local customers.
- One reason to trust you. Years in business, a qualification, a number of clients served. One short fact, no boasting.
- What to do next. An instruction, not a hint. “DM ‘book’ for availability” or “Tap the link to book” — tell people the exact action.
That’s it. No mission statement, no list of five emoji, no quote about following your dreams.
The link
One link, pointing at the thing you most want to happen. If you take bookings online, link the booking page — not your home page, and not a link-in-bio menu with nine options. Every extra choice loses people. If you genuinely need two destinations, put the second one in your story highlights instead.
A bio has one job: convert a curious visitor into a message or a booking. Say what you do, where you do it, why you can be trusted, and exactly what to tap.
Common mistakes
Writing for other people in your industry rather than customers. Leaving out the location. Using your business name as your bio’s first line — it’s already at the top of the profile. Filling the space with symbols that screen readers announce one by one. And the most expensive one: no instruction at the end, so a visitor who was ready to book has to work out how.
Test it on a stranger
Show your profile to someone who doesn’t know your business, for three seconds, then take the phone away. Ask them what you do, where you’re based, and what they’d tap to book. If they can’t answer all three, the bio isn’t finished — and the fix is almost always cutting words rather than adding them.
Your profile picture, your first three posts and your highlights carry the same weight as the text. I look at all of it together in a free growth audit.
