by Katy Kauffman @KatyKauffman28

What do I put? Even after thirteen years of writing, I often stop and wonder what I should put in my writer’s bio. The best determining factor is the amount of space. If you only have three sentences to work with, your options are streamlined for you. But if you have 60-200 words to work with, use these five tips to maximize your reader’s interest in your writing, website, and social media pages. 

Tip #1: Think about what your target audience would enjoy knowing of your personal life.  

Author bios don’t have to be all about the places we’ve written for or the awards we’ve won. What are your readers interested in? If you are writing for a missions magazine, you could include the countries or states that you have been to on mission trips. If you are writing for a parenting blog, don’t forget to include how many children you have and possibly their ages (and the name of the family dog or cat). 

Include those details that your particular audience would find endearing, funny, or fun. Bios don’t have to be boring or factual. With a little personality, we can add some flare to our bios and give readers a few more reasons to connect with us online. 

So what are your hobbies? What is something of interest to your readers that would help them remember you? Include a few interesting details about yourself when you have a large enough word count for your bio. I like to mention that I enjoy working in my garden in the morning sun and I started a group for creative hearts called My Artsy Tribe.  

Tip#2: Double check your bio for grammatical errors and punctuation mistakes. 

Don’t lose rapport with your audience because of typos or grammatical “oopsies.” After a stellar article, it can be surprising to find mistakes in an author’s bio. Double check your bio to make sure book titles are in italics, you have subject-verb agreement, and the sentences make sense. After making multiple edits to a bio, it can be easy to miss a mistake. Read your bio aloud to make sure the final version is correct. 

Tip #3: Use hyperlinks when your bio appears on websites. 

If you are limited on word count, create a link to each social media page you want to mention, and “hide” it in a word. For example, I may put the following at the end of my bio: Connect with Katy on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. I don’t have to give my handle (0r unique name) for each of those sites, although some authors do take space to do this. I can attach the appropriate links to the right words. 

To “see” the hyperlinks before clicking those blue words above, hover your mouse over each word, and the URL of the linked web page should appear in the bottom left corner of your browser’s tool bar. When you put a bio with hyperlinks on your website, make sure each link “opens in a new window.” Your website will give you that option, and this allows your readers not to “lose” their spot on your website because they clicked a link. They can find your website in one of the browser tabs at the top of their screen and continue reading. 

To create a hyperlink in Word, highlight the word you want to make a hyperlink for, then click the “Insert” tab, and click the “Link” button. You can copy and paste your URL in the “Address” field and hit OK.   

Tip #4: Spell out your website’s URL when your bio appears in print. 

Since we can’t include hyperlinks in printed materials, we need to be sure to give the full URL of our websites in our bios. Some sites begin with “https” or “http,” depending on whether they have an SSL certificate (for verified security). I have seen some people prefer to start a URL with “www.” or just give the shortest form like this—lighthousebiblestudies.com.  

I like the shortest form because it looks the cleanest, but some websites don’t end in “.com.” So the “www.” may be necessary to draw attention to the URL being a web address.

What should we use? Check the style guide that your publisher or publication is using. If none is indicated, I would pick a particular form for the web address and use that regularly. 

Tip #5: Include the publishing credentials most needed for that audience and publication. 

Now we come to the part that we usually think of first for our author bios—the books we have published, the publications we have written for, and the awards we have won. 

Keep both your audience and publisher in mind when including these details. Which places have you written for, that your audience would be interested in or have visited? Which publications and awards help to establish credibility for writing about your particular subject? 

Which of the five tips do you practice regularly? Which one might you need to focus on more? Tell us in the comments, and join our conversation!

Katy Kauffman is an award-winning author, an editor of Refresh Bible Study Magazine, and a co-founder of Lighthouse Bible Studies. She loves connecting with writers and working alongside them in compilations, such as Feed Your Soul with the Word of God, Collection 1 which is a 2020 Selah Awards finalist. She recently started The Lighthouse Connection, a monthly writers’ newsletter including writing tips, inspiration to write, and news of submission opportunities.

In addition to online magazines, Katy’s writing can be found at CBN.com, thoughts-about-God.com, and three blogs on writing. She loves to spend time with family and friends, take acrylic painting classes online, and do yard work in the morning sun. Connect with her at her blog, Winning the Victory, and on Facebook and Twitter.