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Dear Oprah:
Welcome to the Twittersphere.
The 324,821 followers you’ve managed to amass in two days put to shame the measly 6,572 I’ve attracted in about a year.
But I can’t help myself. Please, please, do something a little more creative with your bio! “Live your best life” is fine. Unlike the 140-character limit for tweets, however, Twitter gives you 160 characters for your bio.
Use them. Your Twitter followers, me included, are dying to know more about you.
I was hoping to give you a good example of a clever bio written by somebody you’re following. But I checked out the bios for Ellen DeGeneres, George Stephanopolous and Ashton Kutcher and couldn’t find much. The best was Shaq’s description of himself as “Very quotatious, I perform random acts of Shaqness.”
Here are three examples of bios I love, written by people I’m following:
@JudySL, aka Judy Lederman, whose bio I wrote about here. Check out her “location.”
@whatsnext, aka BL Ochman:
@ShermanHu, aka Sherman Hu:
See what I mean? Here are five ideas for dressing up your bio:
1. Who’s the cute dog in the photo? Tell us its name and the breed.
2. Food might be a sore subject. Like you, I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life. But consider sharing your can’t-do-without comfort food.
3. What’s your favorite music genre, singer or group?
4. Who are your favorite leading ladies or men, or favorite movie?
5. How do you unwind?
The very best resource I’ve found for learning everything about Twitter is The Twitter Handbook by @WarrenWhitlock, aka Warren Whitlock, and @CoachDeb, aka Deborah Micek.
In the meantime, I’m asking my Twitter followers to use the comments section below to pass along their best how-to-Twitter-better tips and their favorite Twitter resources, like the Massive Twitter Directory I wrote about here.
Have fun on twittering, Oprah.
Joan Stewart
The Publicity Hound
You make a great point, Joan. Just because a celebrity thinks that “everybody” knows him/her, true personality — maybe even something the public doesn’t know — would humanize a Twitter bio and the person. People relate to others when they share things in common. Otherwise, the celeb is just another untouchable name in the media.
Ok, Joan. I’m going to change my twitter bio. Check it out at http://twitter.com/DeniseMerritt!
Denise, all those little details give visitors a great bird’s eye view about your background, likes, etc.
Dear Joan,
Lucky me to have found you. I see I’m going to learn a lot of your twitts and, who knows,maybe give you some mediterranean point of view in return.
Many regards from a sunny Mallorca.
Victòria.
Awesome ideas! Your bio is one of the few things on the ‘net you can actually control. I know what I’m doing next…:-)
I absolutely see the value in an explicit Twitter bio like the ones you’ve highlighted. It’s extremely user-friendly, and seems to have become the norm on Twitter.
That said, I’m probably going to keep my rather more oblique (and definitely spicier) bio for the time being. It’s more in keeping with my brand (when did that word start making me cringe?) and it kind of lets people know if they’re going to like the way I use Twitter, which is not the way the majority seem to use it.
Another wonderful piece on getting up and running with the service is Andy Ihnatko’s piece for the Sun-Times:
http://www.suntimes.com/business/1532392,ihnatko-oprah-twitter-041709.article
Oof. Long URL!
I especially love his tip about finding someone you really like who has a big follower-to-following ratio and looking at those people s/he follows. Someone you like who both follows few and is followed by many is likely going to point you toward similarly awesome tweeple.
Excellent advice –it prompted me to improve my bio significantly. I was so concerned about figuring how how to follow and be followed that I paid too little attention to the bio.
http://www.twitter.com/EHCottrell
One of the things I particularly appreciate about your contributions to the Internet, Joan, is that they are smart AND practical. The fact that you share them so generously speaks volumes about you as a person and an entrepreneur we can all emulate.
Thank you.