The Business of Tattooing - How To Set Up An Engaged Instagram Account For Your Tattooing

Memphis Mori

Jul 4, 2025

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The Business of Tattooing - How To Set Up An Engaged Instagram Account For Your Tattooing

STEP ONE.
YOUR ACCOUNT USERNAME, NAME AND BIO

Your username should be your name or business name, as short as possible and if your name alone is not available; try adding a word for context "tattoo, tattoos, ink"

for example if your name is Joey Smith, @joeysmith, @joeysmithtattoos, @inkbyjoey @joeytattoos etc.

in your bio, your name should be your name or business name and then the city you work in and your profession.

for example, Joey Smith | Tattoo Artist in Elkhart IN or Joey Smith Tattoos | Elkhart IN

For the Bio, use a 4 line format something similar to:

A quick tag line about who you are
Tattooing at @shop you work at
Booking info (books always open, bookings open in november, walk ins welcome)
Want to work together: (link below)

Emojis are a great way to express your brand if your brand would use emojis.

We strongly advise against using fancy lettering as it is not always searchable.

Always have a CLEAR and current photograph of your face, logo or something that really makes sense for your business. Your face is ideal, people want to know who you are and seeing your face makes them feel more confident in booking.

MAKE SURE YOU ARE A BUSINESS OR CREATOR ACCOUNT.

STEP TWO
Study Viral Content

Write down your 'niche' or hashtags that would best represent your work and your business.

examples would be:

neotrad tattoos
queer tattooer
bipoc color tattoos
traditional tattoos
girly tattoos
spooky tattoos

Now go search these hashtags on instagram, go to reels and save any (literally any, but like several per search term) reels OVER 1 million views.
You want at least 50 videos and we recommend doing this every 3-6 months.

Create a spreadsheet, copy and paste the video link into the spreadsheet and then write down the "hook" of each video.
Ideally include the format of the video (talking video, funny, tutorial, pov etc), the number of views and then study this. THIS is your roadmap to creating content people will care about.

This ALSO serves the algorithm by telling it this is the kind of content you care about. Engage on your business account ONLY with relevant tattoo topics. Do NOT engage with other content. Commenting, sharing and saving videos tells the algorithm that you want to see more of this type of content.

STEP THREE
Create.

Once you have the roadmap for successful content, create content that fits the popular and successful formats, use the hooks that are working for others for your content and use a consistent format.
Use the same fonts in your cover photos, use the same colors in your video texts.

Create the video IN the app, add your text captions in instagrams editing software and make sure every video has a strong hook in the first 3-5 seconds.

Make sure in the videos you include visual elements along with whatever you're creating so there are lots of transitions, effects, pop ups etc. as people have zero attention span.

You can cheat, use ChatGPT. enter the prompts for creating viral reel ideas for a tattoo artist, insert your tone (serious, funny, cute, depressed, tired, lazy etc), enter your hook idea and the subject and let it do its thing.
This will give you great ideas and help you start creating if you're really not sure where to start.

STEP FOUR.
Post consistently.

If you can post once a day, post once a day.
if you cant, set a schedule that you can actually maintain, if thats once a week, then fine, but stick to your schedule.

In your business acount, you can view your actual followers active times and days, post according to this information. Don't fall for suggested times, believe what your followers are telling you.