Writing a bio: 3 tips for wrangling your bio

A few weeks ago, I was honored to be on another podcast. I have had fun being a guest this past year. The podcast host asked for a bio.

I have had bios, but they weren’t that great. This is mostly because I rarely take the time to make them decent, so this time, I thought I would step back and try to make it better.

I’m not saying it was great, but it was definitely better than what I had before. 

This little task got me thinking. I know many people aren’t fond of talking glowingly about themselves. We aren’t peacocks and have no interest in showing off.

However… We have to create bios often, and they need to be intriguing to people who might listen to what we have to say.

Therefore, I decided to create a little primer that you can use the next time you need to create a bio. Today, we are going to look at 3 tips to help you build your bio to use almost anywhere online.

Are you ready? 

Step One: Gather that information

As with any writing project, you have to gather all the info. So grab that CV, that resume, and also get the info from your LinkedIn profile. 

We are going professionally here.

The types of information you need include career highlights, your education and various special projects that show your expertise and skills. Don’t forget any certifications you have earned along the way.

You may not use everything you gather, but get them, so you have them ready. 

Finally, gather any interesting information about you. This can be hard because you may do something that you don’t think is interesting. Your best clue that it is interesting is when someone has said, “hey, that’s interesting.” 

It can be, of course, hobbies you have, causes you believe in, things you volunteer for, and something you pay attention to such as various sports (e.g. Cricket, Formula 1, Pro Wrestling, Football, etc.) 

Name, Title/Role, Company

Career Highlights – List all your career accomplishments. These may include notable past roles, jobs, companies you worked for, etc.

Education & Certifications – List your professional education and any certifications you have completed. 

Special Projects – Have you been involved with any special projects outside your normal job tasks? These are skills! 

Interesting info – Hobbies, passion projects, volunteering jobs, sports and other things you love. Don’t forget families and pets! 

Goals and Mission – Do you have a mission for your career? Do you have goals? These are elements of your bio you should include. Here is an example from Colleen Gratzer:

“My mission is to help designers gain confidence, clarity and a competitive edge over other designers.” Colleen Gratzer.

These six areas of information will form the basis for your bio.

Three types of bios

In my opinion, there are three types of bios to write professionally: Short, Medium, and Long.

Short bio

The short bio is a bio you use in social media such as X, LinkedIn, your website author bio, and other social media areas.

These types of bios are very short, mostly because the social media platforms limit them.

They tend to be somewhere around 75-150 words. There isn’t much room to add everything, and it depends on what platform you are posting it to determine what you include.

For example, on X (Twitter), if you have a professional presence, you may include something briefly about what you do and then an interesting tidbit.

Medium bio

A medium bio is longer. They are ideal for various professional settings, such as being on a podcast, speaker page (WordCamps, etc.) and there is even a place on your LinkedIn profile that a medium bio makes sense.

A medium length bio allows you to expand on things a bit and add more information. These types of bios are around 150-300 words. 

Long bio

I sometimes call the Long Bio a memoir. It isn’t a memoir like writing a book, but it is a much longer layout of your career. It may expand anywhere from 300 to 500 words. 

A long bio is a great place to create a professional career origin story. You really get a chance to craft this type of bio in a longer narrative form.

See Bio Lengths, Perplexity

Can I use AI (GenAI)?

The final stage is what I want to call execution. Here is where you take the information you have gathered and you execute, creating and editing the bio.

And yes, you can use AI (GenAI) to do so if you aren’t comfortable writing it yourself. A tool like ChatGPT or Gemini can take you out of the writing process and allow it to be more objective.

Now, before you finish and put your bio online, make sure you edit. Anything done by tools like ChatGPT and Gemini needs a “human feedback loop” as I learned from Britney Muller.

Your prompts are much better when you have the info you need at your fingerprints. Something I’ve learned about prompts along the way is that they are created with “give and take” with the tool. 

Rarely is a prompt perfect and often we have to continue to give our prompt more instructions and refine them.

My advice is to start with a long bio. Once you have it where you want, then ask your Generative AI tool to create the shorter ones.

Example of a bio prompt (fill in your information):

Create a long bio that is at least 400-500 words (amount you want) with a professional yet casual (alternative humorous or professional formal) tone. Here is the pertinent information that I want to include:

Name: Todd E Jones
Title: copywriter
Company: Copyflight Media
Highlights:
Education & Certifications: 
Special Projects & Skills: 
Social Proof include: 
My goals and mission include: 

 Wrapping it up

Using all the information you have gathered, you should be able to build your bio. Start with a longer one, more than 500 words. From there, you can create shorter ones. 

There are several bio templates you can find online to help fill in the information. Additionally, use one of the GenAI resources, such as ChatGPT, to help build your bio.

Don’t forget to edit your bio. Often you end up with an unfinished and unpolished product. GenAI tend to be overly formal or overly casual. Get an extra set of eyes to validate.

Go forth and create your bio!

I have included a PDF workbook that you can access. To access the workbook, join the discussion at either our Discord Serve (Effective Writing Channel) or at the MainWP Users Facebook Group. The Workbook will be there to download for free. 

Join us!