Changing Signatures

I've been trying to change my signature line, to include a link. I've entered the following as a response to a post, and the link comes up fine. But when I try to use the exact same text to update my signature, it doesn't display a link ... it displays the exact text. What am I doing wrong?

[ url=http://www.thelocalbeet.com/2016/02/25/mead-is-the-new-cider/]If cider is the new beer, could mead be the new cider?[/url]

I just noticed that it displays as a link in this post. (I added a space in front of the first "URL" for purposes of this post so you can see what I've been trying to use for the signature file.) But, even without the space, it won't work when I'm trying to change my signature.