3 Tips to Improve Your Professional Biography + This Month's Social Content Prompts
Bios can set you apart from the crowd. Here's how to win at this important area of your business!
Embarrassing confession - I’m a bio junkie. Seriously. When I come across someone new or want to get more familiar with someone I’ve been following, I go straight to the Instagram bio and then directly to the website. While I love the window Instagram provides into someone’s perspective, I often find that I want to know more - Why do they do this work? Where did they get their education? What other work have they done that I can dive into? Do they have other hobbies, a family, etc.?
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The most frustrating thing to me is going to someone’s website and discovering that the bio barely answers those questions. I can only imagine how potential clients or customers feel when they read those and walk away without any more insight into the practitioner’s background and story.
In this age of the internet where anyone can portray themselves as anything, one way we can do to differentiate ourselves from others is to have a really great bio that answers the curious questions.
In the last decade, I’ve seen a lot of bios. It’s a perk that comes with collaborating with well over 100 other professionals in different industries (another story for another day…) and some side writing. Here’s what I’ve learned: Writing a quality bio is one of those skills that very few solopreneurs get down.
That may sound intimidating, but it really isn’t! Writing a great bio - or even tweaking an existing bio - is really simple. Today, I want to share a few, straightforward tips to help you make your bio amazing:
Always write in third person. This is the most common issue that I’ve seen over the years when it comes to professional bios. First-person may be appropriate for connecting with Instagram followers, but your professional bio should read like an author bio on the back of a book. If you aren’t sure of what I mean, go pick up a few books and reach the author bio.
Examples:
(First Person) I am the host of the Baby Dust Fertility Podcast.
(Third Person) Hannah is the host of the Baby Dust Fertility Podcast.For the long bio: Tell your story and then tell it again. Your long bio should start with an overview of who you are as a professional, transition into your personal journey, and end with a few more details about you. This gives anyone who comes to your website an opportunity to get to know your experience and connect with where you’ve been.
Have different versions of your bio for different situations. You need lots of different versions of your bio ~ the one for your website, the one for when you appear on a podcast, the one for your Instagram bio, the one for the short blurb at the bottom of your blog… Each version of your bio should convey the most important facts about you in a more concise manner. (We work through this in my Perfect Bio worksheets! Check it out here)
My personal bio needs to be updated. It’s 5 years old and things have changed a lot since I originally wrote it. So, let this be your reminder that you do need to revisit your bio periodically! I plan to revise it again during or after my upcoming maternity leave.
3 Holiday-Themed Social Media Prompts + 2 Engagement/Growth Challenges
3 Social Media Prompts
What are the biggest struggles your ideal client is facing over the holidays? - Ask in your stories (FB & IG) or Facebook Group and take notes on the topics your followers are submitting!
Give a short answer reply in your stories (Yay! Immediate content) - Don’t worry about repeating yourself in the future! Only a fraction of your followers will see this and you can go more in depth in another post.
Prep a carousel of slides to answer the question - If it’s an in-depth question, break it down into bite-sized pieces. Remember, you get your followers’ attention for 15-30 seconds. Keep it short, sweet, and simple!
Plan a reel with a 1-2 sentence statement talking about the topic - Either prep the video in canva or just save the text in a note on your phone to overlay over a video you shoot.
Create a gift guide (or series of gift ideas) - Think about the items and services that could be really beneficial to your audience and put together a set of posts to share what they are, why they need them, and where to find them.
Be sure to use your affiliate links and coupons!
Make a master list of gift ideas and link to it in your bio!
Post about it regularly so your community knows the list is there.
Share an inside look into your Thanksgiving prep, traditions, and celebrations - Connect with your community! Did you buy a new wreath? Are you hosting Thanksgiving this year? Are you traveling? Give your audience an inside peek into what you are up to. Remember ~ showing up is better than trying to be perfect.
Engagement/Growth Challenge
Collaborate with someone in your industry! Pick someone you know and/or admire and plan a collab. New to collabs? Try putting together a post carousel or do a live video together.
Hashtag research - hashtags are an amazing way to make a post evergreen! I still have traction on specific posts simply because they were well categorized with hashtags.
Take 15 minutes to explore hashtags and figure out which ones are the most popular for your industry.
Make a secondary list of smaller hashtags that are less popular, but still active, that you can start contributing to regularly.
Look at some of your competitor accounts (especially the big ones) and identify the hashtags they are using to promote their work.