Bio help

Composing your bio is one of the first steps in setting up a new social media account. It’s also something worth revisiting on many occasions, such as your brand’s pivot in positioning, a career change, or a newly acquired skill or work experience.

Whether you run a business yourself or belong to a larger team, your personal and professional brand is constantly evolving. Updating your social media bio helps inform your followers about the latest change, and properly introduce your brand to new followers.

Each bio description is unique to the user, so instead of telling you how to fill out your ‘About Me’ section, we’ve come up with six questions your social media bio should answer in order to accurately represent your brand.

Who are you?

All your social media bios should include your most commonly used name. This may seem like Social Media 101 material, but it’s surprising how many people (and businesses!) don’t keep their brand consistent across different channels. For your personal social profiles, be especially careful if you have a preferred name that’s different from your full name (eg. “Alex” instead of “Alexandra”): in this case, use the name that would be most familiar to your online audience. If you have a common first and last name combination, make sure the rest of your bio description has a unique identifier that helps people find the right account.

For businesses, be clear in distinguishing your main engagement accounts from other official accounts you may have. For example, if your organization has several departments active on social media, or uses social media for customer service, you should create separate account names and @handles, and make sure that the different purposes for each account are reflected in the bio. We use @Hootsuite as our main engagement and content promotion channel, and @Hootsuite_Help for any customer concerns. The latter’s main goal is also reflected in the name: Hootsuite Helpers.

Finally, if you’re part of an international organization with branches in many countries, use your social media bio to help you explain where you’re located and which audiences you serve. Starbucks does this with their regional accounts:

Where do you work?

With social media bios, the rule of thumb is aim to inform, not impress; hopefully, the latter can be accomplished with the content of your messaging.