Lots of Publicity Hounds spend far too much time crafting the perfect pitch and ignoring a marketing tool that can get them in front of journalists: their bio.
At Publishers Marketing Association University in Washington, D.C., last week, I cringed when I heard national correspondent Dan Raviv of CBS Radio talk about what he looks for when someone pitches him.
He doesn’t care about their book. He sometimes doesn’t even care about the pitch. The one thing that’s likely to catch his attention is their bio.
Why did I cringe? Because most bios are more potent than sleeping pills. Authors and speakers, it seems, write the worst bios.
Pull out your own bio right now and read it. Then ask yourself. “If I were a journalist, would I interview me?”
Chances are, you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t either. And most other journalists wouldn’t.
As I stated in my “Special Report #46: Tips for Rewriting Your Boring Bio,” the best bios reflect the personality of the writer. Great bios include fun little tidbits about people’s hobbies, or their pets, or the one thing they want to accomplish before they die, or the best piece of advice they got from mom.
You can see how I’ve offered short and long verisons of my bio here.
One of my favorite bios that I featured in my special report is actually an introduction for a speaker who is a veterinarian, and it morphs into a funny poem that has the audience howling with laughter before the speaker takes the microphone.
Take a half hour to rewrite your bio, right now, so journalists like Dan Aviv call you for an interview
One of the best tips I ever heard about how to write a bio is to remember the difference between “bio” and “biography”.
Bio = short. Biography = long.
In other words, a good bio is short. Because if it’s too long, people won’t read it. That’s certainly been my experience!