Writing a Good Bio

Laura's been kind of obsessed lately with networking -- and "kind of" is kind of an understatement (kind of!) -- so she's been spending a lot of her time ("a lot" is kind of an understatement, too) on-line on every single social networking site known to man.  This includes Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and she has to say, while she's been ambivalent about these sites for a long time, wondering if they waste more time than make good use of time, she's definitely not ambivalent anymore.

For one thing, she sent an email to lots and lots of friends on Facebook -- friends in publishing -- editors and agents and authors (Laura's not bragging, just trying to make a point) -- to let them know she was interested in ghostwriting and collaborative work and she got a great response!  From everyone! Except from the Facebook Team who threatened to shut down her account because apparently you're not supposed to send around a giant email letting people know you're interested in gainful employment. Instead, you're supposed to set up a "Page" of some kind to "advertise" and "promote" your "services" but that seems like an awfully passive way to go about expanding your work-sphere compared with just being direct.

Then she went on LinkedIn and had another positive experience (and no one there threatened to shut down her LinkedIn account.  At least not yet.)

Twitter proved to be the biggest surprise because while Laura had been slow to realize how fun Twitter is with its 140-character micro-blogging business, she didn't have a clue that it was a good networking and friend-making tool, too.

First of all, she became excellent "Twitter" pals with an author she loves but has never met -- Julie Klam, whose book Please Excuse My Daughter is the funny but really moving memoir Laura wishes she wrote (for a rave review by a #1 NYTs bestselling author, go to www.jenniferweiner.blogspot.com).  Laura and Julie share a mutual friend, one of Laura's bestest [sic] friends of all time and book publicist-extraordinaire, Marian Brown, and Laura and Julie were Facebook "friends," but somehow the immediacy of Twitter really cemented their virtual-friendship.

Not that Facebook doesn't generate that same potential "heat" for making Insta-LUV-friends: Laura and Jane Green, another author Laura has never met, have had some great exchanges on FB, and Laura and Stephanie Green (no relation to Jane Green) met on Facebook (both are breast-cancer peeps -- Stephanie's amazing blog is www.dishalicious.blogspot.com and will hopefully provide tons of material for the book she's working on) and recently had a fantastic lunch together in Boston when Stephanie was in from Miami.  (Laura's sure she's forgetting a few other Insta-LUV-friends and will update this post later with additions...)

Back to Twitter, though, which started out being the point of this post:  Laura ended up answering a Twitter query from Marci Alboher -- Marci, until recently, had a blog for the New York Times based on her terrific book, One Person/Multiple Careers, and currently guest blogs for Yahoo on her new blog, Working the New Economy.  When Marci tweeted that she was looking for people with interesting bios (resume-related), Laura sent her a quick message with a few suggestions (namely, writer Tom Perrotta whose website bio is hilarious).

(Before Laura goes any further she wants to apologize for all the name-dropping which isn't the point of this post [you might be wondering: What IS the point of this post?  Good question...])

Anyway, Laura and Marci had a great exchange and it turned out that Marci included a link to Laura's third-person-website bio in the blog she was writing about bios -- which is the point of this post.  Here's the link to that post and Laura is not only grateful to Marci for the mention but would like to share Marci with anyone who reads this because Marci has some of THE best and most interesting and intelligent advice about staying relevant and hire-able in this ridiculously awful economy.