The link in your Instagram bio: what to put there as a musician
A links page or your site: what people coming from social media need, and how to have both without keeping two sites.
By Joan Subirats, founder of The Jazz Passport5 min read
In this article
Instagram gives you one link in your bio, and TikTok and most other networks do much the same. Someone watches a video of yours and likes it. From there, that link is the only way to everything else: your gigs, your records, how to reach you. What they find behind it decides whether they take the next step or go back to scrolling.
Who taps that link
Someone arriving from social media is almost always on a phone, in a hurry, and still inside the app. They are not looking for your biography. They want one thing, and it is usually one of these four:
What people from social media look for
- When your next gig is, and where to buy tickets
- Your latest record or single
- Somewhere to hear you properly, on the platform they already use
- How to book you or get in touch
The first three come from your audience. The fourth comes from someone who may have found you through a video and wants to know whether you fit their venue or festival. That visit happens less often, and it is worth more than any other, so it should not take any searching.
A links page or your site
There are two ways to use that link, and both make sense.
A links page is a short list of buttons made for the phone: tickets, record, listen, contact. It reads in a second, and every button leads somewhere. Its weak point is where it lives. It usually sits on another service, at another address, and holds a copy of what is already on your site.
Your site has everything, and someone who books finds what they need there. But if the link goes to the home page, a person who has just watched a fifteen-second video has to find the gig on their own. Sometimes that means scrolling through a page built for a different visitor.
What tends to work best sits between the two: a links page that is part of your site. It is as short as a list of buttons, and it is fed by the same details as everything else.
The trouble with two sites
The most common failure is about dates, and design has little to do with it. It goes like this.
You add a new gig to your site and forget the links page. Three weeks later its top button still announces a concert that has already happened. The new one appears nowhere that people from Instagram can see. Nobody tells you. Those people simply do not buy a ticket.
Every copy is one more thing to keep up, and anything kept up by hand ends up out of date. The healthy setup has a single source: you write the date once, and both the site and the links page show it.
What to put there, and in what order
A links page is short by definition. Give it twenty buttons and you have a worse website.
- At the top, whatever is most urgent: your next gig, with its ticket link if there is one.
- Then whatever is newest: your latest record or single.
- One link to listen, on the platform that has all your music.
- How to book you: a form or an email address, never your personal number.
- If there is room, your full site and one or two networks.
When a record comes out, it moves to the top for a few weeks. When a tour gets close, the dates move up. The order follows what is happening.
Clear
- Buttons that say what they do: Tickets, Listen, Book
- The date and the city on the gig button
- Five or six links at most
- The most urgent thing at the top
Lost
- Buttons that say Click here or Check this out
- Gigs that have already happened
- One link for every network you are on
- Your personal phone number on show
The line above the link
On Instagram the link sits right under your bio text, and that text decides whether anyone taps it. An arrow on its own says little. A line that names what is behind the link works better: "Autumn tour and new record, at the link". When the top of your links page changes, change that line too, so people land on what the bio promised.
The address on show matters as well. One with your name in it reads as yours. A string of letters and numbers from a link shortener looks too much like a dubious link, and some people would rather not tap it.
Keeping it fresh
A links page lives on what is new, so it ages fast. A few habits help:
- Check it every time you post something that mentions it. If the video says "tickets in bio", the tickets should be there.
- Remove past dates on the day, or use a tool that does it for you.
- Test the links on your phone, inside the Instagram app, which opens pages in its own browser.
- Look at where your visits come from. If social media sends you people, you will know which page they see first.
For what a booker looks for once they open your site, read what a booker looks for on your site.
In Pages
In Pages the links page is called the Marquee. It lives on your own site, at the address /links, and it is built from your site's blocks, so there is nothing to copy. In Studio you choose which blocks it offers (dates, records, projects, links) and what goes at the top. When you publish a change to the site, the Marquee changes with it.
The dates come from the Calendar. A gig you add shows on the site and on the Marquee at the same moment, and once it has passed it drops off both. If you have more than one site, the Marquee can also gather the dates, records, projects and links of the others, listed after its own.
If you are not sure which music link to put there, how to put your music on your site compares the options.
Your site, without the website work. Ask for your invitation.
Pages is the site and the Studio for musicians by The Jazz Passport. The technical side is done; you bring the music.