Try to choose a name that makes sense to people if they are searching for you and want to engage with you.

If you’re a business or shop, it makes sense that you would use your business or shop name. If you’re a writer or artist or otherwise “personal brand,” it makes sense that you would use your own name.

If you want to choose something a little different to this, keep in mind the following:

* Keep it easy to remember and type (you might think that underscores at the end of your name, repeated letters, a string of numbers or odd spellings etc help you stand out because they are different, but they’re also hard for people to remember and easy traps for typos. Make it easy for people to reach you)

* Plan for the future: right now, you might only paint flowers, but what if one day you want to paint portraits? Or bake artistic loaves of bread? Or whittle wooden spoons? Or write a book? Don’t tie yourself down to just one thing in your URL, or you make it hard on yourself to grow and develop and follow your interests

* Explore other platforms: even if you only use one social media platform at the moment, take a look before you lock yourself in and see if you can secure the same URL on the other popular platforms. If at all possible (and I realise it isn’t always possible), aim to have the same URL everywhere, so you’re easy to remember.

(Extra tip: if you can get the same URL elsewhere, grab it, even if you don’t plan on being active there, so nobody else can grab the same URL and thereby dilute your brand.)

Most social media platforms give you the opportunity to share your name, separate to your URL.

For brands and businesses, this is an excellent opportunity to personalise the experience for their followers. Your URL might be “@happyflowershop,” whereas your name can be “Julie, owner of the Happy Flower Shop”.

If it’s only you posting and commenting on this platform, don’t pretend you’re a team of faceless employees: tell people your name, so they know who they’re talking to when they leave a comment or ask a question.

Dip back into the Values work you did during Lesson 1 (or take a short cut and read back over the values you shared in your Brand Style Guide) and see if you can refine this down to something short and sweet.

Get to the heart of what matters to you - why you do what you do. Often (but not always), people find themselves expressing their values in one or two adjectives. In fact, you might be able to express your values simply by sharing one or two of your mood words!

What if I’m a baker: how do I express my values? How about “sustainable baking,” or “joyful baking” or “community baking” or “easy-to-learn baking” or “affordable bakery” or “inspirational baking”? Can you see how each of these adjectives helps to express my values (whether those values are about sustainability, affordability, accessibility, or any others)?

You may also have expressed your values in your One Liner a couple of activities ago - see if there are any ideas waiting for you in there.

Do you remember, back in Lesson 1 when we were exploring your values, that I asked you to write a list of “I believe” statements? And then I asked you to turn those statements into actions: “I believe… so I will always…”

That’s what we’re talking about here. After expressing your values in the previous section, now I want you to tell us what you do that is in alignment with those values.

If you’re a baker and “community” is one of your values, tell us how you involve or serve or build community through your baking.

Tell us - ever so briefly - what we can expect from you on this platform. Will you be educating us? Entertaining us? Telling stories? Posting pictures of your meals and shoes?

If you share any regular content or engagement, include this here, too. For example, if you host a regular chat, run competitions, or go live at certain times, tell your potential new followers how to join in.

What do you want people to do? Visit your website? Subscribe to your newsletter? Buy your course? Tell them! This is called a CTA, a “call to action”.

And include a link. If you want people to subscribe to your newsletter, link to the subscribe page. If you want people to buy your flowers, link to a “buy now” button. You get the picture!

Many social media platforms only give you one clickable link, so make it count. If you want people to do more than one thing, here are your options:

* Make it count: choose the one you most want people to do. eg. If you want them to buy your products but you don’t think this is likely on social media, ask them to sign up to your newsletter instead, so you can nurture and sell to them that way instead

* Create a “link tree,” so your one link points to a page, where you provide lots of other links. This is helpful, but can dilute the punch of that one special link, and muddies the path of people clicking through to your content

* Swap things around: update your bio link as often as you like, switching it from “read my latest blog” to “buy my product” to “subscribe”, based on what’s going on for you on that day

If someone has only just discovered your profile, they haven’t had time, yet, to know, like and trust you. How do they know that you are who you say you are, or that you can do what you promise to do?

The best way to build this trust is to nurture and build it over time, with consistent, on-brand, values-led content.

But a helpful shortcut that can encourage people to follow you in order to give you a chance to earn that trust, is to share “social proof”.

Social proof is, essentially, sharing someone else’s word that you are who you say you are. This could include feedback, reviews or testimonials from clients or customers; any interviews, positive mentions or features of you in the media; relevant awards you might have won; relevant speaking engagements you’ve taken.

As you build up your body of social proof, keep adding to this box in your workbook. Then, as it’s relevant, choose one or two to include in your various social media platforms.

There’s not a lot of room to be expansive in an Instagram bio, so it’s worth making the absolute most of the real estate you have.

Things to remember:

* To make your profile more searchable, add a commonly searched-for keyword to your username. Eg. “Julie Brown, florist,” or “Julie Brown, botanical artist,” or “Julie Brown, ADHD advice”. Note that being more poetic (“Julie Brown, joy-seeker”) is lovely and helps to share your values, but does not make you more searchable (not many people type “joy-seeker” into search bars, looking for someone like you).

* You only have 150 characters for the bio itself. Be sure to include a) Who you are, ie. what you do and who it’s for (take this from the bio you wrote earlier this week); and b) What to expect, ie. the value people gain from your feed (eg. inspiration, “recipes, food photography, a life of abundance”; or education, “navigating life with ADHD”; or entertainment, “original poetry and magical realism photography”)

* You only have one clickable link, so choose it wisely. This may be your website, newsletter sign-up, another social media profile, or even a “link-tree” sharing them all.

This advice is for a page or business bio, as this is where you are more likely to talk about your brand and your work. You have a word limit of 225 characters for your “about” description, so short and sweet is best.

Things to remember:

* How does this page benefit your audience? Share what you do, or your business/brand’s mission, in the context of its value.

* Overview the products or services you offer (“carefully curated homewares”; “personalised nutritional support”; “original oil paintings and prints”; “storytelling from a country kitchen”)

* Employ keywords: these make you searchable both within and beyond Facebook. Use your social listening to advise you on the language your audience uses to describe what you do, and weave this into your bio

* Social proof - awards, testimonials, media features, speaking engagements, etc can all add value to a Facebook bio (but only after you’ve shared what you do and the value you bring to your audience, and if there’s still room)

TikTok only gives you 80 characters in your bio, so you need to treat it a little differently. There isn’t room for the who/what/values/audience content I’ve recommended on other platforms.

Instead, use your TikTok bio to provide insights into your personality, your values, or your style. You can be a little more creative and less directive on TikTok, generally because there just isn’t room for you to lay everything out.

But be sure your ”creative bio” is still consistent with the content in your feed, and your brand in general. (Don’t hook them with pop culture if your brand style is natural, or lure them with outrage if your brand style is home-cooking)

Emojis are helpful in every social media bio, but especially on TikTok as you have so little character real-estate. A well chosen emoji can reinforce your brand personality in just one character.

You only have one clickable link, so choose it wisely. This may be your website, newsletter sign-up, another social media profile, or even a “link-tree” sharing them all.

Don’t overlook the value of a YouTube bio. By understanding who you are, what you stand for and what to expect from your content, you will a) pique your audience’s interest, prompting them to watch more of your videos, b) build audience loyalty, resulting in longer watch-times, and c) increase the number of new subscribers.

Tell your viewers what to expect: as with your other social media bios, the goal is to help viewers see the value of your content to them, and this includes not only what you do, but also the way you do it (your values). This content should be readable in the first 100-150 characters, so it appears above the “show more” scroll button.

But the greatest benefit to you in a well-written YouTube bio is the power of SEO. If you share Hungarian home-cooking videos, you want to be one of the first to show up when people type “goulash recipes” into the YouTube search bar. Thoughtful keywords in a well-written bio will help the YouTube algorithm take you there.

Moreover, YouTube ranks extremely well in Google searches, so if you are smart with the key-words in your bio, it dramatically increases the likelihood of you being discovered by people who want exactly what you offer.

On Twitter you have 160 characters with which to share what you to, what you stand for (your values), and the value you bring to your right audience. It’s not a lot of space, but more than some of the other platforms provide!

Use as much of this space as you need: surveys of Twitter feeds have found that the number of followers steadily increases, the longer a bio becomes. Although of course, we can’t know which came first: the long bio, or the new followers, so don’t get too caught up on this.

When it comes to Twitter, hashtags in the bio do not appear to have any value in terms of follower growth, so only include them if you want people to interact with a particular hashtag that you have created.

However, as with many social media platforms, emojis (when used sensibly and minimally) are increasingly helpful for driving engagement.

LinkedIn gives you more space than most other platforms in which to tell your story and share your values. You have 2600 characters in a LinkedIn summary (the “summary” is your “about” content).

Don’t be tempted, however, to fill all this extra space with qualifications, job positions and awards - LinkedIn provides specific areas for you to do that. Instead, use your summary to showcase the value you bring to your right people.

Your first priority should be to write what your ideal audience wants to read from you, not “stuff you want to say”. Think about your audience and why they might be looking at your profile: what do they want from you? Show them how they can get it. 



This is particularly important if you are showing up on LinkedIn as a business owner, rather than a person seeking employment, which is what I’m assuming you’re doing.

Because LinkedIn bios are longer, it’s also important to use formatting tools that visually break long blocks of text up. This makes it more inviting to read, easier to scan, and increases the likelihood that people will continue reading right to the end. Break your content into paragraphs, use sub-headings, and make use of dot-point lists.

Beyond the summary, be sure to fill out all the sections in the introduction - or at least as many as you can. The template nature of LinkedIn means that doing this enables people viewing your profile to be able to compare apples with apples, which in turn helps to build trust.

LinkedIn also provides additional optional sections that can bring colour and information to your profile. If you want to include these, click “Me” > “View profile” > “Add profile section”.