how to write a bio

In BiographyBiography.com writing a biography is a fast and easy process. The following are some suggestions and steps you might like to follow:

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Decide whom you want to write about, your parents, grandparents, great grand parents, ancestors, other relatives, friends, idols, heroes, yourself or any other special person.
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Collect as much information as you possibly can, from his or her birth date to the most relevant facts of his or her life through letters, journals, newspaper clippings, pictures, and most importantly, through conversations with elder family members (it would be a good idea to take notes or record conversations). .
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Organize your thoughts before starting to write, think of that part of the person’s life you would like to highlight. Some useful questions can be: who?, what?, where?, why? and how?
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Other questions to ask would be: what makes this person so special and interesting? How can he or she be best described? Which were the events that marked or changed his or her life? In what way was he or she an influence to family, society or professionally?
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When writing about somebody else, describe his or her appearance, habits, features and way of talking. If you do not remember a name, use replacements such as: friend, mate or boss.
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Edit the biography; read it aloud to feel of the rhythm and the sound of it, it will also help you notice if you are repeating information.


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Briefly highlight your main achievements
The key words here are "briefly" and "achievements". The purpose of a professional bio is to demonstrate your professional credibility. Unlike a resume (which should include your complete career history), a professional bio only needs to cover the "high points" of your career.

Here's another way to think about it: your professional bio is a little advertisement for you or your business. And as you know, the best advertisements are memorable because they highlight the best features with very few words.

Ideally, your professional bio will address what I call the “four reader questions”. These are the four questions that readers want answered in your professional bio:

1) who you are...
2) your expertise and how it addresses...
3) their problem or goal, and how they can...
4) contact you

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Write in the third person

What this means is that you write your professional bio as though someone else is talking about you. So instead of writing "I am" and "I graduated", you would write "Jane Smith is" and "She graduated".

first names are friendly and informal, while last names are more conservative and formal

Personal information is optional

In our bio templates, we include a paragraph where you can mention personal information such as where you're from, who you live with, and what you like doing in your spare time. This is completely optional.

Some people say that personal information is not relevant in a professional bio, because it has nothing to do with the job. That may be true, but I find that most readers like getting a sense of who you are outside of your professional role. And that brings us to point #5:

Don't be bland - let your personality show

Since your professional bio is an advertisement for you, make it reflect the real you. If you're a down-to-earth person, use unpretentious language. If you have a particular passion, let the reader know. If you love to joke around, include some humor in your bio (but be careful, humor can be tricky).

If you decide to write a longer bio

As mentioned in point #1, when writing a professional bio for your website you can make it a little longer if you wish. The bio templates that we sell give you an option of using either the short bio template, or the long bio template that elaborates on the information in the short bio.

If you choose to write a longer bio, make sure you break it into short paragraphs (no more than three sentences in each paragraph). Studies show that when people are faced with a large block of text (especially on a computer screen), they just scan over it quickly.

By making your paragraphs nice and short, you'll increase the likelihood that people will actually read your bio. And that's what you want, right?