We’ve been working with clients lately on bios/profiles for websites and backgrounders, and it’s reminded me of how difficult it is for most people to write about themselves—or even get comfortable with what someone else writes about them.

Faced with a bio request, people often retreat to the safe familiarity of resume-style recitations: jobs,  accomplishments, education. That’s not wrong; it’s just not great—especially for networking via social media. Ideally, a bio will evoke a real human (not some kind of business bot) and will communicate something about how you approach your work and what makes you stand out (note to modest types: there’s always something).

A few tips that can make it easier:

• Have someone interview you (or your team)— it’s often easier to talk about we do than to put it in writing.
• Develop a list of questions for bios (our colleague Kelly Parkinson has a great one here) and answer them stream-of-consciousness style. People often have a hard time writing because they try to edit while they write. Write first, then edit.
• Think about (and write about) the ultimate results you deliver—not just what you know how to do.
• Talk about why you do what you do.
• Having a hard time pinning down that extra something you bring? Think about what others have said about  you—friends, a former boss, your mom.
• Include something about what you like to do in your off time—it gives people a way to relate to you. And be specific: “I walk dogs for the SPCA,” not “I like animals”; “I’m addicted to gritty crime novels,” not “I like to read.”

In general, think about what you like to know about others; they want to know that about you, too. And try not stress about it. You may never get comfortable with your bio, but that doesn’t matter—you don’t have to read again until it’s update time.

We love engineers. We work with a lot of them, and appreciate their analytical minds and openness to well-supported suggestions. But engineers should not be writing marketing copy. Alas, in the world of clean tech (and sometimes other sustainability sectors) it seems they often do.

The result for most readers is a lack of clarity. Symptoms of engineer-driven copy include an overabundance of technical detail up front, inadequate explanations of complex technology and processes, and a failure to show benefits and results. This that can translate to a lack of credibility with the target market in number of ways:

• When you hit people with technical details right off the bat, many will give up trying to understand and go away.
• If you can’t explain what you do clearly and concisely, it may send the message that you aren’t quite up to the task of execution.
• If you don’t show people how they will benefit and what results they’ll see, you give them no reason to engage you.
• Lack of clarity is increasingly associated with greenwashing (see an earlier post on this).

Communications that are clear and credible explain the  solution and technology as simply as possible, keeping audience needs in mind; provide technical details and specifications separately from core messages whenever possible; and keep benefits and results front and center.

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it … I can resist everything but temptation.” —Oscar Wilde

It’s tempting to cram everything that can be said about your product, program, or service into every communication about it. That way, you can satisfy all the internal agendas and answer any question that might occur to anyone.

But yielding to temptation ultimately didn’t work out well for Oscar Wilde, and it probably won’t for you either. Asking your audience to wade through a river of detail to find the bit they want (not to mention the bit you want them to get) is making them work, and people generally expect to get paid for that.

Make it easy for people to understand what you’re offering and how it will benefit them: address them directly and clearly, and don’t let extraneous bits obscure your message. That means resisting the engineer or other detail-obsessed insider who insists that everything is important, and leaders who can’t see that, frankly, your target audience doesn’t give a damn about their hobbyhorses.

It doesn’t mean paring your pitch down to lofty generalities (a sure way to raise greenwashing suspicions). The trick is to isolate essential and powerful details and let them shine. How do you do that? Find out what your target audience cares about and speak directly to that, with verifiable claims. Anything more will tempt them to tune out.