Like All Web Pages, You Must Update Your Bio

Your bio is a way to put a face on your business, whether you’re a solopreneur, a freelancer or the head of a web development firm. Potential clients who’ve found your website may want to take a look at who they may be doing business with before you meet. It’s a way to show off your creative flair or your professional demeanor. A bio on your website also provides clients with frames of reference for:

• Where you live
• Where you went to school
• What your hobbies are
• What kind of family you have
• How long you’ve been in your industry
• What credentials you bring to the table
• And other important (or fun) facts

You should update your bio when you first create your website. At the same time, you should update your bio on your social media sites, especially business-related sites like LinkedIn, where your business associates are most likely to look for your background information.

Remember Why You Have a Bio

Name recognition is highly valued in business. Consider the enormous amount of time you’ve spent building your brand. Since you’re an integral part of that brand, whether you interact with the public or not, it behooves you to put your best face forward. Building your brand and encouraging potential clients to contact you are reasons enough to make sure your bio is up-to-date.

Website developers, for example, rarely meet with clients face-to-face if they’re spread out all over the world. (In fact, Ray Access has clients as far away as Singapore!) Yet readers and clients who’re thinking of hiring some geek to create their website still want — and inherently need — to know the person who’s going to help them create an online impression.

If you don’t update your bio on a regular basis, those clients won’t get to know the most recent body of work you’ve completed. They won’t know about any awards and credentials you’ve earned recently, and they won’t know what you look like now. Face it, a picture of a goofy college grad doesn’t carry as much weight as an experienced and dedicated 40-something.

Update Your Bio Now

When you think it’s about time to update your bio, it’s probably past time to get it done. Some say that a biographical account of you and your accomplishments should be updated every six months. Consider tweaking your online brand at least once a year.

A lot can happen in a year. Think of everything you’ve done in the past year worth crowing about! Besides, looking at and reviewing your bio annually forces you to stop and ask yourself important questions, such as:

• Is your brand still relevant?
• Is the bio as complete as it can be?
• Does your bio and that of your employees still express your values and mission?
• Can your potential clients relate to you?
• Are you being relatable?

If you answered “no” to any one of those questions, then it’s time to update your bio. Do it soon because every day you don’t may be a missed opportunity to impress a potential client.

DIY or Hire a Pro to Write It

A country-and-western song famously alluded to the fact that sometimes it’s hard to be humble when you’re so darn great. But for most people, humility is not the issue. In fact, too much humility can hold you back. And when it comes to your bio, maybe you’re the last person who should write it.

If you haven’t hired a professional biographer — and who has? — then turn to a professional writer, interviewer and former journalist, like the experts at Ray Access, who can ask you the right questions to capture an alluring personality and state all the reasons people should do business with you.

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Ready to update your bio?

Call on the professionals at Ray Access. We can give you a one-page bio for your website, a shorthand version for your social sites and a couple of one-lines for your marketing materials. We’ll take the humble with the greatness and turn it into a thoughtful, true rendition of you — one that represents you today, not the old you of yesterday.