If I get personal (aka include non-work related things) in my bio…is it a personal ad?  A bio needs to be professional and serious and convince any potential prospect why they want to work with you.  Or does it?  Have you looked at Linked-in lately?  Wow..what a boring sea of bios.  In a pool of 10 people who provide the same service, it’s tough to find one whose bio says anything different.  This applies to websites too; your business card, accessible by the world, should say something to differentiate you. 

In a market where getting new customers often  relies on how high up in the Search ranks you show, how do you stand out?  By saying the same thing as the 9 other companies like yours?  Or by putting some character into it?

I’m taking a stand and writing a personal ad in place of my bio because, while my work qualifications are important, it’s my personal experiences and  my story that speak to my character and the type of person I am. 

As a small business, we often weigh the comfort of being ourselves and the perception of being bigger.  For those of us small business folks who are interested in working with people like us, we should feel free to be interesting and not feel committed to the status quo just because it seems like that’s the professional thing to do.   As the web - and the marketplace in general - get flooded with “sameness” being interesting by  being yourself (the one and only you) becomes more and more important!

I think Toby Bloomberg over at Diva Marketing Blog, has a great bio.  It’s well balanced: flowing through professional accolades but sprinkled with personal experience and interests.

Always open to a conversation, tell me what you think!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.