How Do You Write Your Agent Bio? Put Your Best Foot Forward & Write Something Unique (Lose the Boilerplate!)

Today I got a postcard from an agent who's relatively new to the business. It appears that she studied a number of other agent's biographies and "about me" pages to figure out what to write about herself, because she copied at least part of the  description word for word. I'd seen it many times before, so could not resist the thought of Googling it.

Here's a snippet of what she copied: (agent name) "joins a group of distinguished real estate professionals who are all part of the most sophisticated and technologically advanced marketing firm".

One prominent real estate brokerage in Silicon Valley is probably responsible for actually authoring this powerful phrase, because initially those words could be found on virtually every bio of agents within that company. Now, though, if you take the phrase and Google it, it shows up across many firms. Just now when I used quotation marks and plugged this in to Google, it came back with 1030 exact responses. Now we're talking boilerplate.

And that's the funny part. The language is "distinguished", but if there are 1029 others with the exact same description, it's not distinguished. It's a "me too". It's ironic.

It is not easy to write a bio about oneself. The public wants to know why it should chose you, or even chose to speak with you. The public wants to know how you are different from everyone else. Given that many consumers rely heavily on the internet in searching for their homes, and sometimes their agents too, it is very helpful to distinguish oneself with an authentically unique (non copied) bio.

Rule # 1: When you write your agent bio or promo pieces, find your own way of expressing why you have strengths that should be factored in favorably.  When you have a boilerplate method of listing your assets, you undermine your own uniqueness, not just in the eyes of Google, but more importantly, in the eyes of your would-be prospects.