This is part three of a seven-part series on bio writing for every level professional.

Now, to answer the question I can anticipate you asking, “How can you write a bio about yourself when there is very little to say?”

First, you have to be clear about your direction, what you offer, and whom you offer your services to. Without this information, you can’t really write a new bio, an old bio, or any bio.

Get very clear about what service you provide, how your provide it, and to whom.

Sometimes when folks answer these questions, they may realize that they were headed in the wrong direction with their new career choice because these three things don’t really click with who they are and what they stand for.

We are living in the age of excessive online baloney. What this means is that there is a lot of misinformation about going into business for yourself out there.

Don’t get mixed up in get-rich-quick schemes. Strive to have a legitimate career with actual skills you can grow and hone. If someone is offering shortcuts or secrets or any of the other hoo-haw coming into our inboxes these days, think twice.

And don’t write a fantasy bio. Ground your bio in reality even if you are just getting started heading in a new direction. I bet when you do, you will discover that you have legitimate skills to share with the world. And I bet you will also find that you are looking forward to gaining and using even more skills so you can make your bio even stronger.

If you write your bio in a new direction you think you want to go in and you feel kind of “meh” afterwards, then maybe that’s not your next best direction.

Maybe you were just going to go that way because it sounded good in theory or you thought people would expect that direction from you. Don’t go in the expected direction. Don’t go in a theoretical direction. Go in the direction that makes your heart sing.

If you are going to go in brand new direction, you may as well go for it, and make it a direction that will  make you happy every day. And then your bio will grow stronger organically and authentically.

Need more help making a new or old direction sound like an engaging bio? I can help with my new Build A Better Bio video course. It only takes 30 minutes to take it and you’ll also get six downloadable worksheets.

Learn more about bio writing in my latest online video course, Build A Better Bio, which can train you to write the three most important types of bio you will need in an online career in just 30 minutes. Learn more here.

~ Photo By Ann Althouse

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Come on by JaneFriedman.com today to talk about bio writing!

I wrote a piece for Jane Friedman’s blog today about bio writing for online professionals.

After all, writers are not the only pros who need compelling bios, any professional working online today needs engaging bios, as well.

And even though the name of my new course is Build A Better Bio, we all actually need multiple types and lengths of bios. So I’ve outlined the basics over at Jane’s blog today.

Training writers is my specialty, so come on by and bring your questions and comments about bio writing with you.

I’m happy to help if I can!

Here’s how it begins…

Have you ever had someone ask for your bio, and you found yourself dashing one off quickly and emailing it over?

You probably know that’s not the most thoughtful approach, but bios aren’t the easiest things to write. So we put off writing them as long as we can. A strongly written bio often requires taking an inventory, measuring the impact of past efforts and accomplishments, reviewing feedback and testimonials about your efforts, and compressing professional history into witty and engaging prose. And then, once you’ve drafted a great one, it tends to date quickly if you’re an active writer. READ MORE

Monthly challenges with Christina Katz will commence on Tuesday, March 3rd, rather than Monday March 2nd.

There is a bunch of administration required on my end to launch my monthly challenges, depending on how many types of challenges folks sign up for.

And this month, folks just happened to sign up for a wide variety of challenges. I was away from my desk all day Sunday, so I did not have a chance to get the challenges all lined up for midnight delivery.

So I’m going to ask for one grace day, to get everything off to a solid start. Since the system can be finicky, and if I don’t get everything set up correctly, it often creates headaches for everyone, especially me.

Thank you for giving me an extra 24 hours, if you have already signed up.

As for anyone who has not signed up yet, you may have until 9 pm on March 2nd to sign up for this round of challenges as follows:

Receive 21 excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days. Click on the badge to learn more and register:

 Receive 21 more excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days:

 Receive 21 more excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days:

Anyone who is looking to become a more facile and joyful parenting article writer should take my Article Writing Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become a more thoughtful and skillful parenting essay writer should take my Essay Writing Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become a more thoughtful rewriter and polisher of her own words should take my Grammar & Punctuation Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become more brave about selling work should sign up for my Sell Your Writing Challenge.

Taking this article writing challenge has given me a bank of article outlines to begin the new year and a way to keep on creating more and more when I get to the end of my current list. I highly recommend it for the writer dry of ideas, needing some sort of method to keep her inventory supplied, or just starting out and learning how to create ideas for herself. The best $20 I’ve spent to further my career.  ~ C. Alexander

During 21 Moments I discovered ideas for many intriguing subjects I wanted to write about that had not occurred to me prior.​ An excellent kickstarter to writing for pleasure as well as potential profit.  ~ M. Clair

Once again Christina has aimed her arrow and hit the bull’s-eye with a useful daily challenge. The Grammar & Punctuation challenge helped me efficiently revise current article drafts, keep an eye on tricky punctuation mistakes I shouldn’t be making, and hone my word choice and sentence structure. Writers can expect this challenge to be an effective continuing education tool to help them improve their overall writing.  ~ R. Franz

I like taking online writing classes or workshops, but by far I got the most writing out of 21 Moments. It really clicked with me, that a moment is just a segment of time. Since I don’t have a lot of time due to my day job and other commitments, doing the moments really fit into my schedule.  ~ J. Huspek

This is part two of a seven-part series on bio writing for every level professional.

One of the most challenging types of bios to write, is the bio for the career you haven’t started yet. This is why, when folks ask, “Should I write the bio for my old career or my new career?” I always suggest writing a bio for the old career.

First of all, you have more to say about your old career.

Secondly, working with your old material will make you a better bio writer in general, so you will be more likely to do a good job on all your future bios, once you have worked on a current bio where there is actually a lot of bio material to condense.

So, if you have a choice, practice bio writing about your old career, not your brand-spanking new one.

If for no other reason, so you can learn to become a better bio writer, and then you’ll be better prepared to write your next bio.

Happy bio writing!

Learn more about bio writing in my latest online video course, Build A Better Bio, which can train you to write the three most important types of bio you will need in an online career in just 30 minutes. Learn more here.

This is part one of a seven-part series on bio writing for every level professional.

The first tip is this: you need to know what you offer the world in a nutshell, and you need to be able to describe what you offer clearly and concisely in the first few sentences of your bio.

Don’t bury the lead. Don’t think the reader is going to stick around to read a long bio and figure out what you are all about after several paragraphs of blah, blah, blah.

Readers want the topic sentence right up front.

The challenge for you as the writer is: how do I summarize all of this concisely?

I know the task seems daunting. But the answer is simple if you consider THE IMPACT YOUR WORK HAS ON THE WORLD.

If you know your impact, you know what you change in the world, and you know, essentially, what you DO.

This information needs to be right up at the top of your bio.

Of course, today’s tip is for folks with a professional track record already. I will address folks without a track record in my next bio writing tip.

Hope this is helpful for you in building a better bio!

Learn more about bio writing in my latest online video course, Build A Better Bio, which can train you to write the three most important types of bio you will need in an online career in just 30 minutes. Learn more here.

~ Photo “tips” by Torbakhopper

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Just because you have a bio does not mean that it is communicating the best of what you offer and how what you offer sets you apart from the crowd.

Another problem happens when you have not taken the time to really think about these details and how much they matter to those reading your bio.

So, the ten million dollar question becomes:

Do you know what you offer?

And the next question is: do you know how what you offer is different from what everyone else offers?

And finally, can you describe in exquisite detail your most current offerings in ways that make it so we can’t resist at least checking them and you out?

Here’s some help. If you include these ten things in your bio, then the answer to all of the above questions will be soon be YES.

Your bio should include:

1. Who you are

2. What you offer

3. When you offer it

4. How frequently you offer it

5. Where you offer it

6. Why you offer it

7. How you offer it

8. How we can get in touch with you

9. How you like to connect with us

10. What we can expect from you next

If your bio is not communicating all of these things, I hope you will check out my latest online course, Build A Better Bio.

All this and more! Please subscribe to The Prosperous Writer Blog and sign up for The Prosperous Writer Newsletter, for exclusive discounts you won’t find elsewhere.

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What Pre-launch Students Are Saying — So Far — About Build A Better Bio!

Just finished all the videos…excellent!  ~ Monica R. on Facebook

Probably the most information-packed course I have seen. All of it is totally relevant and points out that I need to build a better bio! Amazing insight, bringing all the major social media platforms into the discussion. Well done. A real career-changing approach to writing a biography for more successful results.  ~ posted in the course discussion by Heather

Great so far — watched the 1st video yesterday, printed the first 2 worksheets today, will have more time for it Sunday!”  ~ Lisa C. on Twitter

Build A Better Bio is now in launch phase at the price of only $20.

If you missed the pre-launch this time around, please don’t miss it next time. I like to give my closest friends the best deals on my new courses.

But don’t feel badly if you missed the pre-launch, because for the launch phase, I am offering a FREE bio review.

See the class discussion inside the course for details to take advantage of your free bio review.

And don’t miss this time-sensitive offer. You must sign up by midnight on February 28th to claim your bio review.

I don’t plan on offering it again, so this is your only chance outside of a phone consult to work with me on your bio.

Click Here & Go Directly To The Registration Page

While you are here, why not subscribe to my YouTube page, where I have updated the promo video for this course.

Stay tuned for my post tomorrow on questions your bio must answer…

If you feel like folks are not responding to your bio, then that’s not good.

You should actually be hearing from those who encounter your bio for the first time and who are nodding along with what you have to offer because it sounds so much like what they are looking for.

This is accomplished when you get beyond merely describing yourself and get into describing your platform dynamic instead.

Your platform dynamic is how you do what you do that sets you apart. If you are not well-versed in your platform dynamic, then you are probably not able to communicate it in a way that draws people to you.

Your bio should also create what I call the Universal Yes. It should not only present the who, what, when, where, why and how of what you do, it should also create interest in all of those things at the same time.

This sounds like a tall order, but it’s not hard, once you get the hang of it.

Interest drives engagement. Engagement drives interaction. Interaction increases the chance that folks will want to work with you or purchase your offerings.

And of course, I’m talking about authentic engagement with real people, not just attempting to dazzle everyone while you run away and hide. Although your bio can and should communicate your availability, too.

Your bio should read like you are sticking out your hand and saying, “Hello, nice to meet you. Here’s what you can expect from me. And here’s how we should keep connecting.”

You can measure how well you did writing your bio by how folks are responding to it and to you.

If no one is responding, then your bio is not working for you and it needs improvement.

Improving your bio is fun and empowering. You can have fun learning how to write your bio and gain insights that will help you connect and keep connecting with your audience by taking my new Build A Better Bio class.

I hope you can join us!

Photo Credit: handshake II by Alvaro Canivell

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I am always encouraging my students to turn their lemon life experiences into written lemonade. And this is me following my own advice.

I was persecuted and harassed in a huge online community yesterday, and lemme tell you, it was WEIRD.

The person doing the bullying seemed quite fixated on me and was following me around as I moved from group to group, chastising me in a private Facebook message thread that she initiated.

I persistently asked to understand what her issue was with me, and my question was never answered.

The only comment that came close was, “I want you to buy into what I’m trying to do, that’s all.”

Sooo, yeah. Let’s just say chasing me around on social media is not a good way to get me to buy into to WHATEVER you are trying to do. Especially when you fail to communicate to me what that is.

In the end, I could not reconcile with the person, so I left a group she facilitated that I was part of, and reported her to the folks responsible for the larger groups’ existence.

But I did not get away from her before she took some totally uncalled for swipes at me.

Now I am quite clear that I did not deserve to be chased around on social media nor bullied nor called names. It was pretty ugly stuff and borderline absurd, from my point of view.

Afterward, however, I still felt hurt. I had used reason as long as I could, but in retrospect, and to protect myself, I think I should have used instinct sooner.

I should have said simply, “You need to stop.”

And if she did not stop after I said that, then I should have said, “I am leaving this conversation.”

And then I should have reported her, just the same, because even the beginning of the interaction was weird and confusing.

Boundaries are hard sometimes. They are especially hard if your boundaries were messed with when you were younger.

Have you ever needed to say, “Stop,” to someone online and not done so? Or not done so soon enough?

Have you tried to reason with someone online when reason was futile?

Have you ever tried to preserve a relationship when the relationship is clearly not worth preserving?

And now here’s the big question, are you negatively obsessed with another person’s behavior? Do you follow them or monitor them just to keep tabs on how they behave? (Please say, no. Cause it’s not healthy, people.)

One thing is certain, folks have some pretty crazy ideas about what constitutes appropriate online behavior.

What can we do about it as individuals?

I say, take care of yourself first, especially if you have been legitimately hurt. And then speak up about the offense. Because no one is helped if we all keep silent.

And if you were bullied than there is a good chance someone else is being or is going to be bullied, as well.

I would like to hear stories, not in detail about the harassment because that would go on and on, wouldn’t it? There is just SO MUCH of this online.

Instead, I’d like to hear stories from folks who successfully set boundaries, walked away and reported offenses. Or whatever else you did that created a positive impact in a negative situation from your point of view.

I think we all need help in this regard and sharing empowering success stories can be helpful. It’s good for all of us.

That’s my lemons into lemonade. Thanks in advance for sharing your strength if you have something inspiring to share!

~ Photo credit: Finger Wag by Lara604

I am a veteran journalist, author and coach with over a decade and a half of experience and a wealth of techniques to share. I am focused on making the world a saner, more expressive place. I help folks become more creative for personal enjoyment, professional development and transformational growth. Whether you are a professional creative or hope to become one some day, I can help you embrace your personal strengths, explore your creative possibilities, and evolve incrementally into your most inspiring self. If you are ready to achieve creative consistency in your life and career, email me about monthly coaching calls. To learn more about increasing your creative confidence, please check out my online school. Stay tuned for ways to save money by becoming a Beta User for my next new course by subscribing to The Prosperous Creative. And don’t forget to get these blog posts delivered to your inbox, so you never miss a post. If you appreciate my work—school, products, blog and social media posts—you are welcome to make a contribution of any size at any time. Thank you for your support!