Your blog is your own, and it exudes your personality and branding throughout. Your About page is packed full of information about you, but that's lengthy and really only relevant to people who want to know more about who you are. There's another, more important bio on your blog, though, and that's the bio you attach to the end of posts. It's likely the same bio you use on other sites, too, when you guest post or buy sponsored posts on their blogs.
The question is, how do you write this bio? It can be surprisingly difficult to know what to add and what not to add to your bio box, especially without letting it run over the usually-accepted character limits such bios have.The first thing to keep in mind is that your short bio is exactly that: short.
In general, you want to keep this bio under 100 words; this is the cutoff for many sites you might contribute to, and it's often the character limit for longer bios on social media sites and profile aggregators. You're going to need to have some short bio to share in these locations, so aiming for 100 words is a good place to start.Some sites give you even less room (Twitter, for example), but others may give you more.
Relevance is hugely important here. Every detail you include in your bio should be relevant, with at most one exception. That one exception exists to help humanize you and show others that you're a real person, not just a face in the marketing. For example, a stereotypical sentence might be something like, "When he's not working on his next business idea, he's out enjoying nature in his kayak."
Some people object to including anything "off-topic" in your bio. I feel that it's better to include one detail to humanize you, even if it's a little generic. You can usually work it into another sentence so it only takes up 5-10 words, so it's not going to ruin your bio to include it. On the other hand, it's not going to ruin you if you leave it out or if you don't have any real hobbies you'd want to share, so that's not 100% essential.
Keyword research rears its head once again.
The trick to including a keyword or two in your bio is that, unlike every other use of a keyword in your marketing, the keywords you pick here should be high-level, topical keywords. If you run a snowboard shop, this keyword is something simple like "snowboarding," not some long-tail keyword about a specific snowboard technique.
The goal here is simply to build an association between your name and your primary topic. You just want your name tied to it, in the eyes of Google and its bots, in the mental word cloud associations of the people who read your content, and anyone who sees you and your content in passing. You aren't going to rank #1 for your keyword through this association alone, but you're in a good position to keep capitalizing on it through your content in other ways.
Bios generally have links in them, and your short bio is no different. Remember that this bio will be in use throughout your site, but you can also use it in other locations too, and pick your links with that in mind.
In general, the best links to include are to profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or another primary social media site. It depends on the networks you use and which ones you would want to promote. Make sure you do actually use the profiles you mention; you don't want people to try to reach out to you through one of those links only to be ignored because you never check it.
You can take a shortcut here if you have the same username everywhere. In these cases, you can just use a sentence like "You can find him on pretty much any social network as @Username" and link that to your primary social network.
If you use your bio in different locations, you can customize this link to the network the audience most likely prefers or remove links when they're not relevant. For example, if you cross-post your content on LinkedIn, you don't want your bio to say, "you can find him on LinkedIn" since the user is already there.
Why two links? Generally, you're only given up to three links in a bio on guest post sites, so it's a good habit to be in. In cases where you can include as many links as you like, you can always add more. If you're tasked with picking just one link, it'll be your website instead, usually. On your own site, two is a good number to include.Your bio will also mention your blog and your brand, and that's always an opportunity for a link whenever you use this bio on sites other than your own. Obviously, if you're writing the bio for your own site, you don't need to include the link since the user is already on your site. In those cases, you can link a sister site, an alternative profile (like a YouTube link or a Google Business Profile, something people might find useful), or whatever you prefer.
An alternative to just linking to your homepage is to link to a piece of flagship content. Maybe you wrote a massive ultimate guide to your industry as a pillar. Maybe you produced an eBook you're promoting, or you're running a course on Masterclass or Coursera. Maybe you're heavily promoting a regular webinar series. These are all good options for linking to on your site and can be useful on other sites if they don't mind. Remember, of course, that any requirements for your bio from the sites you're publishing on can trump anything you want to add in.
Why only one website link? You want to have one high-priority link anywhere your bio is published. When guest posting on other websites, or when a post is shared or re-blogged, links draw editorial scrutiny. Most publishers only allow one link (possibly even do-followed), so it needs to be worthwhile and relevant to your audience.
It's one thing to say you're the owner of the blog a reader is on, but why should that matter to them? Anyone can just go on the internet and build a website; it's not even particularly hard these days. With templates, stock images, AI generators, and a million tutorials, you can have a site up and running in a few hours.
The question is, why should anyone trust you? Not just as a person writing about a topic but as an authority in your space. Even Google cares about this these days; their E-A-T algorithm looks at the Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness of you and your content. If you lack that authoritativeness and trustworthiness, you're going to find it much harder to grow.
What kind of accolades should you pick? Something relevant. Maybe you were listed as a top business by Forbes. Maybe you won an industry award. Maybe you published a book or a course that has sold X thousands of copies, where X is an impressive number.
It matters less what the accolades are and more that they're relevant. A content marketer might brag about writing a flagship piece of content with thousands of links. A snowboarder might talk about their competition wins. It all comes down to context and reasons for why your audience should trust you.
Now here's a real contentious issue: should you write in first person or third person? There's actually a lot of argument and discussion over this one.
Truthfully, it doesn't really matter as long as it matches the tone of your brand.
For example, in my bio, I write in third person, as if some anonymous biographer created a five-sentence description of who I am. Third-person viewpoint in your bio gives you a bit of an air of authority, as if you're important enough that someone else is writing about you rather than you writing your own bio.
The tricky part is coming off as impartial and authentic while still being promotional and self-descriptive. It's a tough line to walk, and not everyone pulls it off.
Third person is also less personal than first person, which works for some kinds of business and in areas where you're trying to position yourself as an authority and thought leader. On the other hand, it doesn't work as well for certain niches.
For example, a food blog, travel blog, or DIY blog might focus on first-person writing for the bio. That's because these kinds of blogs rely less on you being some much-vaunted authority and more about you being a personality that your audience can project parasocial feelings of friendship upon. By being more personal and casual with your bio, you connect more with the people who read that bio; if that connection is what you seek, a first-person bio can be the better option.
To be honest, you can pick whichever version you want or even change it up with split testing across different guest posts or posts on your site and see which ones get the most interaction and engagement. It varies by brand and author which will work best, so it's difficult to use a definitive answer. Just reflect your brand in your style, and you're generally good to go.
One of the "don'ts" of writing your short bio is using firm statistics or information that is frequently subject to change.
For example, rather than saying, "He has 15,000 followers on Twitter," you might want to say, "He has a growing audience on Twitter," so it's more genericized and future-proof. Though, a better option would be to simply not mention your Twitter audience at all unless it's highly relevant for some reason.
This also goes for things like date-relevant information, statistics, and counts of any data that changes regularly. You don't want to have to go in and edit your bio every two weeks, right? The exception to this is when, on your site, you can integrate a widget that pulls the data directly, so it's automatically up to date.
One of the biggest mistakes people make in their bio is making it all about themselves. While, yes, your short bio is a small box of information about you, that's not why people read it. Your readers don't really care about your families or your hobbies; they care about what value you bring to them. What source of altruism do you have?
Instead of "He spends his free time reading and hiking the mountains," write something like "He spends his days helping others learn to produce better content." There's an implicit promise here to the reader that they can get that value from you when they read your content, participate in your communities, and comment on your site.
While writing your short bio seems like a big decision, it's really not. Very few people are going to memorize your bio or really even read it. It's there just as much for the search robots as it is for your readers.
That means you're never set in stone. You want a good, tested bio for when you publish on other sites – since that version is going to be set when it's published, and you might not be able to change it – but for your own site? You can change that every day if you want. In fact, testing variations is part of how you progress toward an optimal bio.
And, of course, your bio is only valuable if it's attached to high-quality content. Otherwise, no one will read enough of it to reach your bio in the first place. So why not head on over to my job board and take a look at the professional writers looking for work, and post your own jobs to hire them for your blog? You may be surprised at how much value a good freelance writer can bring to the table for you.
Ultimate Guide: How Blogging Helps Drive Leads and Sales
The Ultimate Guide to Buying Articles and Website Content
[Guide] How to Find and Post Online Editing Jobs in 2022
[Guide] How to Hire Somebody to Write Your Email Newsletter
[Guide] How to Outsource Your Content Writing Successfully
The Ultimate List of High Paying Freelance Writing Niches
How to Identify and Choose the Best Author Writing Style
[Guide] How to Hire a Writer to Ghostwrite Your Book for You
[Guide] How to Write the Best Freelance Writer Job Description
[Guide] What Does a Marketing Team Structure Look Like?
We encourage you to share this article on Twitter and Facebook. Just click those two links - you'll see why.
It's important to share the news to spread the truth. Most people won't.
