How to write a good personal profile

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The age old adage of first impressions is true even online, in some ways a lot more so. Whilst you can’t control what people think of you, you can at the very least make sure that they’re seeing (or judging) an accurate impression.

There’s a few ways of doing this, I like to work from my longest (and most boring personal profile) downwards. So first I create a description of myself, as if I was on the “Management” section of a company website. It includes some vital statistics and a nice Steve-Jobs-esque head shot (or whatever styling you prefer):

  1. Title
  2. Company
  3. Key focus / Passion
  4. Hobbies
  5. Past Experience
  6. Accolades & Awards (don’t get too pompous here)
  7. Current Industry Memberships (these are great, they show you’re actively involved & contributing to your profession)
  8. Education (industry qualifications are also great to showcase, plus they’re usually more relvant)

management-profile
Once you’ve got your larger, more wordy, corporate profile done, everything else becomes easy. Don’t forget, that just because it’s your “corporate” profile, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have your own flavour and styling. There’s nothing worse than a soulless, vanilla personal profile that looks like it’s been created by a machine.

Your next step is to create a series (about three) of increasingly short profiles/bio’s – all of which are effectively excerpts from what you’ve just created. Your twitter bio will probably be the shortest one you’ll need, and maybe one in between. If you opening paragraph is punchy enough, that might be all you need for shorter bio’s.

Just remember to use the same “stock” profiles whenever you setup any online accounts. Keeping your profiles uniform, not only makes you look professional & organised, but ensures that if anyone’s looking you up from anywhere, they’re seeing exactly what you want them to see – not a blank profile or the default nonsense a lot of sites put in.

If you’re managing a company website, try to make all the personal profiles conform to a standard structure, layout and size – it’ll maintain some individual personality, whilst looking much better than having too many varying lengths & styles.