Profiles that turn visitors into inquiries

What you will be able to do

• Write a bio that states your offer, your client, your area and your next step
• Arrange pinned posts and highlights so they answer the questions buyers ask before inquiring
• Audit a profile against a ten-point checklist and fix the three weakest points

Most people who land on your profile already know your name. A planner mentioned you, a friend tagged you, a venue listed you. They are not there to be entertained. They are there to decide whether to send a message. Your profile has a few seconds to make that decision easy.

Read the transcript

Profiles that turn visitors into inquiries.

Most people who land on your profile already know your name.

A planner mentioned you, a friend tagged you, a venue listed you.

The four questions a profile must answer.

A visitor scanning your profile is silently asking four questions.

If any one goes unanswered, many will leave without writing.

Name, handle and photo.

Your handle should be your business name, or as close as the platform allows.

Avoid numbers, underscores in odd places and words a client would have to spell back to a friend over the phone.

The bio formula.

A good bio follows a simple pattern: what you do, for whom, where, proof, and the next step.

Copy this template and fill in the brackets.

The link and the contact buttons.

The link in your profile is the single most valuable piece of real estate you have.

Send it to a page on your own website, not to a third-party link page that lists every account you have ever made.

Pinned posts and highlights.

Most visitors look at the top of your grid and then leave.

Use pinned posts, where the platform offers them, to answer the questions buyers ask before inquiring.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

The four questions a profile must answer

A visitor scanning your profile is silently asking four questions. If any one goes unanswered, many will leave without writing.

1. What do you do? In plain words. “Wedding and event planning” beats “Curating moments”.
2. Is it for someone like me? Weddings or corporate? Intimate or 400 guests? South Asian multi-day weddings? Name the client.
3. Do you work where I am? A city or region. “Toronto and the GTA” or “Hamilton to Niagara”.
4. How do I take the next step? One clear action: inquire, check dates, see packages.

Everything else on the profile, from the photo to the highlights, should support these four answers or get out of the way.

Name, handle and photo

Your handle should be your business name, or as close as the platform allows. Avoid numbers, underscores in odd places and words a client would have to spell back to a friend over the phone. Use the same handle on every platform so people can find you when someone says your name out loud.

Many platforms have a separate display name field that appears in search. If the platform allows it, add a short descriptor there, such as “Lantern & Lane | Toronto Event Planner”, because people search platforms for exactly those words. Keep it honest and short.

For the profile photo, use your logo if you are a company that clients think of as a brand, such as a rental company or a venue. Use a clear, well-lit photo of your face if clients are hiring you as a person, such as a magician, a solo photographer or a DJ. At small sizes a busy logo becomes a blur, so test it on your phone at thumbnail size.

The bio formula

A good bio follows a simple pattern: what you do, for whom, where, proof, and the next step. Copy this template and fill in the brackets.

• Line 1: [Service] for [client type]
• Line 2: [Area served]
• Line 3: [One piece of proof: a number, a credential, a notable venue type]
• Line 4: [Call to action] followed by the link

Here is how it changed for Lantern & Lane.

The “before” version is pleasant and says almost nothing. The “after” version answers all four questions and gives one piece of proof that a stranger can believe. If you use a number in your bio, make sure it is true and that you could show your records.

The link and the contact buttons

The link in your profile is the single most valuable piece of real estate you have. Send it to a page on your own website, not to a third-party link page that lists every account you have ever made. A page you own lets you track visits, keep your branding, and change it without asking anyone.

Keep that page short. Three choices is plenty: the two main services you sell, and one direct action such as “check a date” or “request a quote”. Each button goes to the matching page or form. If you sell to two very different buyers, such as couples and corporate clients, the first split should be by buyer, not by service.

Turn on whatever contact options the platform offers for business accounts, such as email, phone or a message button, and test each one from a friend’s phone. A surprising number of event businesses have a contact button that opens an email address nobody checks.

Pinned posts and highlights

Most visitors look at the top of your grid and then leave. Use pinned posts, where the platform offers them, to answer the questions buyers ask before inquiring. A useful set of three:

1. Your best recent event, with the type of client, the venue type and the guest count in the caption.
2. How it works: your process in a carousel or short video, from first call to event day.
3. Proof: a short client testimonial, with permission, or a before-and-after of a room you transformed.

Story highlights, or their equivalent, work like a small website menu. Name them for the questions people ask: Weddings, Corporate, Packages, Reviews, Process, FAQ. Avoid cryptic names. A caterer might use Menus, Tastings, Corporate Lunch and Weddings. A photo booth company might use Booths, Backdrops, Prints and Pricing.

The ten-point profile audit

Run this checklist on your own profile, then on two competitors’, and score each point 0 or 1.

1. A stranger can tell what you do from the bio alone.
2. The bio names the type of client you serve.
3. The bio names the area you serve.
4. The bio includes one specific, provable piece of proof.
5. There is one clear call to action.
6. The link goes to a page on your own site with three or fewer choices.
7. Contact buttons work and reach someone who answers.
8. Pinned posts show your best work, your process and proof.
9. Highlights are named in plain words and are less than a year old.
10. The most recent post is less than two weeks old.

Lantern & Lane scored 5 on its first audit. The bio had no client, no area and no proof, and the link page offered eleven choices. Marco fixed those four items in one evening. Inquiries that mentioned Instagram did not double overnight, but the messages that arrived were better: couples asked about dates and packages instead of asking what the studio actually did.

Anything under 8 needs work. Fix the lowest-scoring items first, because they are usually the cheapest to fix.

In Canada and the GTA

Your profile is advertising, and Canadian advertising law applies to it the same way it applies to a print ad. The Competition Act makes it reviewable conduct to make a representation to the public that is false or misleading in a material respect to promote a business. Courts and the Competition Bureau look at the general impression a claim creates, so “Toronto’s best wedding planner”, “award-winning” or “500 five-star reviews” all need to be literally true and provable. If the award was a regional reader’s poll in 2019, say so. If the reviews are spread across several platforms, do not imply they are all in one place.

Ad Standards’ Canadian Code of Advertising Standards says testimonials must reflect the genuine, reasonably current opinion of the person giving them, and be based on adequate experience of the service. A highlight full of glowing screenshots from 2017 does not meet the “reasonably current” test well. Refresh it, and keep the original messages or emails so you can show where each testimonial came from.

Prices in your profile. If a highlight or pinned post says “Packages from $2,400”, the drip pricing rules apply. Since the 2022 amendments to the Competition Act, a price that cannot be attained because of fixed mandatory fees is a false or misleading representation. You may add HST on top, because it is imposed by law. You may not add a mandatory booking fee, admin fee or service charge on top of the advertised figure. The Competition Bureau explains this on its drip pricing page. A caterer quoting “$45 per person” with a mandatory 18 percent service charge needs to show the total, or rethink how it presents the figure.

Photos of guests. Your grid is full of people who did not hire you: guests, children, staff. Under PIPEDA, information about an identifiable individual in any form is personal information, and the Privacy Commissioner has treated photographs of identifiable people as personal information. Get the client’s agreement in your contract to use event photos in marketing, give guests a way to opt out on the day, and take down a photo promptly when someone asks. Be extra careful with children and with religious ceremonies where photography of certain moments is not welcome.

Keep your names consistent. On social platforms you can usually add a descriptor to your display name. Google Business Profile is stricter: Google says the business name must match your real-world name and must not include taglines, service descriptors or location details, and unnecessary information can lead to suspension. So “Lantern & Lane | Toronto Event Planner” is fine on Instagram and wrong on Google. See Google’s guidelines for representing your business.

Accessibility. The AODA’s web standard applies to public websites controlled by businesses with 50 or more employees in Ontario, so most small event businesses are not covered for their own site, let alone their social accounts. Accessible profiles still win clients. Write alt text where the platform lets you, add captions to every video because many people watch with the sound off, and avoid putting essential information only inside an image. If your profile says you serve accessible events, show it: ramps, accessible seating plans, ASL interpretation you have coordinated.

Local cues. Name the parts of the region you actually serve. “GTA” means different things to a client in Oshawa and one in Milton. If you travel to cottage country, Niagara or Prince Edward County for weddings, say so, because couples planning destination weddings within Ontario search for those places by name. A performer based in Scarborough who happily drives to Barrie should say so, rather than leaving clients north of the city to assume they are out of range.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)