The Professional Bio-Template That Makes Everyone Sound Accomplished
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A bio-template is an important piece of information that reflects an individual’s professional career and their interests. Let’s say you read a great piece of article on the internet and want to know more about the author and his thoughts. Where would you find this information? — In their bio template, of course.
Most people find it ridiculously difficult to write a bio template for themselves and are usually found doodling away for hours with no answer in sight. The most important piece of advice you need to follow when writing a bio template is — to hook your reader with the first line with an engaging tone as readers tend to suffer from information fatigue.
In this page, you will learn the points to keep in mind while constructing a bio template for your professional page. The information covers bio templates for all aspects — for a website, a social media platform, a business page, etc.
KEY ELEMENTS TO INCLUDE WHILE CREATING YOUR BIO TEMPLATE
How to Write a Personal Bio
What is it that you are trying to sell or promote to your audience — Are you a blogger? Are you a business? Do you own a professional freelance website? — Figuring out what you do is your first step before you write your bio.
In a piece of paper, write down the most relevant keywords that describe your purpose and the type of audience you’d like to attract.
When you narrow down information to keywords, you begin to strongly understand the type of information you are trying to create with your bio template. Your credibility is incredibly critical, and your audience will need to understand you as a person. Always be humanizing in your endeavors and never boast your accomplishments. Readers love it when you offer yourself as a person they can reflect to.
Let’s take an example here — you are a freelance photographer trying to sell your digital assets, your webpage should have an about us page that strongly emphasizes you as a professional photographer. Some of the keywords a freelance photographer would recreate on a piece of paper would be — Wildlife, Fashion, Globetrotter, Instagram, Canon, National Geographic, Wedding, etc.
With the following keywords, you now have a clear vision of the type of photographer you are by listing the most personal things about you. In the above example, you are a freelance photographer that has dabbled in works relating to wildlife, fashion, and wedding moments. You love traveling the world with your professional Canon equipment and you use Instagram to share your professional photos.
Through keywords, you’ve finally found the necessary information to tell a story to your audience. The following points are some of the other content you need to include to capture your audience or to sell your business.
Job profile and Expertise
Don’t just list your job and proceed to talk about your favorite snack, provide as much detailed information as possible. List the years of experience and the companies you’ve worked for.
Do include your previous employers as they make a stellar inclusion for your bio template. Your readers will feel thrilled and confident knowing they are reading about an experienced professional when you state these valuable facts.
Next, ensure your talents and skills are mentioned in exceptional detail. After all, if you aren’t special why would people want to read about you, right? Say you’re a tattoo artist that excels at making great artistic designs, list the type of graphic art that you’ve created in short bullet points.
If you have a knack for creating special oil-based designs, mention it. Every unique factor adds a compelling and distinct flavor to your profession.
Finally, don’t forget to convert your facts to figures. “I’ve created many tattoos” isn’t as appealing as “I’ve designed over 50,000 tattoos for my clients”. Be specific where you can, a figure can provide an estimation of your worth and provide the reader with the information they are looking for.
Awards and Recognition
Is there something you’ve achieved in your career that adds to your brand value? Mention it.
Have you recently been recognized by an organization or you’ve won a contest? Mention it.
Readers love it when the person they are reading about have something special and personal to share in their profile. Being a motivational speaker might be special but being a motivational speaker that has spoken at a recent “TEDx” campaign is far more engaging.
Don’t just display your awards and trophies on your wall, mention them proudly on your bio template and share your success story to the world.
If you’ve recently addressed a seminar, mention the average number of attendees and where the seminar was held. Readers who have access to your information can look to attend your next seminar at the next venue.
In this way, by displaying information on your achievements and recognition, you begin to build a loyal following of readers that are interested in knowing about you. The bio template offers all the information in a conveniently designated location.
Educational Qualifications
While many individuals tend to ignore their educational qualifications when writing their bio template, you have a choice to consider — If your educational qualifications are relevant to your field of employment or business, then displaying them would strengthen your reputation.
If you’ve achieved a high standard of education like a master’s degree or Ph.D. — include it into your bio template.
A Ph.D. holder is held in high regard and honored in society over someone that holds a bachelor’s degree. By displaying this information, your readers immediately know you are qualified enough to know what you are talking about and proceed to take your words at face value.
This is immensely helpful when trying to sell a product or service. Educational qualifications are the trend to wooing clients.
There is no real reason to hide your educational qualifications, you’ve taken great effort to complete your studies. You can surely afford a sentence or two describing them.
Hobbies and Personal Experiences
If you’d like to share a personal side of you, save it until the end of your bio. Let your audience know about you as a professional before they enter your personal life.
Remember that the first time an audience reads about you, they are interested in knowing the kind of person you are and the services you offer. Your hobbies or interests play no role in their life and should be kept out of the topic for later use.
Add your hobbies and interests towards the end where the audience can choose to read on further about your personal preferences.
All the information stating the places you’ve been to or the medals you’ve won in your favorite sport need to be placed in this section as well. Your favorite food and music can be included here as well.
While explaining your personal story, wit and humor can go a long way in engaging and bringing smiles to your audience. Don’t just narrate the story like a scriptwriter, instead describe the experiences and emotions you felt during that time. Let your audience know what you experienced and how far you’ve come in your personal journey.
If you’re still looking for more information to brain storm your ideal profile format, Courtney Burback has compiled useful tips in this video to write the perfect biography.
COMMON ERRORS COMMITTED WHILE WRITING A PROFESSIONAL BIO TEMPLATE
Not maintaining an up-to-date bio page
Personalize your bio template with a recently taken snapshot of yourself. Anyone glancing at your profile is bound to wonder the kind of person you are, and a photo can immediately lay rest to these doubts.
Always upload a recent photo of yourself every year to keep things fresh and updated. Changing your photos can also show your high level of activity and enthusiasm in updating your bio template.
One of the biggest blunders that professional individuals tend to make is to not update their information over a period. Let’s say you’ve not updated your bio template in 2 years, your readers access information that is outdated and your most recent achievements aren’t displayed for building your brand image.
Hence, maintain a schedule that updates your latest information and update it every 4-6 months.
Not Demonstrating Services and Backing their Claims
In the olden days, a merchant would demonstrate his services by publicly advertising his wares and attracting a group of people in no time. When people begin to see his services or wares and have a full understanding, they throng to buy. In the modern times, selling your services on the street is a little archaic — the modern professional backs his tall claims by directing his audience to his portfolio or website.
Include your website or portfolio as a backlink to your bio, this will redirect your audience to all your previous work and give them a good understanding of your experience in your field. Don’t promise things you can’t deliver on, instead provide links for your audience to judge your work by themselves and let them find out that you’re the real deal.
Another authentic way to ensure you bio template reflects on your accomplishments especially if you’re a company is to add client testimonials. If you’ve worked with a client, politely request feedback or a video review of your work.
In the initial phase, your audience would be wary after reading your profile and may not be fully convinced to trust you as a professional. Testimonials act to prove your trustworthiness and showcase your efforts through positive reviews.
Losing Consistency
The formula for writing exceptional bio templates is to first understand what it’s you want on your template and shortening it as much as possible.
Here’s an example —
“Alex Myers is a marketing agent and he likes to read books and go hiking during his leisure time. Alex Myers is also a professional photographer who likes to take photos of birds and wildlife.”
The following template is extremely long and is bound to cause your reader to lose focus on what Alex Myers really is. A great way to shorten the content would be —
“Alex Myers is a marketing agent and a professional wildlife photographer who enjoys reading and hiking”.
There, the content is now simple and shortened without having to repeat clutter words that add no information or value. The reader now completely understands what Alex Myers does for a living and his hobbies in a single sentence.
Simplify your sentences, your audience can absorb information better when you maintain a consistent profile throughout.
No Spellchecks or Proofreading
The biggest downfall of many professional bio pages is due to the sheer number of grammatical mistakes and the careless attitude of not editing them. Aim to be a perfectionist, minimize your written mistakes. You can’t expect your audience to take you seriously when you can’t phrase a sentence properly.
Use the right tense — if it’s an incident that has already occurred, utilize the past tense, if you are talking about your current situation, use words describing present tense and if you’re talking about a future goal, speak in the future tense. Many professionals tend to jumble up simple tenses and end up confusing their readers. This is an easy way to lose your audience.
Write down your first draft and turn off any editing software that might interfere with your work. This step is crucial to put down all the planned information from your mind to paper. Once you’ve finished your first draft, begin with the editing process and refine your content.
Proofread it over two or three times and consistently eliminate words that add no value whatsoever. The shorter you can condense your content, the crispier your profile bio will look to the reader.
TIPS ON WRITING A PROFESSIONAL BIO TEMPLATE
Utilize the “third person perspective” while writing your bio
Writing in a third person’s perspective, allows you to introduce your name to the audience rather than simply stating “I”. Also, in terms of search engine indexing, the more you use your full name, the easier your content is displayed on the internet for your followers to reach you.
By speaking in the third person in your bio, you eliminate any copyright infringement as the owner of the profile is aptly described.
The third person style ensures you are accessible and your content isn’t about bragging rights and is more to do with the kind of person you are. An added benefit of writing your profile in the third person is, if your audience decides to promote you or your content on social media — your new readers will immediately know it’s you by your full name through your introduction.
An important rule is to start your profile with your Full Name, this immediately makes it clear who you are right from the get-go.
Long or Short Bio: What is the Ideal Bio Template Length?
While there are successful professionals with just a single line of information as their bio template, others choose to include every minor detail and fill up a page. The perfect length depends on the information you are willing to share and the type of bio profile you’re preparing.
A blogger will want to write all the information about himself in under two paragraphs or less. The audience won’t have enough attention span to last more than 20 seconds scanning a blogger’s personal details. The best place to place your profile would be at the bottom of the article — the audience must first read your article before they decide if you’re good enough to learn about you.
However, if you are a company, your audience needs specific information to judge whether you are trustworthy to do business with and hence, you might need to set up an “About Us” page and list all your achievements in full detail.
Similarly, if you run a social media page, it’s important to provide as much information as you can to ensure your audience fully understand you as a business before they buy your services.
Keep it simple, and be yourself
While it’s exciting to emulate people you adore and follow, it’s important to maintain your own identity. Never utilize someone else’s style and always aim to create your own personalized way of writing.
After all, your audience can better relate to you when you can be yourself. Since your profile is about you, it’s important to maintain a style of communicating whether it’s humorous or strictly professional.
To attain your own personalized style, it’s important to experiment writing your profile in many ways and then reading it out loud in your own voice. If you feel the profile is moving away from the person you are, you can always edit ruthlessly, and construct a bio that’s true to your real-life persona.
Being yourself also allows you to freely convert your thoughts into your own words rather than utilizing another style that you don’t have any experience in.
A SAMPLE PROFESSIONAL TEMPLATE
Here is a simple template for beginners to quickly create a comprehensive bio profile. The template doesn’t have to be followed to the bone. You can add your own variation to it and experiment the way you want.
“[Full Name] is a professional [Your profession] who works with [Your Organization]. [First Name] has achieved success with well-established companies such as [Your Clientelist], to name a few. After spending more than [Expertise] in [Profession], [First Name] understands what drives businesses [list notable skillsets/talents/certifications]. [First Name] holds [Qualification Merits] in [University/College Name and Area of Study].
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Here’s how the sample template Looks once it has been filled with the necessary information.
“Dan Brook is a professional digital marketer who creates and promotes digital content at Solaris Digital. Dan has achieved success with well-established companies such as Goldman Sachs, The Body Shop, Nintendo, BBC, Newsweek, and Microsoft, to name a few. After spending more than 12 years in Digital Marketing with various enterprises, Dan understands what drives businesses and how to spread brand awareness efficiently for optimum product promotion. He utilizes a brand marketing plan while working closely with clients and ensuring all work-in-progress is clarified. Dan utilizes SEO tools to rank high in search engine indexing and performs various ad-marketing campaigns to generate organic traffic back to your site. Dan holds a Master’s Degree in MBA from John Hopkins University in Baltimore. He has several digital marketing certifications including AMA Certified Professional Marketer, DMA certification, Google AdWords certification, and a Hootsuite certification.”
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You should aim to improvise and provide your own unique story retelling your experiences. It’s important to introduce yourself in a positive way and to mention your talents in a conversation with the reader.
Popular youtuber Evan Carmichael offers a piece of his mind on how to write an effective profile bio exclusively for companies to attract new talent in this video guide.
THE BOTTOM LINE
A professional bio should constantly be updated and with time, you get to figure out what works and what doesn’t. With every new project that you complete, your profile bio will evolve along with you.
Don’t forget to add your most recent company and client that you’ve worked with. Your profile bio is meant to add a general framework of information about your business and your personal life. Don’t include meaningless information.
Remember to always edit, refine, and improvise your profile frequently. A professional bio is not a blog so have a tighter leash on your grammatical errors and word usage.
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