There were a couple of responses to my call for your most burning questions that point to an important part of marketing and personal branding: you.

The questions were about name recognition, writing a bio, and how to write an About page for your website. Each requires talking about yourself in a way that engages your audience.

Unless you’ve gone through the process a few times, writing a bio or About page for your website can be stupidly intimidating. You’re not sure exactly what you should write. You want to impress people. You want to sound smart and talented and likeable, or smart and talented and edgy, or smart and talented and sophisticated.

Which might be exactly the wrong approach.

Stop trying to impress people and tell it like it is
You know what happens when you try too hard. You trip yourself up almost instantly, wanting to prove yourself worthy. But it’s not about being worthy—it’s about being real.

Your audience wants to know you, the artist. They want to make a connection with the person who makes the work they want to buy.

Start with the facts
You probably have a resume kicking around somewhere with some important dates on it. The training that gives you professional credibility, years of experience, awards and shows. Take the best pieces and put them into a few paragraphs, along with pertinent facts about your work, and possibly where you were born and where you live now. Make it into a story to engage your reader.

You have probably also read countless bios of other artists, as well as prominent people. Go look at a few, both of people you know, and famous artists. For the sake of quick reference, here’s one on master portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh. Yours won’t read exactly like his (because you’re still here, and probably not world famous), but you get the idea.

There’s no perfect formula
Don’t feel like you have to follow a formula, and don’t feel like there’s only one correct way to write your bio. You don’t have to say where you were born or where you grew up. If you do a little research, you will realize there’s no one style or format. Make sure you have the important information in there, then write what feels most authentic to you. If your audience loves hearing about how many kids and pets you have, write about it, as long as you feel comfortable. If not, leave it out.

Who should you be—I, he, she or we?
Some people like to write about themselves in the third person, and sometimes it’s appropriate. That usually happens in a formal document, when a convention has already been established about writing about yourself as “she,” and it usually involves far too much paperwork and a snooty jury of some kind. Normally you will be you (that is, “I”), unless there are more than one of you, in which case you’ll be a “we,” not an “I.” Don’t use the royal “we,” which is a bit pretentious.

(I was trying to make you laugh, not confuse you. Writing about yourself can be stressful. It shouldn’t be, because you’ve been you all your life, but it is. Not taking yourself too seriously can help keep you grounded.)

The point I’m trying to make is you don’t want to get too complicated or too uptight. Talking about yourself in the first person isn’t narcissistic, it’s factual. If you really want to go with third person, and it fits your personal style, do it.

If you want to write in first person and want a bio that can be used for press coverage, write one in third person and put a link to it on your website for just that purpose (tip: reporters love it when you make their jobs easier).

Your About page—should it really be about you?
If your About page is your bio page, then obviously the answer is yes. But if you offer a service, your About page might focus on your audience, and what you can do for them, with a short bio at the end.

How you organize that information depends on how you set up your website. You can have a Services (or Gallery or Portfolio) page, and an About page that contains your bio. Make it as easy and clear for your website visitors as you can. Some creatives who offer services take a “Who We Are” and “What We Do” approach. Dead easy for anyone visiting the site to figure out exactly what’s on the site.

(Writing tip: technically, none of the above capitalized words are proper nouns, so they shouldn’t be capitalized. I’m just pretending they’re officially named pages so you don’t get confused.)

What to do when you’re stuck
This is an exercise I like to suggest when you can’t get out of your own head: write a letter. An old friend, who you haven’t seen in years, asks what you’ve been up to lately. What would you tell her? Write it down, without editing, until you run out of words. Then leave it for a while, even a day or two, then come back and clean it up—without losing your own voice.

If you’re still stuck, do a W5: who, where, when, what, and why. Adapt as needed. That will give you a basic structure and solid starting point. When you flesh it out, remember that your audience, no matter who they are, connect with your work and you, so you don’t want to back away so much that you disappear.

Be present
The work doesn’t sell itself. If it did, you wouldn’t be thinking about writing a bio, or an About page, or working on marketing. You make the work, and directly or indirectly, you—your reputation, your brand—are a critical part of selling it.

Over to you: what trips you up when talking about yourself? How do you approach writing your bio?

Related posts:

1. How to write headlines that grab your audience
2. Online selling – how to figure out your prospects without going crazy
3. Put four Ps in your creative marketing