How to Write a Speaker Bio that Doesn't Suck | The Copy & Content Podcast with Jon Cook, Presented by Keynote Content

Copy & Content with Jon Cook: For Speakers, Coaches, and Experts Who Actually Give an 'Ish'...

Hey, it's Jon Cook with Keynote Content. Thanks so much for joining me today. One of the key challenges I hear from so many different speakers is, "Jon, I have an amazing speaking opportunity that I'd love to be a part of, but I don't want to send my speaking info because frankly my speaker bio sucks. It is boring, it is putting people to sleep just reading it. I need a better speaker bio."

These aren't just new speakers who are just starting out. These are speakers who have been well-established, they are industry experts, they are ones who are saying, "I already have established that I have a best-selling book. I have clients, I can get results, my name is recognized," but for some reason there is this almost like, "I don't know how to talk about myself in my speaker bio. Either I sound like a narcissist or I feel like I'm underselling myself. Can you help me?" In fact, this is a couple years ago, I got a call from a New York Times best-selling author. He said, "Jon, your name was given to me as somebody to write my speaker bio. I have been staring at my screen, a blank page for the last hour writing things, deleting everything, writing, deleting and I am just frustrated and I saw your information, I want to reach out to you. Can you help me?"

Yes. For the last four years, I've written over 800 different speaker bios, speaking bios for over 800 different speakers. Worked with them one on one, crafting the message, getting them on the right stages, helping them deliver their content, helping them put together their speaker bios or speaker promotion material. This is what I do. So I'm going to walk you through here's how to create a speaker bio that doesn't suck or put your audience to sleep.

So there are two different types of speaking bios that I've put together. Initially what I recommend is putting together your feature-length, and your feature-length is about 170 to 200 words long. So I'm going to write it here, I'm writing on a whiteboard here, 170 to 200 words long for your feature-length bio, and then once you have that in place, then I'd like to trim that down to what I call your short-form bio. Your short-form is about 80 to 100 words and what you want to do is you want to make it so super easy for the person who is the decision-maker for an event, somebody who's like ... Whether it's a podcast host or whether it's an event planner, meeting planner, whoever it might be, for them to essentially copy, paste your bio right into the promotional material for their event. That way they don't have to rewrite it. They don't have to edit it. They don't have to change from first person to third person, whatever it might be. The way to do it is by writing your bio so they can just copy, paste.

Now I might have just tipped my hand there a little bit. You're saying, "Okay, do I write in first-person or third-person?" I recommend for a speaking bio always writing in third person. Third-person gives it a little bit more of a professional take as far as like the content goes. So third person allows you to say, "Hey, Jon Cook is the founder of Keynote Content, he is the creator of the expert message method and a number one best-selling author," that gives you the chance...

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Being an expert doesn't mean you automatically have an audience, especially with so much noise in the digital marketing space. You need to break through the noise and establish your message as a rising thought leader in your industry. Jon Cook has worked with over 1,100 coaches and consultants and 800 speakers to make their messages remarkably clear and compelling to the right audience, and today he wants to help you. If you want greater clarity and even better results with your message, visit workwithjoncook.com.