Lots of Publicity Hounds spend far too much time crafting the perfect pitch and\u00a0ignoring a marketing tool that can get them in front of journalists: their bio.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At\u00a0Publishers Marketing Association University in Washington, D.C., last week, I cringed when I heard national correspondent Dan Raviv<\/a> of CBS Radio talk about what he looks for when\u00a0someone pitches him.<\/p>\n He doesn’t care about their book. He sometimes doesn’t even care about the pitch. The one thing that’s likely to catch his attention is their bio.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why did I cringe? Because most bios\u00a0are more potent than sleeping pills. Authors and speakers, it seems, write the worst bios.<\/p>\n Pull out your own bio right now and read it. Then ask yourself. “If I were a journalist, would I interview me?”<\/p>\n Chances are, you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t either. And most other journalists wouldn’t.<\/p>\n As I stated in my “Special Report #46: Tips for Rewriting Your Boring Bio,”<\/a>\u00a0the best\u00a0bios reflect the personality of the writer. Great bios include fun little tidbits about people’s hobbies, or their pets, or the one thing they want to accomplish before they die, or the best piece of advice they got from mom.<\/p>\n You can see how I’ve offered short and long verisons of my bio here.<\/a><\/p>\n One of my favorite bios that I featured in my special report is actually an introduction for a speaker who is a veterinarian, and it morphs into a funny poem that has the audience howling with laughter before the speaker takes the microphone.\u00a0<\/p>\n Take\u00a0a half hour to rewrite your bio, right now, so\u00a0journalists like Dan Aviv call you for an interview<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lots of Publicity Hounds spend far too much time crafting the perfect pitch and\u00a0ignoring a marketing tool that can get them in front of journalists: their bio.\u00a0 At\u00a0Publishers Marketing Association University in Washington, D.C., last week, I cringed when I heard national correspondent Dan Raviv of CBS Radio talk about what he looks for when\u00a0someone\u2026 Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":6,"wds_primary_category":603,"footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[626],"class_list":{"0":"post-619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-content-creation","7":"tag-how-to-write-a-bio","8":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40625,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions\/40625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}