Do YOU have a professionally written biography?
Business marketing is all about first impressions and your professional “bio” is potentially the most important document that you’ll ever write for your business. In fact, a well written bio is one of the best tools that you can have readily on hand to professionally represent you and your skills to your target market and educate prospects about you and your company.
The wonderful thing about a biography is that it is the story-based version of your life—rather like your C.V. or resume, only less formal. Since it is a story, you can throw in interesting snippets and inject some personality into your bio as well. The greatest advantage of all is that you can highlight the best bits that you are proud of, and omit the parts that won’t help you much.
Keep in mind, though, that your business bio should NOT read like your seventh grade essay on the life of Helen Keller. A bio is essentially just another form of copy writing, not unlike many of the business marketing documents that you already produce. You will need to include the introductory “hook,” demonstrate problems that you can solve, show your solutions, and then end with a call to action. The BIG difference is that you will need to be much more subtle about how you go about including these features so that it reads like a story—not an advertorial.
Once you have a good idea of what you’re going to write, it’s a good idea to produce the “long form” version of your bio first. Traditionally, this is equivalent to one 8-1/2 x 11 page of writing, usually fewer than 500 words. It is often formatted so that you can reproduce it in print with a photo to use at trade shows and other events, as well as to use as part of a press kit for speaking engagements and media interviews. Once you have this prepared, you can pare it down into abbreviated versions that we call “short” and “micro” bios. The short version is the type of bio that you would see in social media profiles and professional directories and the length can vary a bit, depending on the medium. The micro version is usually two to three sentences long, and you would see this most often as the footer at the end of an article.
Far too few business owners have taken the time to produce a professionally written business bio, even though this can be an excellent tool to help build your credibility, establish you as an authority in your industry and differentiate you from the competition. Once you’ve seen how having a readily accessible and well crafted bio at your fingertips can enhance both your personal and brand image, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without it! So, if your business bio needs a bit of tweaking, or if you’ve been putting off making your first try at writing your business bio, January is the perfect time to include this as one of your goals for 2012.
Deborah Plouffe is a Canadian business writer and the owner of rewriter.ca, a new company offering editing, proofreading,copywriting and “rewriting” services.
Website: http//:www.rewriter.ca Phone: 705-920-9473
