Convince Me With Your Twitter Bio. Please!
by HKICC Associate Member Kay Ross
When someone follows me on twitter, I don’t automatically follow them back. Before I decide whether or not to follow someone, I read their profile page, in particular their bio. I want to see what their interests, skills, background and values are.
And that’s where most people get a big FAIL, in my opinion. If someone doesn’t offer ANY bio info at all, or their bio isn’t interesting, compelling and intriguing to me, I won’t follow them. It’s brutal, I know, but that’s the way it is (and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way).
After all, if you want someone to follow you, you have to SELL yourself and give them a good REASON to follow you. You only have 160 characters (including spaces) for your twitter bio, so make ’em count.
When you’re writing your bio
- Use keywords that will grab people’s attention in a split second.
- Tell me only the most relevant, compelling, interesting stuff.
- Be bold about declaring your interests, skills, values and what you offer the world.
- Show me who you are and what makes you unique and follow-worthy.
- Don’t tell people what YOU want/need, tell them how you can help them get what THEY want/need.
- Be quirky, memorable and intriguing.
- Don’t bother using full grammatical sentences.
- Don’t try to be all things to all people.
Here are a few twitter bios (from people I didn’t already know) that caught my attention and made me follow the writers, because the keywords are topics I’m interested in and the writers have added a personal touch that appeals to me.
@jeremylim “Musician, DJ, marketer, photographer, and social media aficionado. Big dreamer and panda-eyed.”
@wendyperrin “Consumer news editor, columnist, feature writer at Conde Nast Traveler mag. Author, speaker, road warrior, mom of 2 boys, trying to juggle it all.”
@Mjamme“Social, Serial Entrepreneur, Humanitarian, Mother, Philanthropist, Motivational Speaker, Strategist, President, CEO, Advocate for Women and Men’s Rights.”
@nametagscott “Writer. Speaker. Entrepreneur. Coach. Oh, and I wear a nametag 24-7!”
@BethHarte “Principal of HMC. Marketing. PR. Social Media. Adjunct Prof. History addict. Avid reader. Art/Culture buff. Fan of beer, cowgirl boots and brilliance”
@Adamfyre “Prayer, devotion, love, dance, movement. Handknitting, handspinning, metalworking. Upliftment of all beings. Embracing life :)”
@StuBakerComedy “With Muscular Dystrophy, I’m doing stand up even though I can barely stand up! If that’s not enough, I’m old too! So, I got those things going for me! Booyah!”
Here are 10 things NOT to say in your twitter bio:
- Nothing. I’m astonished at how many people don’t offer ANY bio info at all. How do they expect anyone (other than a bot) to follow them?
- “John Doe is a…” or “I’m an…”. That’s a waste of valuable characters - just jump straight in with compelling content.
- “Single and lonely.” That’s a real one I received (and it was the sum total of the guy’s bio). He really thinks that’s going to attract followers?!
- “My girlfriend is much more interesting than me.” That’s another real one I received. OK, let me follow her, then!
- “Go to my website to find out more about me.” Well duh! If you’ve listed your website address in the relevant field, it’s obvious that I have the option of going there to find out more about you. No need to tell me so in your bio.
- “The leader in…” or “The leading expert in…”. Who says you’re THE leader? Where’s your proof? Why should I believe you?
- “I’ll be active once I reach 2,500 followers.” This from someone who had very few followers and who had posted no tweets at all.
- “Internet marketing expert” or “Social media expert” or “I’ll show you how to get thousands of followers” when you only have 17 followers yourself.
- “Please follow me and I’ll follow you back.” By creating a twitter profile page, you are by definition inviting people to follow you. If you give me a good enough reason, I WILL follow you (but promising to follow me back is not a good enough reason for me to follow you).
- An inspirational quote (by someone else, not you). I want to know about YOUR talents and opinions and experience, not someone else’s.
I need more
An interesting twitter bio by itself isn’t enough to convince me to follow you. I also want to see:
- your real name as your logon name
- a real, recent, close-up photo of your face (not your dog or your cleavage)
- your real-world location
- your website address
- a good balance of “following” to “followers”
- some interesting, funny, helpful tweets (please, not too many hard-sell messages promoting your e-book, teleseminar or Internet marketing system)
- tweets that are relevant to the topics you listed in your bio – if you say you’re an expert in collecting stamps, tweet mostly about that. It’s about establishing and maintaining your personal brand.
Oh, and if I see that you’ve re-tweeted that message about somebody’s interesting idea about how to attract 19,530 new twitter followers in 30 days, you lose! And please don’t “protect your updates” – that kind of defeats the purpose of being on a social media site.
@kayross
Marketing consultant editor copywriter connector comedian actor singer healer CouchSurfer. Born Glasgow, grew up Adelaide, living in Hong Kong since Sept 93
© Kay Ross, June 2009
Reproduced here with the author’s permission
