Every professional coach and trainer should find happiness and pride in their accomplishments. Creating a professional biography reflects professional development and promotes your personal brands to target potential clients for a profit.
A professional biography is a non-negotiable tool of self-promotion that serves as marketing too on websites. Also, creating an effective professional biography is a major step in developing a marketing tool kit for business. The more professional and attractive the biography is the more it has the power to attract more clients to a coach. Writing an effective biography as a coach or trainer requires creativity and taking into consideration various strategies to ensure that the result works as illustrated in this article.
Who is the Target Audience?
When writing a professional biography it is a good practice to consider the readers as a matter of strategy. A biography serves as a tool that helps clients see what a coach wants and the coach as the solution to the problems that clients have. Therefore, a biography should enable the readers to see the coach professionally and not guessing how a coach can be the problem solver. Usually, it is common for people and even coaches to be nervous when writing biographies because sometimes it feels like boasting when outlining the accomplishment and what a coach can achieve. A coach should put him/herself in the client shoes and consider what he/she would want to hear from someone they would hire to solve a problem.
A coach should ask what I am known for? It is paramount to share expertise with potential clients to give them a reason why they should hire you as a coach or trainer. When writing a biography a coach should bear in mind what the audience would like to know and understand about you. Essentially, a biography should be like a short story of your professional life that is presented to the target audience. It should be all about the coach but rather about connecting with the target market.
Credibility Issues
Personality values act as the common criteria that clients use to determine which coach they will partner with. Target clients need to be assured that a coach can deliver on what they have listed as their credentials backed with academic qualification and professional history. Notably, they act as assurance and sets the mind of the clients that the coach is qualified enough for hiring. Professional history, in other words, is known as experience. When writing on experience on professional biography, a coach or trainer needs to infuse personality and be specific on expertise at the start of the biography. To prove credibility, coaches are required to include their accomplishment in the biography.
Readers of the biography need to see accomplishment which they can relate to hence the need to arrange them according to their order of relevance to the target audience. Credibility in a biography should include a coach’s professional experience, what they have accomplished within their profession including awards and recognitions given to them and the results of their work which should be backed by statistics of proof. To build trust from the target audience, coaches need to support their professional history with accurate statistic (Facts and figure). Coaches should show rather than telling by quantifying results of their accomplishments. Also, they should show the person to whom the recognition and accolades are given.
Formatting and Structure
A professional biography requires creativity to make it interesting and engaging to the reader. Coaches, therefore, need to consider the following key tips when formatting and designing professional biographies
- Language Issues
Coaches and trainers should make their biography interesting to the reader by making use of power terms and words that are active and meaningful in the present tense. For instance terms such as organize, deliver and create are effective terms in the convincing potential client. Biographies are very different from resumes in that while the latter focus more previous accomplishments, biographies take more focus on the situation as of now. Strong terms and active voice are crucial in creating authority and credibility while at the same time ensuring the coaches’ contributions are presented.
- Use of Images
Images are very effective in enhancing biographies regardless of whether it is a profile photo or a string of powerful photos relating to the professional life of a coach. Images and visual effects tend to have a longer-lasting impact on the minds of audiences than words alone where a coach is limited on only one or few images for use in a biography, they should make sure to use the most powerful ones.
- Use of Statistics (Numbers Speak Louder than Words)
Statistics do not lie. They also count more than anyone would think. Trainers and coaches should make it a matter of strategy to include statistics whenever they can.
Another aspect of structure in a biography is the use of the inverted pyramid model. This method is common in public relations were the most important information I placed at the start and the less meaningful last. People sometimes become lazy and poor readers hence if coaches are worried that the target audience may not read much of the information provided, it would be wise to use the aforementioned model to capture them accordingly.
First and Third-Person Narrative
This is a strategy of promoting oneself. Coaches should to talk about themselves actively and genuinely which encourages potential clients to continue reading. A biography should always be written in the third person. Talking about their accomplishments in a biography is not bragging but rather providing vital information to promote themselves by making themselves known to the target audience. It is vital to have different formats in both first and third-person depending on who is the target audience. For instance, when sharing information on personal platforms such as social media, the first-person narrative is appropriate while the third person is applicable when writing to outside platforms such as blogs.
Bearing in Mind the Length
The length of the biography depends on the platform used for instance some social media platforms limit the number of characters used such as Twitter while there are others such as Facebook that low use of more characters. Websites also tend to have longer details relating to the biography. Having multiple versions of biography is important because not all audiences need the same amount of information. Therefore coaches should have long, short and micro biographies to enable them to meet the needs of various audiences. Short biographies are effective for the audience such as journalists that have minimum reading time, long biographies for event organizers to understand the background and micro biographies for social media platforms such as Twitter.
Keep Editing the Biography
Coaches should regularly edit their biographies until they are 100% satisfied with them. It may take a long time but what is important is attaining a product that reflects their credibility well. Biographies are living documents that can be improved as the credibility and status of the coach grows and consequently the business recent achievements should be included in the biography and once it is done it should showcase the professional history and experience.
Getting Started
A well-written biography has two major purposes that include satisfying the audiences’ desire to relate to the coaches perspectives and speaking to audiences in a manner that meets their needs. Autobiographies, therefore, should have the ore message which essentially is what coaches can do to solve the problems of the clients backed with adequate proof that they can do it. Biography writing can be viewed as a process that documents the professional life and experience of a coach which is why it is considered a living document where updates are regularly incorporated. More importantly, the aforementioned strategies are crucial when writing effective and attractive biographies.
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