During the summer of 2020, 30-year-old Kristen Melchiorre, like many other quarantined Americans, picked up a new hobby: making ice cream. In her free time, she’d churn unique flavors — like blueberry corn crisp and chocolate peanut butter pretzel — out of her kitchen in Philadelphia, gifting them to enthusiastic family and friends who served as initial taste testers. In their feedback was the resounding notion that Melchiorre should cash in on her talents and sell her frozen confections. So she made an Instagram and dubbed her new gig Side Hustle Scoops.
Initially, Instagram was the primary driver of sales, but soon after launching, Melchiorre used her Hinge profile to tout her sweet side project, filling in prompts like “Together we can…” with “build my ice cream business together” and including Side Hustle Scoops’ IG handle. Sure enough, Melchiorre noticed her the account’s following grew after she added the link to her profile.
Ice cream, she found, was the perfect ice breaker. Many of her conversations on the app centered around the dessert — her matches’ favorite flavors, witty brainstorm sessions about which variety she should produce next, and the occasional overt come-on. “I think I got the like, ‘So can I come over and try some? ;)’ more times than I could count,” Melchiorre says.
Though she ditched the venture after about nine months (her day job as a television and podcast producer necessitated more time and energy), Melchiorre found Hinge to be an ideal medium for promoting a small business. Adding the brand’s Instagram to her profile required minimal effort and chatting with matches about her side gig allowed for an organic direct-to-consumer marketing approach. “Just speaking from a woman’s side of things, it’s nice to promote yourself,” Melchiorre says. “It’s nice to show that you have a lot going on, it shows that you hustle, it shows that you’re driven. The type of partner I want to attract respects that and would comment on that being one [my] most attractive qualities.”
Just as Instagram handles in bios have become pervasive as a means of personal brand promotion on dating apps, singles are utilizing dating sites to advertise other aspects of their lives — namely, their small businesses. They shill for their real estate companies and sunglasses brands, personal training services and startups. Some even attempt to recruit for multilevel marketing companies on dating apps.
On Tinder, the use of the word “entrepreneur” in bios increased by 25% between April 2020 and July 2021, according to a survey by Shopify and Tinder. Taking advantage of the …….
Source: https://www.bustle.com/wellness/should-you-promote-small-business-dating-profile-bio