Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: Hello everybody. My name is Ben and I am a side hustle coach and I'm so excited to be teaching this course today. I live in New York City. I am at Skillshare teacher and I decided to put this class together because I know it's something that a lot of people are curious about and in my own coaching and consulting, it's something that a lot of people ask me about. So I thought it would be a great class to teach how to write the perfect Instagram bio. So I know a lot of people are on Instagram, and I know that Instagram can be a platform that's a little frustrating because it's hard to know how to get the most out of your Instagram experience. So this course is going to be really niche, really focused on the Instagram bio. We're not going to talk about your picture. We're not going to talk about your posts and your content. We are specifically going to spend a little bit of time today talking about the words inside of your Instagram bio, how to make them impactful, how to make them powerful. And I'm so excited to get into it with you today. So before we do that, I thought I would introduce myself just quickly. My name is Ben Haws. I do live in New York City and I run a side hustle coaching and consulting company where I help people like you find a start and grow their side hustle businesses, mainly online. I talked a lot about marketing. I've talked a lot about generating word of mouth, and I talk a lot about social media. I'm also an Instagram fanatic and expert. I absolutely love Instagram. I am on Instagram all the time looking at other people's content, creating my own content. And you know, it's really just fun to be on Instagram. And so I hope you share that same passion if you don't, and you're frustrated with Instagram and you don't like it. This really is the perfect class for you because it's going to make Instagram a lot easier for you. You're going to attract more customers in a way, more organic way. It's not going to take you much work after you've gone ahead and changed your Instagram bio and optimized it for Instagram. So I would really love for you to take this course and just kind of follow along with me. If you're not sure if this is for you and you're not sure if you click on to the right link, onto the right class, onto the right video. I thought I would just tell you a little bit more about who this class is for three bullet points. So really it's for people who run small businesses. And whether that business is that you're an artist or you're trying to become more well-known for your own personality or your make products, or you have a service that you offer. This class is for you if you run a small business and you use Instagram. It's also for people who want to grow their following. And I am absolutely not going to promise that this will give you a certain number of followers or that it'll be a certain amount easier. But if you want to grow your following, one of the most important things that you can do is optimize your Instagram bio. Because if you optimize your Instagram bio, more people are going to be able to find you. The right people are going to be able to find you and you're going to have an easier time over on Instagram. The last person that this class is for is people who want to generate more conversations. So it would be great if everybody had 20000 followers. But it's important that you have the right followers and it's important that your followers know what to come to you for. So this is a course to learn how to connect with the right people via Instagram, again, via your Instagram bio. And so it's going to be a really great, It's going to be a really great class that really helps you totally optimize your Instagram bio gives you some inspiration, gives you some examples of what really looks good on Instagram. And it'll be, it'll be a great time. So today's project, I know we're going to want to make sure we're really emphasizing learning here and really emphasizing that I'm going to teach you things, but I want you to take it and put it into place. I want you to go and write and Instagram bio and then maybe posted on here on Skillshare. If that's something that you're interested in, host it to the group. And if you see somebody else's bio and you want to give them feedback, that would be fantastic. You can also use their bios as inspiration, although I'm going to have a few examples in this course. So however that works for you. Just make sure that you write a new bio after you take this course or while you take this course and you can work on it as you go. And that will be really, really awesome. So when you're done with this class, right, your bios, submit it in the projects and we'll go from there. So without further ado, this has been the intro video. I am so excited to be here with you. Let's take a deep breath in. Take a deep breath out. Whether you're in your bed, whether you're at your desk, whether you're at a Starbucks drinking a Frappuccino. Let's make sure we're present. Let's make sure we're here, ready to learn and ready to maximize our impact on Instagram. So let's do it. Let's go.
2. Why Your Bio Is Important : Okay, welcome back. I'm so excited that you've decided to take this course with me. I think it's going to be truly a really fun time. I like to think I'm engaging and funny and energetic. I think you probably are too. So let's kinda partner up on this and do this together. But the third thing that I want to talk about is really why our Instagram bio is so important. A lot of people think I'm just going to put a little line about my name and whatever. And it doesn't really matter because my content is more important or nobody is really going to find me anyway. But there are some reasons why Instagram bios can actually be one of the most powerful tools that you can even use on Instagram to grow your following and to connect with your audience. So the first thing is to help customers find you. And I'm talking about search engine optimization and search engine optimization for anybody that isn't familiar with the term is in one short sentence. It's basically how do you show up first when someone searches on Instagram. So Instagram doesn't have that many ways that people can search. One way is hashtags, but I don't know about you. I'm not using very many hashtags when I just, I'm not searching for content on hashtags, but I do a search for experts. I do search for businesses, I do search for people in certain industries. And so there's a way that you can kind of make sure that you show up when the right customer is looking for someone like you. The second thing is kind of similar to what I was just saying is getting the right followers and making sure the right people, the ones who are the most relevant to your business, are the ones who are following you. And the third thing is making sure that your customers or your followers or your perspective people who might buy from your company or your team, or who you know, anything that you're doing and making sure that they understand what the action is that you want them to do. So whether that's to buy something or to follow something or to read something. And it's really important that you use your bio to communicate what you expect to people when they find you and start to follow you, follow you and start to engage with you. So it's really important, vitals are really important. I hope you don't walk away from this class thinking that it's not important because truly, it is something that's going to maximize your impact over on Instagram. So that's it for this little section. I will see you back for the next section and take a break if you need to or just come back right away.
3. The 4 Elements of a Great Bio: Okay, welcome back. I am really excited we're getting going or getting into the meat of this. I wanted to talk about the four elements of a great Instagram bio. And this is something that a lot of people don't think about too much when they create their Instagram bio. I know some people want their Instagram bio to be funny. Some people want it to be simple, so people want it to be short. But when I really sit down and think about what I've seen as a side hustle coach as the most successful Instagram bios. These are the four elements that I really came down to, that, that really make the most impact on Instagram. So the first one is optimizing your name. And in the next section I'm going to show you some examples of exactly what this looks like. But basically optimizing your name, a lot of people use just their name in their name. So if your name is John Smith, then you might just put John Smith as your name and bio in your bio. But there's some ways that you can actually make it a little bit more searchable when it comes to that SEO, like we talked about search engine optimization. And so I really recommend using the name of your business, the name of your expertise or industry to help more people find you when they're looking on Instagram. So we'll talk a little bit more about exactly what that looks like. But quickly, if you're a yoga teacher, it means putting John Smith and then putting the actual words yoga teacher because in the name of the bold name on your Instagram bio, that is one of the only places that Instagram allows people to search for you by. So if you put that in the regular bio, like yoga teacher, in the regular bio, it's actually not searchable. And so it's really important that if you want it to be searchable, that you put it in your actual name and you've seen this happen. You've seen people do this in their Instagram bios, but maybe you didn't know why. And so it's really important if you are John Smith and your yoga teacher, to put John Smith yoga teacher in your name. And that will help people understand who you are. It'll help them find you. The other thing that's really important, this is number two, and this is something that I would do right away when you are creating your Instagram bio is just to tell people how you can help them. So what value are you bringing to them? Nobody wants to follow you as a favor unless they're your friend or your grandma. Everybody on Instagram wants to derive value from people's content. So if you have something that you can help someone with, if you have something that you can inspire someone with, say that right off the bat. And again, I'll give you some examples in the next lesson, but just make sure you're focusing. This is a general rule for Instagram in content as well as your bile. It's really important that your followers know that you are there to help them. You're there to give value to them. You're there to make sure that they have what they need to get through their day in a way that's meaningful to them. So don't ask them for anything until you tell them what value you are going to bring to them. The third one is a really fun one, especially if you have a lot of work that you can show, but it's essentially to show your work. And this means, you know, tagging other Instagram profiles that you run. Or it means, I'm talking about where you've been featured or just give examples of what makes you the go-to person for your topic. So if you are a leadership coach, where, who, who have you coached and where has your work been published? If you are a bakery, What are some, what are some ways that you can show people but you have a reputation in the city that you're operating in. So have you been featured in a newspaper? Did you get voted best bakery? What are some ways that you can show that you are a credible and reputable business. So show examples of work that you have done. The last element of the four elements that I really think is incredibly important and I don't want anybody to leave this class without taking advantage of this one is having an actual call to action. So an easy one is follow me for x, y, and z. If you have a book or you have something that you want people to visit, a website or a blog, making sure that they know that you want them to go and visit that website or blog. Or if you have a YouTube channel or you have something that you want them to download, just making sure that at the end of your bio, you're telling them that explicitly because your bio is one of the most valuable spots on your Instagram. If you think about it like ads, space, like your content is going to be flushed out by your other content, but your bio always remain static. So it's important that this is a really valuable part of your Instagram profile. And if you have something that people can buy, if you have something that people can read, It's really important that you make sure that people know that and that they know that that's what you want of them because you've shown them what value you're going to bring to them. So show them where they can get it. And again, these are the four values, the four elements of a great Instagram bio. I think if you take advantage of all four of these and you really think about them individually, and you think about how they all come together as one Instagram file, you are going to be really well off for really maximum impacts on Instagram. So let's move on to the next lesson because I really want to show you some concrete examples of what this is actually looking like. So join me in the next lesson and I will see you there.
4. 3 Instagram Bio Examples: Okay, so let's get into some concrete examples of exactly what a good Instagram bio looks like. So we talked about the four elements. We talked about different ways you can make sure that your followers find you and that they're engaged. And I just want to show you three really solid examples of things that I came up with. These are all made up businesses. These are all things that I just kinda put together myself. But I wanted to take them one by one. So the first one is a yoga teacher like I was talking about in the last lesson. Greg Smith is a yoga teacher and you'll see in all three of these examples, I've used their title or their company or their name, in their actual name, or when it comes to Instagram. So this is something that you'll want to set inside your Instagram settings. This is something that's separate from the bio in particular, but it does show up as one piece in Instagram. So this person has Greg Smith, yoga teacher. Then what they do is they write their bio and you know, it's got to be sure, it's gotta be snappy and it's got to be to the point and show the value that you're bringing to people. So all of these, all of these examples have basically a statement that shows the value that people are bringing to customers. So Greg Smith has helping every day millennials develop a love for yoga. And what I love about this one is that it's specific about who he's helping and it tells them exactly what he's doing. So it doesn't say that he's teaching yoga. It doesn't say that he's selling a book about yoga. It tells them that he is helping people develop a love for yoga. Then he shows some credibility. He gives some contexts and he says he is the creator of yoga XY. So maybe that's a yoga studio or maybe it's a YouTube channel. And he has his own Instagram channel just for that. And so he's tagged it in his Instagram bio so people know where to find more about him. And he says Editor in Chief at yoga, yoga Mac, which is a yoga magazine that he is the editor in chief at. So this is just showing a little bit more about who he is. So you can see that the first sentence is a little bit more broad and then it gets into exactly who he is and why people should trust him. Then he gives the call to action and he says, follow for daily achievable yoga poses and get the guide below. So he's actually given two calls to action, which I think is okay in this scenario because one of them is just to follow and He's asking you to follow him. And so that's just a quick button. But if you want to know more and you want to get his guide to yoga, you can go into his link below. And one thing that I haven't mentioned yet is if you haven't created something like a link tree, then I definitely recommend having something like that. And for those who don't know, a link tree is if you go to link tree.com, you can create a link that actually expands into five or six links, or three or four links depending on how many you want. And it's a free service and it makes it so that you can point people to multiple things rather than committing to just one website that you want to send people to. So Greg Smith has a really great bio. It talks about what value he's bringing to his customers. It talks of gives them, gives them some context as to who he is and why they should trust him. And then it gives a call to action at the end, tells them to follow him and to get the guide below. The next one I think is a really great example of someone who's not promoting themselves but promoting their bakery. And so this is fluff bakery, which is a bakery that I just made up this week. And what I love about this one is that they say best NYC bakery in their name because like I said, this top line is the only thing that's searchable on Instagram. So if somebody types in NYC bakery, then fluff bakery is going to come up first in the search. And that is extremely important if there's one thing I want you to do today, it's make your name searchable in Instagram. And because that is going to be one of the more powerful things that you can do to get more followers. Okay, so then they talk about what value they bring to the community and to their customers. So they say serving fresh cookies and brownies across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. And this is a really interesting situation because they're a bakery. They're obviously selling cookies and brownies. And it's not as clear like what value. It's not like you're going to follow them for tips on cookies and brownies. You're probably going to follow them for really delicious looking pictures of cookies and brownies. And you're going to follow them probably for when they're having a sale or when they're opening new locations, things like that. But but they have said they have said serving fresh cookies and brownies across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Then they add some context as to who they are and why you should trust them. So they say voted best bakery in NYC in 2020 and 2021. That is a great stat to have because it's recent. And also it says voted best bakery. One thing they could have done to make this a little bit better is to say what organization. Kinda qualified for this under so was it the New York Times or was it something a lot smaller? So that's one critique I would give for this bakery. Then they say, follow for sweets and follow for daily suites. And click below to grab $5 off your next visit. So what I love about this is that there's a call to action. Again, it says follow and then it says click below for $5 off your next visit. And the cool thing about that is that it provides value to them immediately to the customer because you're giving them $5 off to their next visit. So there's actually an incentive to be someone who follows fluff bakery on Instagram. And then they put actually they don't use the link tree in there. The link that they're providing on Instagram, they have their own website, slash five off. And so this is going to go to a coupon. And one of the cool things that I might do is maybe they have to enter their email to get there $5 off. And then once they enter their email, then they're going to be in your email list. And the e-mail list is a lot more valuable than just an Instagram follower. That's for another class. So fluff bakery is doing a really great job here. The next one is a leadership coach that I created for my mind, her name is Elaine them around and she is trying to get people to engage with her leadership content. So, and it says to add value to people and tell them why they might want to follow her. She says, dropping daily tips and tools for the next generation of startup liters. So liters in there, her leadership coaches in her name. And then she adds some credibility. She had some context, says featured in Forbes, Fast Company and Business Insider. That's something that regardless of how big your businesses, if you're a babysitter or if you are a CEO of a company, you'll always want to do something that adds some credibility. So if you're a babysitter, maybe you can say I've been babysitting for ten years or five years, or you can say I've baby sat 35 children in the last five years. To adding some type of credibility is going to be something that's really going to be powerful in your Instagram bio. Then she says, follow today and DM me for a free 20 minute consultation. And what I love about this is again, she's asking people to follow. I love just asking you to follow, giving them that call to action. But she also says to DM me for a free 20 minute consultation. And there's two things that I really, really love about this bio here. The first thing is that she's saying to DM her and just from my own experience running different businesses. The dm is the most powerful engagement you can get. And DM for anybody that doesn't know as direct message. So it's when somebody texts you through Instagram, it's one of the more powerful engagement that you can get because you're actually having a conversation with someone. And that can lead you to giving them more information about where your businesses or given, or giving them a link to buy something or just connecting with them on a deeper level. So direct messages are a very powerful way to connect with your audience. The other thing that I like about it is she's offering a 2320 minute consultation. A challenge that I would give to all of the people taking this course right now is to think about something that you can give to your audience that will make them happier to follow you. So for this situation with the leadership coach, Alaina Moran, she is giving a free 20 minute consultation. And that, that again, I'm going to split it out into two things. The first thing is that she's going to be able to get on a call for 20 minutes with someone who's heard her target customers. So she's going to be able to learn more about what they want. Learn about how mid they might partner together and she might get some business from it. But the other thing that I love about it is that it's giving something away and it makes the follower more excited to be connected to that person. So with any of these businesses, like with Greg Smith, the yoga teacher, he's giving away that guide. But I wonder what would happen if he said, click for a 3, 20 minute yoga consultation or click for my free Wednesday night group classes. Think about something that you can do that's free, that people can click into. That is going to provide a lot more value. So think about, you know, you have people on Instagram. How can you get them outside of Instagram? And then how can you get, how can you get them outside of Instagram to consume something that you've created or come to your shop, or take your class, whatever it is, how can you get people to do that? And also engage with you on Instagram? Because instagram is a great platform, but you can't really make money right on Instagram. So giving people a chance to explore you outside of that. So these are three examples that I think are really, really great. I'm gonna go into some final tips in the next lesson. Because I think there's some things that I didn't capture in this lesson here. So stay tuned. We'll catch up in the next lesson. I will see you there.
5. My Final Tips: Oh, okay, so I have some final tips for you. This lesson is going to be fairly short, but I just don't want you to forget about these ones because there are things that may have been left out so far that I really want to make sure I address head on. So the first thing that I would say is don't shy away from emojis. If you're not an emoji person and you don't want to use any emojis, That's totally fine. I will kinda challenge you. There are some emojis that are a little bit less expressive that might be helpful. Maybe an arrow, maybe a number. There are some things that are not so funny or so cute. But emojis can add a lot of life and a lot of flair to your Instagram bio. The next thing that I will say is, I've shown you three examples of bios that I think are really great. But please do me a huge solid and make sure that your bio aligns with the brand voice that you've already created. So if you're really funny, make sure your Instagram bio is really, really funny. If you're really meaningful and serious, make sure people feel that sense of meaningful and weight when they are looking at your bio. The last one is aimed toward action. So I know we just talked about this for a while in the last lesson. But, you know, follows are really great and you do want to build your following, but ask for more. If you can get people to direct message you, that is the best type of engagement on Instagram. So I actually highly recommend and would actually love to challenge you as the viewer of this class to see what you can do in your power to get people to direct message you via your bio. So maybe they can unlock an offer by dm and you, or maybe you're offering free consultation over DMZ and you'll answer people's questions. Sometimes that's something that I do. And I've seen a lot of other people do that as well. So if you can get people to direct message you, that's going to be really powerful. And then also if you can get people to leave Instagram and maybe go to your website or maybe add themselves to your email list. That is also going to be really powerful because one of the things about Instagram is that you never know what's going to happen with their algorithm. You never know what's going to happen with their business. Instagram could go under tomorrow and you would have no notice to be able to go and capture your leads, capture your followers. The more you can do to gather more of a following outside of Instagram, that's also going to be really, really helpful. So adding people to your email list or getting people to subscribe to you on YouTube. Any of these things are going to really, really help you. So these are just some final tips that I wanted to say before we end the course. I know it's been a fun time learning about all the four elements and learning about some examples. But these are 33 things that I really wanted you to not miss in the course. Okay? We will come back and I will give you my final remarks.
6. Closing Remarks: Thank you so much for taking this course. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you had a good time and I hope you learned something that you can actually apply to your Instagram bio. One thing that I'll say is that Instagram bio is very similar to a Tiktok bio or a Twitter bio. It's all kinda the same thing. They all have the same four elements to make sure that you're calling people to action, to make sure that you are giving contexts and creating credibility. And to make sure that you're delivering value to people in a way that's meaningful to them before you're asking them for something for yourself. And so I really appreciate this time that you've taken with me. Let's all take a deep breath in and a deep breath out one more time. I hope this has been valuable for you. If you have any questions, I want to further the value this kind of Meta because this is something that I just taught in this course. Please message me here on Skillshare or message me over on Instagram if you want to check out what I've been doing in terms of side hustle contents. I love talking to people about how to find a start and grow their side hustle. And so if that's something that's interesting to you, you can always go message me there. I would be happy to give you more information. Answer your questions if you want me to just check your Instagram bio, I do get a lot of Instagram messages, but I may be able to check that for you and give you some feedback or some tweaks or some changes. And if you're interested in the general topic of side hustles and side hustle success and, and how to increase your income, how to generate more word of mouth marketing. This is something that I love talking about and I have other classes here on Skillshare, so I would love for you to go take that takes some more classes on Skillshare through my channel here. Because I think Skillshare's are really fantastic platform and I would love to connect with you here so you can follow me here, you can engage with me here. And I would love to stay in touch. So once again, thank you so much for taking the time here with me. My name is Ben, and I will see you in the next one.
Ben Hawes, Creative Project Consultant & Podcaster
