Let's Save You Two Years Here

Until you get this right, your profile page will be like a leaky bucket.

Your content will drive traffic there, but your inability to consistently convert and retain prospects will frustrate your efforts to grow your audience.

It took me two years to fix this with my accounts. In this post, I'll share how I've done that to save you time, boost your profile conversions, and increase your followers and subscribers.

Stop Overthinking & Start Somewhere

The first barrier I faced was not knowing where to start.

I had so many interests - history, politics, public policy, photography, technology - how I could commit to one without knowing things like:

Would I like it?
What would I do with it?
How would it turn out?

So, I kept these ideas circling, trying to theorize my way to the "ultimate niche" that would support a "perfect strategy."

But here's the thing: you cannot think through this to arrive at a final answer that will solve the problem once and for all. The answer has to come from doing, and it will evolve continually. That's because you need the lived experience and the feedback of the market to know the answers, and those things will keep changing over time.

What saved me from this "analysis paralysis" was the decision to buy a better camera one day, which prompted me to start an Instagram account to have a place to share photos from my hobby. That led to the YouTube channel, the podcast, and social media "brand."

Yet none of it would have happened without just starting somewhere.

Take Inspiration & Use Templates

Once I started, the next challenge was defining a specific focus.

I quickly realized that most successful creators had a clear answer to the "so what" question when people visited their profile.

They're a photographer. Great, but why should I follow this person instead of the thousands of other photographer accounts? If I hit "follow" or "subscribe," there was usually a reason.

It's tough to be clear on that reason out of the gate and know how to write it up in a compelling way, especially if you haven't done this before.

This is where taking inspiration from other top accounts and using templates to help you structure your compelling bio headline can be super valuable.

The idea is not to copy anything but to equip yourself with inspiration and creativity constraints to help you articulate your unique value proposition.

For most platforms, this value proposition fits into a very standard formula: I help [x type of person] with [y type of issues or achieve y type of transformation] [with z benefit or minus z problem].

Approaching it this way should help you keep it short and clear.

Be Real & Play to Your Strengths

The last point is to be "real" and play to your strengths.

That means having credible claims and building on what you do best or at least focusing on what you can demonstrate you have the potential to become great at.

Early on, I made a mistake with this. I promoted a "benefit" I couldn't support with evidence. My profile said I'd "help photographers grow on Instagram." And while that reflected my true intent and content, it was clear I hadn't done that yet (with ~550 followers). So, why follow me?

The other issue was focusing on photography, which I enjoyed as a hobby and had a decent eye for but was not an "expert" in.

Knowing what I now know, if I were to reframe this type of profile to improve it, I'd say, "Helping hobby photographers take better photos." That would be legitimate regarding my ability and still aligned with my interest/intent, and it probably would have gotten me more followers.

I'd then add a "call to action" that made sense in alignment with that statement and my overall strategy, perhaps by replacing "DM me with questions" (like, what are you thinking?) with "Check out my photography channel" (or portfolio, or coaching program or whatever I would be trying to do strategically that lined up with my profile).

Now, I've taken this all a step further by refocusing my profiles on helping professionals and organizations build brands with content strategy, which aligns even more with my podcast and professional experience.

That revised focus has helped me grow my YouTube channel and Twitter by 50% since the start of this year. Although we're still not talking huge numbers in absolute terms, this is the direction and trajectory I've been trying to create for a while now. And I've done it with fewer (but better) videos and posts.