Your company bio is one of the first opportunities you have to make a good impression. If it’s confusing or boring, potential customers are going to walk straight into the arms of your competitors who are able to showcase themselves in a fun, peppy way.
A company bio is slightly different from a personal bio that highlights your personal information and professional skills for a potential employer or to get a new job. It’s not a cover letter for entrepreneurs or a freelancer that lists out your job title or years of experience. Instead, it can go on your professional website to highlight why customers should buy your products and services.
But here’s the thing. Writing about your business can be hard. You’re so entrenched in it that it’s difficult to see it from an outside perspective. Plus, there’s so much you want to say, right? How can you possibly squeeze it all into a couple of concise paragraphs? But once you’ve got the foundations of your company bio, you can use it on your social media profiles, in your Twitter bio, as part of your LinkedIn summary, and on your company website.
Yes, it’s difficult choosing the right words to describe your business (especially if you don’t want it to look like you’re bragging), but learning how to write a company bio can put you in good stead for the future, especially in situations where you need to pitch your brand to customers and stakeholders.
Why you need a company biography to stand out
It’s simple, really. Your company biography lets potential customers know who you are and what you do. It helps them determine off the bat whether you’re a good fit for them or whether they even need your products or services in the first place.
But there are plenty of other reasons a professional bio is important:
- Showcase your values: consumers today are keen to buy from brands that share the same values as them
- Build connections: customers are more likely to care about brands they can relate to
- Stand out: there’s so much competition today that it’s crucial for you to explain why your business is different from other startups
When potential customers can get a quick understanding of you, your offerings, and your values, they can then decide about whether they want to buy from you. And, if you manage to showcase your brand personality while you’re at it, you can start to forge deeper relationships with your audience.
The 3 things you need to include in a company bio
You can be as creative as you like with your company bio, but there are a few key things you should include to make sure readers get all the information they need.
1. Your company story
The story behind your company is one of the things that makes it unique. No two businesses will have the same backstory, so this can help you stand out and connect with readers.
Start by noting down the answers to these questions:
- When was the company started?
- Who started it?
- Where was the business started?
- Why did you start the business?
- How did you get from then until now? Any important milestones along the way?
- What’s the story behind the company name?
These answers will form the foundations of your company bio. Obviously, you don’t want to just reel them off in order - that would be dull! Instead, think about how they fit into a narrative.
Mailchimp’s short bio covers all the important stuff, like where the business was founded and what the goal of the business is. Notice how they write in the third person for a more professional feel.
Toggl features one of our favorite professional bio examples. It includes all the important information but in a fun and friendly way.
2. What makes your company different
The sheer amount of competition out there makes it hard to stand out today. But there’s always going to be something that separates you from your competitors. It might be the number of employees you have. It might be the specific material you use in your products. Or it might be that you give a large portion of your revenue to charity.
It’s important to mention what makes you different in your company bio so you don’t come across like “just another company in X industry”.
If you get stuck on this part, think about:
- What you sell
- Who you sell it to
- What makes your products or services better than others
- What customers have praised you for in the past
- What you want to be known for
Fun bandage brand Welly makes its products stand out by taking a relatively mundane but necessary item and turning it into something adventurous.
Splunk highlights that it's the first of its kind in the world.
3. Your company’s mission and values
Your company’s mission and values will also set you apart from your competitors. There’s a very slim chance that all companies in your industry started for the same reason, so think about the things your business believes in and stands for.
Ask yourself:
- What was the goal when starting this business?
- What causes does your business believe in?
- Are there certain things you want to promote?
- What does your mission statement say (or, what would it say if you had one)?
It helps to outline your mission and values as your “vision”. For example, you can highlight what you hoped to achieve when you started your business, like starting a new trend or filling a need for something unique.
Slack’s short professional bio states its goal at the start before going into detail about what the tool can do for customers.
Similarly, Shopify overtly states its mission as part of its wider company bio.
Bombas is a great example of an e-commerce brand that is personable in its company bio. They clearly explain what their mission is and why their products fit that mission.
Drinks brand Haus uses short paragraphs to outline its reasoning for starting the business in its company bio. The first sentence tells a story and keeps readers engaged.
How to write a company bio that resonates with your audience
If you’re wondering how to write a company bio, we’ve got you covered. Once you’ve got the basics together for your company bio, you can start putting pen to paper. The writing process will be far easier if you already know what you want to say - after that, it’s all about putting it all together in a cohesive, conversational way.
1. Know your audience
First things first, you need to know who’s going to be reading your company bio. Understanding the motivations of these people and what they’re expecting from you is the first step in writing an engaging bio that keeps the reader’s attention.
Tailoring your company bio to your target audience will help you connect with them quicker and create deeper relationships, making it far more likely that they’ll choose you over a competitor.
For example, people who are seeking legal counsel from a law firm are going to have different expectations than someone who is looking for a magician for their kid’s party. Someone on the hunt for the former is going to be put off by lots of exclamation marks and puns, while someone who’s looking for a magician might like that.
When getting to know your audience, think about:
- Basic demographic information, like age and location
- Their interests
- Their professional goals and desires
- The challenges they’re facing
- How your business solves those challenges
2. Assess what information you already have
You might not know where to start if you’re writing your company bio from scratch. Even if you don’t have any lofty achievements or even a lot of history to note down, it’s likely that you still have some material you can work with.
If you wrote a small business plan, there’ll be a blurb in there about why you started the company and what you want to do with it. If you’ve pitched to a number of clients, those pitch decks will probably have some information you can use. And, if you’ve got a few notebooks tucked away with your early-stage ideas scribbled in them, get them out and see if there’s anything useful you can take from them.
3. Write like you speak
There are so many dry, dull company bios out there that seem to simply state the facts about a business and not much more. While this does a good job of laying out who you are and what you do, it’s difficult for potential clients to suss out your personality and why you might be a good fit for them personally.
To spruce up your company bios, write like you speak. Imagine you were explaining your business to a new customer who’s interested in your services. It can help to actually speak to someone while making notes or record yourself talking and transcribing that to turn it into a rough draft.
How Jasper helps you write a professional company bio
Jasper makes it easy to draft your company bio with its extensive collection of templates, including the professional bio template. Simply enter the name of your company, a sentence about what you do, and the tone you’d like to go for, and the powerful AI generates a blurb you can use straight away, or tweak to fit your brand personality.
These short bio examples use a professional tone for a marketing company.
These samples showcase a more informal tone for a company that hires out magicians for parties.
And these samples use a formal tone to explain what a law firm does.
It’s not enough to write a few sentences and hope for the best. Remember, your company bio is the first impression potential customers will have of your brand and it’s important you engage them from the very start. As well as understanding your audience, you can collect the material you already have to create a vibrant company bio packed with your brand’s personality.
Don’t know where to start? Jasper’s Bootcamp provides a crash course in using the company bio template so you can get started right away.
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