Your Instagram profile is a great way to show off your personal brand, no matter what your brand is.
For example, if you’re a fitness trainer on Instagram, you can share photos of your meals, training routines, and your personal progress to inspire your followers. If you’re a photographer, Instagram is the perfect way to show future clients your portfolio and depict who you are as a photographer and a person.
Want to know an easy way to start crushing your Instagram game? Read on to make the most of your Instagram profile.
1. Use a Single Bio Link for All Your Social Media
Instagram doesn’t allow you to put links in your posts, or put multiple links in your bio; however, there’s a better way to help your followers find you on your other platforms.
The best way to do this is by signing up for a free site like Solo.to or Linktree. I prefer Solo.to because it gives you more customizable options, gives you a personalized link, and I think it looks much better.
First, go to Solo.to and tap Create Account on desktop or Join for Free on mobile.
Right there, it will let you choose what you want your link to be by putting in a username. Make sure to make the username the same as what you go by on Instagram and all your other social media accounts. If it’s not available, make sure to choose something similar and easy to remember. Then create a password.
After signing up, it will allow you to change your background color, profile photo, and add your links.
Note that if you use the free version, you can only add your links by copying and pasting them by tapping + Add New and then Link.
If you get an upgraded plan, you can add Social Buttons that look a bit better, but function exactly the same. For now, we’ll just add our links.
You’re done! Now let’s add it to your Instagram bio. From your profile, tap Edit Profile. Insert your Solo.to link where it says Website.
We also suggest cleaning up your bio a bit. Put a short sentence describing who you are, what you do, and a little bit of personality.
I’m mainly a realtor, photographer, and writer, so mine is: “Cape Cod Realtor, Photographer, Writer, and Lover of food + bad puns.” You can format it so it looks nice in your bio, and you can add some emojis if you wish to give it some more personality.
2. Edit Your Instagram Story Highlight Covers
One of my favorite newer Instagram features is the ability to save highlights from your Instagram stories. If you’re a photographer, this is a great way to show off different kinds of photoshoots you’ve done, including weddings, pets, portraits, landscapes, etc; however, you don’t need to be a photographer to take advantage of this cool feature.
Take, for example, my Realtor friend Ray Ellen. He’s a Realtor as well as a Crossfit trainer who loves showing off some of his hobbies, as well as his business, in his Instagram story highlights.
The highlight titled “Yum” has an icon of a frying pan on top of his brand’s color palette, and is full of food he has put on his Instagram story. He also has one for his real estate business, titled “Pixel”, for Pixel Properties. Anything real estate related goes in here.
Remember that the photos inside these highlight bubbles don’t need to be as high quality as your grid. Just be yourself, have fun with it, and your followers will enjoy seeing some behind the scenes photos of you.
Let’s edit your Instagram story highlight covers. You can use graphic design software, such as Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer, but there’s an even easier, free, and more user-friendly way to do this: Canva.
Sign up for a free account, then click Create a design. Canva has a template for everything you could ever ask for, including Instagram Story Highlight Covers. Search for it in the search bar that popped up, and click it.
Canva will pull up lots of templates full of different colors, fonts, and icons. Choose one that’s similar to what you’re looking for, but remember that we can edit every aspect of the design, so if there isn’t one that matches exactly what you need, don’t worry.
I really like bright, vibrant colors for my brand, so I’m going to choose the template on the very right. The center of your highlight cover can either be an icon or simply a circle with words representing your stories. I will be doing the latter for my Instagram highlight covers.
You’re now in the editor and you’ll see various options for design elements you can change. If your brand uses different colors, you can change them by clicking in the top left with the pink and purple boxes. You can do the same by clicking in the circle.
Now that you have the colors you’d like, you can change what the words say by clicking in the textbox and typing whatever you’d like.
You can save your new cover by clicking download in the top right; however, you can only change your Instagram story highlights cover on mobile
To remedy this, download the Canva app available on iOS and Android and all of your designs will be there when you sign in.
Tap on your design, then tap the download icon in the top right. Your highlight cover will now be in your camera roll and can be added to Instagram.
On your profile, tap and hold the highlight you want to change the cover of. For this example, I’m changing the logo for Cars!
Tap Edit Highlight then Edit Cover.
Next, scroll all the way to the left until you see a square photo icon. Tap that in order to get to your camera roll with your new highlight cover.
Use the grid to make sure your cover is centered perfectly.
Tap Done.
Repeat these steps for every story highlight cover you’d like to change.
You’re all set! Now your profile is looking as aesthetically pleasing as ever.
There are so many more ways to make your Instagram stand out to differentiate yourself from other users on the platform. Now get to it and crush your Instagram game.
How Are You Impressing Your Instagram Followers?
Letting your followers find you on other platforms is a great way to make sure they stay with you in the long run. They may have started following you for your stunning photos, but then tapped on your Solo.to link and discovered that you have a Spotify with awesome music you make!
Your followers can now also get to know your personality better by looking through your Instagram story highlights. Now that they look a lot nicer, your followers are more likely to check them out. Building your personal brand is a great way to professionalize the work you do now by just being yourself.
Solo.to and Canva are easy to use, beautiful, and are only a couple of the best Instagram tools out there. Are you ready to make your grid match your brand now?
