AI & the Art of Brevity: Crafting the Perfect Bio

byCandaceRenee

34 followers

Updated 1 year ago

My favorite high school English teacher, Mr. Odinero (or "Mr. O" as we called him) taught me one of my favorite words: extraneous.

The brilliant way he made sure it stuck in our 10th grade minds was by writing one word on the chalkboard:

B.S.

(except he wrote out the actual word ;)

Of course I never forgot what the word "extraneous" meant after that.

He'd remind us when we did our homework or turned in an essay: cut the "extraneous" parts.

The official definition of extraneous is: irrelevant to the subject being dealt with.

I have the tendency to say a lot while typing.

In fact, even this intro is becoming extraneous! haha

I know that in the scheme of things my bio on WA probably isn't that big of a deal. But I woke up this morning with an idea to use AI to shorten it.

Not the most novel use of AI of course, but I was curious to give it a try.

AI's Short and Sweet Solution

If you tend to be a long-winded writer like me (which is not necessarily a bad thing, see Notes below), you may be interested in using AI to help you edit in a fraction of the time.

Here was the prompt I typed into ChatGPT

(after initially pasting my original longer bio and asking it for a word count):

Can you truncate the above text that's in quotes down to 250 words and
only include the most pertinent information and include the most
important parts, such as what I do and why I'm here in the first 50
words or so. This is for my bio section on the Wealthy Affiliate site.

Of course it did just what I asked it in record time!

My initial bio was over 400 words!

Now 250 words also isn't the shortest bio either.

I think 50-150 words would usually be my sweet spot for such a bio.

But I want to share my honest story with the WA community...so I still left a bit of "meat on the bones".

So many of us use AI to come up with ideas and write things for us and that's all good.

But it's great to know that it can also help us bring out the most important aspects of our writing.

This can of course come in handy with not just bios, but blog posts, eBooks, opt-ins etc.

So enjoy using AI to "cut the fat" and make your words shine!

How have you or how do you plan to use AI in your blogging/affiliate marketing journey?

~

Notes (Because I'm still naturally extraneous AF...sorry Mr. O!):

1. This post (without my notes and original bio below) is shorter than my original bio at only 398 words.

2. Having a "perfect" bio doesn't exist, nor do I think mine is perfect now. But that's a whole different topic and I asked AI to help me craft a catchy blog title (I combined two of it's suggestions into one).

3. There's also no perfect length to bios (or blog posts).

I enjoy reading short and long bios...it all depends on my mood, the writing and the context. I just wanted to make mines a bit shorter and was also itching to play with AI a bit.

So if you're a long-winded writer like me, it's all good...embrace it! :)

4. AI, or even "over editing" with a human, can take some of the "flavor" away from our writing.

But you can play with the prompts or your personal editing to make it work for you. In this case, I just wanted to keep some of my story, but make it more concise.

And if you're interested, in seeing what AI summarized, here's my original 400+ word bio below (the AI truncated one is currently in my WA bio):

Hey yall! I'm excited to jump into the internet marketing world finally,
and it seems WA is the place to be, so here I am :)

My background is super varied (aka I've had a ton of jobs and a few
businesses haha).

Combine that with a handful of life experiences, and you have the
perfect recipe for someone that is more than ready to take charge of her
financial life!

I started out as a freelance writer in 2006 as a way to make money
between jobs, and it grew into my first small business in my early 20s. I
knew absolutely nothing about running a business then, but my older
brother (on the right of me in the photo with the comic books) was a
graphic designer at the time. He created my first website, and I started
posting ads on good ole Craigslists to get my first clients, and it
worked!

I ran a semi-successful business mostly on referrals, for a young person
without any resources or guidance. This good fortune lasted about two
years until 2008, when the recession, combined with the fact that I had
NOT learned anything about marketing, caused my client pipeline to
become non-existent. Before I knew it, I was essentially out of business
and feeling completely discouraged.

Because life is life, I also lost my voice around that same time for
about six/seven years, between 2008-2014 due to a vocal chord issue that
many ENTs could not figure out for years. I'll spare the details, but I
learned a great deal from this experience. But it also caused me to
have severe anxiety for years, and besides some temp jobs and short
stints working at elementary schools, I was pretty much forced into
finding alternative ways to make money from home.

The two great things that came from this trying time are that I started
to become more creative with how to make money from home, and around
2010, I started to get freelance writing clients again, learned video
editing, wrote and published several books, got a Masters online and
also became a virtual assistant for small businesses (before I even knew
of the term).

I also became very interested in alternative health due to my health
issues and trying to get to the bottom of my throat/voice issues.
Thankfully, after three vocal chord surgeries, I thankfully have had
complete and full use of my voice again since 2017! :D

Fast forward to more recent years, and I realized that I enjoyed sales
(except for car sales, which absolutely sucked) and saw how potentially
lucrative sales could be when done right.

So I became an independent licensed life insurance agent in 2021. I
thought I could make good money and have the most time flexibility since
my husband (who was our main breadwinner) became chronically ill and
could no longer work.

I could write a book on the good, the bad, and the ugly of just my life
insurance sales experience alone.

But one thing I've learned from all of my past experiences, personal and
professional, is that I thrive when challenged (and supported), I love
flexibility, and I am passionate about working towards financial freedom
that doesn't require me to trade my time for money. It took me way too
long to realize the last point, but now is all that matters.

Finally, I LOVE to read (everything from sci-fi and "chick lit" to
non-fiction), dance, and stretch (yes, this has become a strange "hobby"
in my life lately, haha). Being in nature is my happy place, and I
would love to experience more travel and living outside of the U.S. at
some point in life, even if it's just for a few months.

Okay, that wasn't that short...but I hope it was at least semi-sweet :)