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Give you Twitter bio ideas to crank up your creativity
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Show you how to write a killer Twitter bio
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Tips to make your bio shine
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How To Write A Twitter Bio That Will Attract New Followers
Before you start brainstorming for the perfect 160 character pitch, you need to get your priorities and objectives straight.
Answer this: What do you want to achieve with your bio?
Let me guess... you want people to click that follow button so you can build a massive following. Who doesn't, right?
But let’s look beyond that for a moment and consider what goal you want your Twitter bio to achieve.
Do you want it to:
- Explain what your business does?
- Guide people to your product?
- Tell them exactly where to find you?
- Make you out to be a rising star?
- Just arouse some healthy curiosity?
Consider your objectives and the results you're looking to get. Then craft your Twitter bio accordingly.
Now, let's take a close look at the top 6 objectives and how you can use them in your Twitter bio.
1. Drive Traffic Through a Call To Action
Your Twitter bio has the potential to get followers out of their passive bubbles and get them working on your behalf.
Whether it's clicking the link to your website, sharing their life moments with your hashtag, or placing an order -- a call to action can be the difference between making a sale or losing your customers.
So how do you decide if a CTA is right for your bio?
Here are 3 instances where you’d be wise to include one:
Running a Live Campaign
Let’s look to two Twitter icons, @airbnb and @nike to show us the ropes of a subtle, elegant and effective CTA for a live campaign.
Notice how the bios seamlessly combine the business tagline with the message for effective delivery? Now, why would they need to do that?
The people following your business are there because they are interested in YOUR PRODUCT.
If a sports company suddenly decides to Tweet about equality, it’s followers will quickly lose interest.
Why?
Because they think equality hasn’t got anything to do with sports. But by merging their message with core values imbibed by sports, people are inclined to see the brand and the message as one.
That can mean only one thing for you...
More clicks!
So, if you decide to use your Twitter bio as the platform to advertise your campaigns, make sure to connect them to your product.
Promoting Your Hashtag
Generic hashtags can lose you followers. Let’s be absolutely clear about that.
If your hashtag doesn’t get lost in a sea of content you’ll probably lose out when they click on the hashtag to check out the tweets. That’s a rabbit hole your followers aren’t coming back from.
So what can you do?
Make your own hashtag just like Whole Foods did with #WholeFoodsFaves or GoPro did with #GoPro.
These brands are tailoring an audience around their product.
By combining a succinct message that clearly conveys their tagline, with a unique hashtag, these brands are letting their audience know what they’re all about.
And at the same time, they're encouraging followers to be part of the community.
Now, that’s how you use a hashtag!
Combine a succinct message with a unique hashtag to let the audience know what you’re all about and to build a community. Click to Tweet
Making Ordering Easy
If you’re already known for something, showcase it! That’s all you need to convey to people who you are.
Just look at the bio of @Five_Guys:
When you’re really good at something, you can be blunt with your audience.
Albeit subtle, Five Guys did add some personality to their bio by adding “and tweets!” It’s their way of telling us that they plan on serving tweets as good as their burgers...yum!
When you’re selling food, it’s always best to have the order button as close to your audience as possible.
After all, one more second and your buyers could squash their hunger cravings and move on to something more productive (or the next burger joint).
Even if you make money by selling stuff online, and not just serving up delicious snacks, it’s always best to include a CTA to “order online” in your Twitter bio.
2. Leverage Social Proof
“Leveraging Social proof” is just a fancy way of saying “boasting about the time someone said something good about our product.”
And funnily enough, it works!
A Nielson study found that 66% of people trust editorial content to define their purchases.
That means, out of 100 people visiting your Twitter page, 66 could be sticking around for the long run. That is, if they see you’ve been featured in a prominent magazine or article.
66% of people trust editorial content to define their purchases. Click to Tweet
Maybe that’s exactly what husband and wife team Laura and John Klein of Organic Authority had in mind when they put up their bio.
With 35.6K followers, it seems that strategy has served them well.
Sure, Huffington Post might not have put you on their Top list for Diet and Nutrition Experts...
But, if you have some form of validation from a prominent and trusted source, you can’t go wrong displaying it on your Twitter bio.
3. Provide Basic Information
Twitter makes room for your address, and a link to your website below the bio. That’s beyond the 160 character limit, so you can go ahead and fill those in without giving it too much thought.
But if you have a local presence you’ll want people to be aware of your hours of operation.
And that’s going to eat into prime social real estate space if you decide to include it in your bio.
“Mon-Fri:9am-5pm,Sat/Sun:10am-4pm”
That just cost you 32 characters. That’s 32 extra characters you could have used to entice your audience with your awesomeness.
Best thing to do?
List your business on Google.
A simple Google search will tell people you’re working hours, plus you get to include all the boring details Twitter doesn’t give you room for.
It's a win-win situation!
4. Arouse curiosity
Humans have a deeply curious nature.
Our innate curiosity is what gives us the capacity to learn and to evolve and to create exciting and amazing things.
It’s also the reason we’re clicking on tweets at 2am in the morning saying to ourselves “just one more...” when we all know that’s not true.
All you have to do is crank up your creative juices and you can use the Twitterati curiosity to your benefit, like @DeutschInc managed to do with their bio:
Wondering what they actually do? Mission accomplished.
5. Engage With Customers
A business takes care of its customers. A good business makes sure it’s customers know they'll be taken care of.
It’s up to you to foresee whether you’re running the kind of business where customers will need constant support.
If so, you can either start a separate Twitter handle for support or point your customers to the support page of your website through your bio.
It’s something very simple to do, but has the potential to get you a lot of brownie points with your customers.
You’re not losing space, you’re gaining customer satisfaction.
@Netflix realized that subscription services are relatively new in the market, which will probably translate into a lot of queries.
Their solution was to address these queries through a separate Twitter handle, @Netflixhelps, and link to it from the main bio...right on!
Of course, if you're not ready to run a separate customer support account, you can always link to your website support page, like @Canva did.
6. Tell Your Story
When you get down to brass tacks, Twitter is about telling your own unique story. And your bio is the first place people stop to decide if your story is worth hearing.
If you don’t make your bio special, you’ll have a harder time convincing people that your product is special.
A mature, well thought-out bio like that of @Visually, tells people the right story. But it doesn’t tell a unique story.
If you want your bio to catch the eye of the quick-clicking, speed-browsing crowd with an attention span shorter than that of a goldfish, you HAVE to make it unique.
That’s what I love about the @FranksRedHot bio. It’s short, it’s catchy and it gets you excited to see what all the fuss is about.
And they consistently follow-up on the excitement with stellar content.
So, figure out your own unique way of telling your story. If not thrilling like @FranksRedHot maybe, tasteful and mouth-watering like @CalifiaFarms:
Or short and memorable like @BWWings:
When we take a look at the Twitter profiles of these brands, they all seem to have developed a personality of their own.
@FranksRedHot is bursting with excitement, @CalifiaFarms is the friendly neighbour and @BWWings is all about wings, beer and sports.
This kind of personality branding helps you elicit an emotional response from your customers.
And that kind of connection is what gets people to follow you on Twitter and buy your product.
Take a look at a few other brands who have embraced a personality as their own:
Excitement
Sincerity
Ruggedness
Competence
Sophistication
Remember, crafting the right bio need not be a daunting task. It can be a fun exercise to play with different identities for your brand.
Keep these tidbits in mind when you tell your story.
Don’t be afraid to flaunt your main selling point. Anything you’ve got that’s nearly as cool as “zero calories” deserves to be on your bio.
But what if your selling point isn’t fancy enough? That’s when some sugar-coating works wonders.
But sometimes it’s okay to be straight with your story:
Just don’t go overboard with the straight talk. Because saying it straight can get dull and forgettable:
You need to look at what it is that makes you special.
If you’re selling a product that has always been associated with a hefty price tag but you’ve made it affordable - emphasize on that, like @DollarShaveClub did!
Your Twitter bio is the place to announce to the world that you’re here and you’re special.
Like Wendy’s did.
The fast food chain put it so sweetly that it's hard to doubt them.
If you’re funny enough, you can even get away with leaving your product out of the bio.
P.S. Johnny Cupcakes makes clothes.
Final Thoughts
Remember: the story you decide to craft for your brand will define its identity.
So, write your Twitter bio for business wisely. Those 160 characters hold a lot of power.
Big responsibility, I know.
But much more doable now, don’t you think?
Comment below if you’ve found any other bios that are worth a mention.
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