While most people enjoy talking about themselves, creating an employee bio that will appeal to your target market can still pose a challenge. If you ask staff to provide their own bios, you’ll probably run across these common problems:
Too long
Too short
Too formal
Way too informal
Not interesting
Not relevant
Most people get into resume-writing mode when asked to write their own employee bio while some go full storyteller and begin at the very beginning. Use these guidelines to craft bios that will remind your prospects that you’re not just experts, you’re real people who will be providing quality, human interaction.
Most prospects aren’t going to take the time to read a lengthy bio. They just want a sense of who they’ll be dealing with, not a Pulitzer Prize winning memoir. If you can keep your bios down to 100 words or less, you’ll be more likely to include the most important details without becoming dull.
You can leave out the details of your birth and childhood years for your agent bio unless you happen to be a hometown guy from the city your small agency is located. Even in that case, however, keep the mention short, as in:
Hometown boy Ken Marsh has spent the past five years helping his neighbors in Smallville get the most comprehensive coverage for their historic homes.
Unless you just graduated and have no other experience, most people aren’t going to be interested in what college you went to or what degrees you earned; they want to know what you’ve been doing recently that makes you an up-to-the-minute expert in your field today.
After all, this is your agency bio. It should reflect who you are at work. You might let readers know why you chose the insurance industry, what you’re known for professionally, what you’re most passionate about as an insurance agent, and how you help customers get the best deals on insurance.
The goal is to strike a balance between expert and approachable. Don’t be afraid to interject an interest or hobby that makes you more relatable to clients, but keep it relevant to the rest of your bio. For example,
Ken spends most weekends at his cottage by the lake, and it’s given him a unique insight the needs of homeowners with vacation houses.
Taking time to edit and revise biographies so that they form a fluid whole is an important and often overlooked step in the development of agent bios. Have your best communicator read and revise each individual bio to keep the voice, tone, and style consistent throughout. When readers have finished perusing your insurance agency’s About Us page, they should come away with a sense of your staff as personable, credible individuals who function cohesively as a team.
What struggles did your team have with developing concise, compelling agent bios?