If you’re on Twitter, you’ve seen it – the mysterious people, businesses and organizations that follow you who want you to follow them back, but when you click on their profile, there is… nothing.
What is a Twitter bio? Besides the photo/avatar, the bio is the first thing that you look at when you check a Twitter profile.
Most of us read the bio first. It is one of the most decisive factors in deciding whether to follow or not follow that person or business or organization.
Things that I check when reading a Twitter bio: Do I have something in common with this person? What do they do? Are they/will they be interesting and worth my time to follow? Does it make sense to connect?
If a bio is not filled out, if it’s not very descriptive or if it’s filled with expletives/symbols/typos/nonsensical words, then undoubtedly that profile is missing out on potential followers (including me). I make it a rule never to follow anyone without a bio – I find that a lot of those accounts are created by spammers (or just uninteresting people).
Fortunately, writing a compelling Twitter bio is very simple. Unlike the 140-character limit for Tweets, Twitter even gives you 160 characters for your bio. You can even add your website without taking away from the 160 character limit!
My top 5 tips for a good Twitter bio:
- You have 160 characters. Use them all and use them to their potential! Try not to use a lot of acronyms or jargon – that tends to turn people off if they don’t understand and can’t make a connection.
- Remembering what I just said about jargon, select your keywords carefully so you can be found in search results. Think of your potential customers, supporters, and audience. Who do you want to connect with on Twitter? If you want to talk about Project Runway, by all means put “Project Runway fan” in your bio. If you want to talk about social media, put that in. Think of industry terms and search words – a little bit like SEO management. Twitter results come up very high on Google searches.
- Be a little bit personal and definitely be real. You can have fun with it – list your hobbies, say you’re a mom with 2 sons, say you like the Red Sox – anything to make you more personable. Personable is a good thing when you are social networking!
- Please. Please. Do not put a ton of hashtags in your bio (sorry @blossom86!) – this is just a personal opinion of mine, others will tell you otherwise.
- Change it up a bit every once in a while! You can change your bio as much or as little as you like. Experiment, use different words, get more/less personal, include/take out hashtags, mix it up. Twitter is not supposed to be static and boring!
What are your tips for good and bad Twitter bios? Do you agree or disagree with this post?
Feel free to submit your comments and examples of good (and bad) Twitter bios in the Comments section, or email me at julia@jcsocialmarketing.com
Comments 7
I think it helps to think of it as a sort of elevator pitchband ask yourself, “if this was someone else’s bio, and I read it, would it make me want to follow them?”
Author
Absolutely right!
follow me on twitter @ObeyO_ONerd And Instagram NerdPost. Thanks
Great tips. Apart from bio, I also look at the followers of that profile. And if I find he/she is following too many people with little followers.. I rather prefer to skip that profile thinking as a spam.
Author
Thank you! Yes – definitely check out the followers!
Wow! Thank you! I continually wanted to write on my site something like that. Can I take a part of your post to my blog?
Author
As long as you link back to my site and give me credit, that’s fine!