A number of articles have been popping up about Niche Expert Marketing and how being an Expert can boost your sales leads. Essentially what all of these articles are saying is that leveraging your ‘Niche Expert Status’ will bring you more sales leads and eventually sales. Many of these articles are written by the founders of online courses in Niche Expert Marketing Systems and how these can create a 6-figure income for your business. While there is some excellent advice within these systems, there is a fundamental problem that I have identified. That is, all of these systems ignore the fact that to make a complicated internet or funnel marketing or email marketing system work, you have to have solid foundation to build on and the systems do not help you build that foundation. Without that solid foundation of a biography and online expert profile (which cost you nothing to build by the way!) your thousand dollar funnel marketing course will be almost impossible and won’t get you the results you want.
The solution is to build a Short Bio – Fast!
If you don’t already have a bio that you can send, don’t spend another dollar on a complicated system on Expert Niche Marketing until you do. Once you have created your short bio, you will save an amazing amount of time dealing with contacts – be they networking, media or sales lead contacts. Are you panicking right now because somebody asked you to send them your biography for an article or media interview and you don’t even know where to start? If you are, you are not alone. As a small business owner, you need to multi-task and perform as a Leader, Salesperson, Marketer, Social Media Guru, PR person, and Media Liaison. There never seems to be enough hours in the day to get everything done, let prepare a polished biography! Who really likes writing bio’s anyway? Writing about yourself can make you feel uncomfortable and unsure and it’s difficult to find time when there are so many other things to take care of in your business.
As a small business owner and Expert in your particular Business Niche, you cannot afford NOT to have at least a short biography, prepared and ready to send at a moment’s notice. If you receive a call from a journalist, wouldn’t it be great to have a bio to send immediately? I would like to argue that there are in fact enough hours in the day, to really boost your profile by following my simple system for positioning yourself as an expert, all starting with a short biography. There are 6 simple steps to my system for the foundational components you need to be able to position yourself as an expert (this system assumes that you know your Niche).
- Gather all of your materials
- Create a Short Biography
- Update your LinkedIn Profile
- Create a Long Biography
- Identify Opportunities to leverage your Expert Profile
- Implement your plan
This article will focus only on Step 1 & 2 of the 6 step system, as these are the most important parts of your profile foundation. It’s quite common that many professional business people do not have a biography, online profile or business profile available. You generally don’t notice that you don’t have these items until you are asked to speak at a business function or conference and the organiser asks you to send your bio for the email list and the web page. There was a time when that inspired utter panic for me because I asked myself questions like; when will I have time to write a bio, I don’t know what to write, I am embarrassed to write about myself and the list of excuses goes on.
The first step of the system is the most important as need to do an inventory of the written materials and business photographs that you have to promote your business. The sorts of things that are important are; Online links to social media/web links, any online profiles, articles you have written, recommendations or reviews, decent quality headshots, business contact details, your CV, professional associations. Set aside 30 minutes to locate and list all your materials, a good method is to setup a new folder called short bio and copy your files there. Save a blank word doc and copy your social media links and stuff there.
Putting your short bio together is easy; it should contain a decent quality headshot of you along with social media/web links and two paragraphs about you. Simply use my paragraph templates below for an easy way to put together your info, add your picture and your contact details and voila, you are done!
Short Biography Template Instructions
Copy and save the template text below into a word document and replace the Italics with your own text. I recommend also saving as a pdf as that is a very stable format to send and stops you from accidentally sending your word document with mark-up showing. You can always update later, but at least now you have something media and client ready.
Name BIOGRAPHY (Insert your picture to the right)
List Qualifications Here
List Awards
List Professional Affiliations here
(First and Last name), received (degree, special training, study abroad) in (discipline or field) from (university name) and is currently (name what you are doing) at (where you are doing it) (name of institution or business). A strong advocate for (list beliefs, philosophy, values) (she/he) involves (her/his) (community, students, organisations) in (list typical activities or projects that reflect core personal beliefs).
(Her/his) professional interests focus on (list professional or research interests) and her/his current projects include (list current projects, activities and publications). In addition, (he/she) serves as (name of position) for (name of organisation), and is a member of (name of advisory board or professional association). (He /she) was recently honoured with the (name of award or achievement) for (her/his) contribution to (field, organisation etc.)
Contact details
Name
Address
Phone
List your Social Media Links below the Bio
E.g. Website Facebook, Instagram etc.
How to profit quickly from your Short Bio and create leads
I recommend that you review your bio at least every 3 months to make sure your links are current and that you improve readability and update anything important. My bio started like this template but has evolved over time (as yours should too). What is important is that you put your bio to good use now that you have invested the time in it.
There are so many ways of benefiting from your newly created bio that I created a list of quick suggestions for putting your Short Bio to work;
- Send to your past media contacts (TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, and Social Media) with a note you have updated information.
- Upload to your website media page or add to a media pack
- Add to your social media profile
- If you have a professional association profile, upload you bio there.
- Send to your sales leads/networking contacts
- Contact local networking groups offering to speak for 10 minutes at the next networking function and email the bio after your conversation.
- Send to your University Alumni association to upload on the Alumni site.
While putting this short bio together will take you about an hour, you won’t believe how much time you will save having this document ready to go at a moment’s notice. I would love to hear how creating this short bio has helped you or if you have any problems putting it together.
