How do you define yourself? Your business?

And what are the fewest amount of words you can do that in?

The challenge is different when you are talking about an older, established brand, vs. a newer one.

With an old brand, you have years of tradition to tweak and build on. Sometimes, you’re enlisting language in a quest to overcome baggage or a tired brand identity.

With a newer brand, you’re trying to tease recognition out of an emerging space; you’re looking for ways to frame things in a way that connects your audience to something they understand and can relate to.

It’s the old “It’s Die Hard on a bus” scenario. You need to find the familiar markers, something that will help you communicated the essentials, quickly and succinctly. It’s this meets that. Chicago with talking dinosaurs. Whatever will help you get people’s heads nodding in recognition.

At least that’s what I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: how to cut right down to the essence of what a brand is.

How few words can you do it in?

When I’ve talked to people about brand-building on the grass-roots level, I’ve urged them to spend a lot of time thinking about their Twitter bio. It’s a challenging exercise because you only have 140 characters. You can cram as many in things in as you can think of , including ferriswheelscupcakesfixiesfriedchickenthaiicedteabrooklynacademyofmusic.

But it’s a lot harder to be succinct.To figure out how to say something effectively in the minimum amount of words.

Of course, what’s interesting to look at is brand that have really taken hold of the public imagination. This is Facebook’s Twitter “bio”:

It struck me because it seems rather limited. The brand qualities that make Facebook so unique (everyone, including your mom, is using it), as well as its ubiquity are absent or just alluded to.

I think its because Facebook, like Twitter, has reached a level where they don’t need to be explained as much to people.

In the beginning, you might have been hard-pressed to deliver a one-liner about Twitter. Now, we almost take for granted that it’s an excellent medium to track breaking news, and what’s happening at the moment.

Their bio is a model of brevity:

A short bio (at least for a lot of individuals and small businesses) like these shouldn’t be seen as something cast into stone. It’s something you should think about and revisit often. Ideally, it’s the crystallization of the core values you want to present to the world. If you’re challenging yourself, those core values will evolve.

So if you’re stumped about crafting one, here’s what I would recommend:

1. Resist the urge to cram together a laundry list of disparate things. While a lot of people are quite witty with this, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach leaves visitors to your bio without a clear takeaway message.

2. Focus on the specific and the concrete, rather than the abstract.

3. Have fun and let your personality shine through.