“Link in Bio”: Why Your Social Media Bios Should Link to Targeted Landing Pages

From cats to astrology – and even ADHD “diagnoses” – you’re probably aware of social media trends even if you don’t have TikTok or Instagram. If you have the time and inclination, these platforms can be a great way to grow your business, whether or not you want to “go viral.”

When setting up a social media profile for your business, there’s some strategy involved. What should you put in your social media bio? What type of posts should you share? Should you follow other accounts or just focus on engaging with other posts? Social media strategy is a whole other beast that I won’t get into today – but I do want to sit and chat about that commonly-used phrase, “Link in bio.” What link should you put in your bio? Let’s take a closer look.

What Purpose Does Social Media Serve for You?

Take a minute to sit and think about what you want to accomplish with your social media accounts. For many of us, our personal accounts are just a place to share bits about our daily lives, vacations, and pets – or maybe even just as a way to scroll through others’ posts without sharing much of our own content at all.

When it comes to influencer or business accounts, there’s much more strategy involved.

What do you want to achieve through your social media profiles? (And bear in mind this can vary from one platform to the next.)

Do you want to…

…gain followers & visibility for your business/brand?
…advertise your products or services?
…spread messaging you support aside from your main products/services?
…encourage engagement to grow a sense of community around your brand?
…funnel visitors & followers through to your website/shop?

Your answers to these questions will help guide you as to how you should fill out the content in your social media bio.

Make Your Social Media Bio Serve Both You & Your Audience

Not only do you need the right wording to concisely say what your business does or what appeal you have to visiting customers, but you also need to make it easy for anyone interested to access relevant content – through one link.

The most popular option is Linktree – an option that allows you to create a custom page with links to relevant articles, pages, or any place else you want to direct visitors. Some other popular options include Koji and Shorby – and Squarespace even offers a similar service.

But I’m here to argue that you should instead use a link to a targeted landing page on your website, rather than using any of those third-party services. This strategy serves you in a number of ways.

Targeted Landing Pages Help Your Digital Marketing

Have you ever clicked through to a Linktree page and felt like you were on just another generic page full of links? No personality. Limited branding. Minimal Effort.

Sure, you can ultimately get where you want to go, but that page didn’t tell you more about what a person or business is about – or why you should care. It’s clear that it serves a purpose for those who don’t have their own website. But if you do have a website, you’re better off not settling with a service like Linktree.

Boost Your Website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Play the keyword game by creating unique, specialized landing pages. Sure, you want to inform visitors and convince them to carry out an action – whether that means subscribing to your newsletter, calling or setting up an appointment, or purchasing a product/service. But each landing page offers a new opportunity to boost your website’s overall SEO and help drive more traffic based on more specialized interests and search terms.

Keep Branding Consistent

When it comes to effective branding, consistency matters. You want the same look, feel, and tone on each page your visitors may land on. That’s much easier to accomplish with a page on your own domain, where you can customize the layout and content, rather than using a service like Linktree. While those services make it quick and easy to create a hub where visitors can find links to content you’ve posted about, that’s about all they do.

Track Page-Specific & Website-Wide Analytics

Without analytics, you don’t know how your page is performing or how to improve. The most robust and comprehensive analytics will be for your domain – and you can track data for every page on your website, including landing pages, all in one place. This is how you’ll understand who’s visiting which page, what content they care about, and how to continuously improve the flow and content of your website.

What You Put into a Landing Page is What You’ll Get Out of It

As with anything, the more time and effort that goes into building a landing page, the more it’s likely to succeed at meeting your goals. And that doesn’t just mean the initial creation – it also means taking time to check in on its performance and analyze how you can make it even better over time, once it’s put into use.

Make each landing page work for you by…

1. Researching your audience
   If you’ve already done audience research as part of the product development process or while building out a social media strategy, you’ve got a head start. Now apply what you know about your audience to the content you use on each landing page – and don’t be afraid to get precise when it comes to landing page audiences, that’s one of the benefits! By creating unique landing pages for each of your social media accounts, you can tailor the content to them – including information, tone, and what you’re promoting.

2. Researching relevant keywords
   When it comes to SEO, keywords are king (and queen). That doesn’t mean you have to fill every header and paragraph with keywords, but it does mean you need to approach the content on your website strategically. Once you understand the audience for your landing page, look into keywords you want to rank for – find ones that are relevant and choose a mix of easier-to-rank-with and long-term-strategy keywords.

3. Optimizing the URL, page title, and meta description
   Effective SEO involves more than just placing keywords on the page – it’s also about being intentional with each page’s URL, page title, and meta description. These aspects are less impactful in some ways for landing pages, since you’re building the page for a specific direct audience, not to show up in search results. However, visitors will see the URL and page title, so you want them to make sense – and if the page title is catchy or points out key information, it can help drive a point home. Plus, if anyone shares the link, the meta description may show up in that link’s preview.

4. Creating the landing page on your own domain
   Not only does having the landing page on your website’s domain help with matching your brand, it also connects you to more (and better) analytics, and makes it seamless for visitors to reach more content – if you want to make it that way. You can also manage all your content and pages in one place, rather than hopping between multiple services and providers. Finally, by hosting the landing page on your domain, you help boost SEO for the entire website by driving more traffic to the domain. It’s a win-win-win situation!

5. Getting strategic about the layout
   With any web page, layout matters. Getting the right content relies on more than just words – it’s also about the design and layout fitting a positive user experience. Consider the thought process of your audience, what they’re most interested in, and questions they likely have – then match the content flow to their “mind flow.” One of the best ways to figure out what’s most interesting to website visitors is setting up heat maps, which allow you to see where most visitors go on a page. This helps you figure out which information they really care about so you can create a landing page (or any other web page) that’s effective. You can set up heat maps on other pages of your website ahead of creating unique landing pages so you have an idea of where to start.

6. Being informative and providing value to visitors
   Believe it or not, offering accurate and valuable information is just as important for SEO as it is for keeping visitors engaged. Provide information that makes sense based on how visitors are directed to that page – with an Instagram bio link for a business, focus on the types of followers you have and information/products/services you push through that platform. Then craft content on the landing page to help them – and guide them toward your goal (i.e. subscribers, buyers, click-throughs).

7. Including calls to action based on your goals
   Go into the creation of each landing page with a goal in mind. If you want visitors from your social media pages to schedule an appointment with you, don’t make it difficult for them to figure out how to do that. If you want to encourage visitors to make a purchase, include featured products on the landing page – and maybe a link to your full shop. The point is, don’t be shy with calls to action, but also be sure to include them in places where it makes sense.

8. Consistently checking in on-page analytics
   Those coming from social media may act differently or have different interests than those coming in from search engines. You may not have all the answers from the get-go, so treat your landing page as a constant opportunity to learn more about specific audiences through analytics. Again, heat maps are a great way to see how visitors interact with your page, which content means the most to them, and what actions they take – and that can change over time, too!

Build a Landing Page that Performs – with the Help of a Professional

The right web design and content can make a huge difference for your business – but it’s not always quick and easy, especially if this is your first rodeo or web design and writing aren’t your jam. Reading this and nodding your head but it feels a bit overwhelming to go through the process yourself? Don’t worry. When I create web content – whether it’s a full website, fresh content, or a landing page – I work closely with my clients to get a feel for their tone, come up with goals to keep page content strategic, and focus on how to appeal to their audience.