If you introduced yourself to someone at a party, how would you do it? How do you give someone you are just meeting an insight into you?
In this era of social networking, something that continually amazes me on Twitter is the way in which some people use their 160 character bio.
One of the biggest trends that I see amongst users is filling it with terms that relate to their niche, without any kind of “I offer”, or “I’m interested in” to preface it. Particularly in my niche I see 160 characters of Social Media, SEO, Affiliate Marketing – all the keywords to their business, jammed in there. It’s a practice akin to keyword stuffing in SEO. Then on the other end of the spectrum are those users who decide cryptic is the way to go, and only use a few words. Then, there are those that just don’t put anything. A
I suppose there is no right or wrong way to do it, but when you consider that this is a a key element of your profile that real people assess when deciding to follow you (and I specify real as opposed to those who automate and follow anyone and everyone), it pays to give it some consideration.
Firstly, I’m not a fan of the keyword laced bio. To me, it’s a warning that all I am going to get from you is affiliate linked tweets. To use the party analogy, if I asked you about yourself and you threw incoherent words at me and then offered to sell me a watch, I’d be looking for the next person or the bar. Similarly, the cryptic one liner and the non-existent bio do nothing to entice me into following.
What I think makes a good bio is personality. By all means, if you are connecting with like minded people in your field, put in what you do. This is important in garnering following from them. But remember, this is a platform for you to connect with people in general. Expose some information about yourself that they may not get from your site, and make yourself into a real human. You want this to translate to your posts as well, giving some life to your Twitter feed. There is a real comfort for people to know that following you will not mean they are continually being sold to.
I’ll admit, I have had a lot of attempts at getting mine right. After all, I am trying to connect with people wanting to start an online business, so I include 3 quick examples of what I do. Then I added a few personal touches – husband, father, aspiring guitar god and celebrity chef. Which took me pretty much to my limit, but gives a small insight into what I enjoy and gives me 4 more things for people to relate to.
Take these into consideration when crafting it. The beauty of Twitter lies in it’s ability to give personality to the internet, so leverage it.
One other small tip I urge you to remember is spelling. One of my particular favourites the other day was a new follower whose specialty was “gorilla marketing”. Which is fine if you work at a zoo, but I am pretty sure she meant guerrilla marketing. If you are expounding something as your field of expertise, make sure you can spell it right. It goes a long way to your credibility.
Related posts:
Nice info. Thanks for sharing this post on Twitter. Twitter has proved to be a really good social media tool for me…