The author bio that you write is very important to your blogging career. You blog to get recognized, right? Your author bio plays an important role in determining your recognition. There are various styles and ways in which you can write your author bio. It should convey a clear idea about who you are as a person in order to connect well with your readers. You don’t have much space to write and so you will have to condense it and keep only what is critically important to share with the readers. Besides this, you should also keep it interesting.
Some people lose the balance here and focus more on sounding interesting rather than sounding relevant. And, often they end up with a funny author bio which makes the reader want to comment ‘ROFL’. There are no set of rules on how your author bio should be. What you choose to include and what you don’t purely depends on your personal interests. However, there are certain things you don’t have to include so that you don’t end up writing a poor bio. Read on to learn how not to write an author bio.
Let’s take for example, the following lines.
“When she’s not at her desk writing, you can find her in her room reading books, in front of the mirror trying to perfect her winged eyeliner, or crouched on the floor, giving her dog, Roco, a belly rub.”
This is an excerpt from a real author bio. The fact that the author reads books shows her in good light. The latter part is not bad, however, this precious space could have been used to show some of the facts about her that are relevant to the niche she writes for rather than informing the readers about her passion for eye makeup and her love for her pet.
Do not fill up space with irrelevant details:
There is no harm in including facts about personal life. In fact, deviating a little is important to make it sound interesting. However, the space we are allowed for author bio is very little and we have to show the professional self first and the rest is always secondary.
Do not reveal everything about your professional life:
This sub-header might seem like a contradiction of the previous idea. However, it is not. You will have to reveal your professional self. Some take it to the extent of telling everything about their past. I have read author bios talking about the failures the author faced in the past in a particular field and why he changed his profession. Disclosing such information will only take up space and cannot help reveal the relevant facts that your readers would want to know.
Do not give place to sarcasm:
Some authors try to sound cool and end up with an author bio that shows them as a sarcastic and arrogant person. This cannot help you get the right attention you are looking for. Always sound polite. There are a lot of differences between sounding cool and sounding arrogant. Use the right words and you’re good to go.
After writing your bio, circulate it to a bunch of friends who you think will give honest opinions and ask them to review it. You will get valuable feedback from people who have known you for quite some time and you can make the necessary changes before using it on your website or blog.
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