Anyone with freelance permissions or higher can have an author profile made for them.
You can update profile information in two places: the user profile and the author profile. Typically, the user profile is meant to display information for any kind of user (including audience members), whereas author profiles are specifically meant for editorial contributors.
Author profiles allow audiences to see all of the stories from an account in one place. They’re beneficial because they help build audience trust, improve discoverability of content, and boost overall site performance in search. They are always linked to an existing account, and managers can add a photo, bio, and title, as well as contact information.
How author profiles work
When you create an author profile for an account, this will replace the public user profile as the landing page for their byline. The author profile will show all the content they have ever had a byline on. It will also show the author profile photo, bio, title, and any additional social media and contact information pulled from the associated account.
Author profiles on eater.com or chalkbeat.org will display stories from around their respective networks. Otherwise, author profiles display stories from a single community.
Your organization has the option to take author profile information to generate a landing page, which can show your information as well as any published content that you have a byline for. Because the author profile is always linked to an account, there’s also an option to pull in that associated information (such as social media or contact links).
Create an author profile
- Make sure the contributor has a Chorus account with author or freelance permissions. If the First and Last name fields are blank, the username will display.
- From your homepage, select Quick Admin > Members.
- Select Author Profiles.
- Select Create Author Profile.
- Choose the account in the User dropdown. If you cannot find the account, you may need to create one first.
- Select Save.
- Add a profile image. (You can update or delete this later.) We recommend using a square image that’s at least 400px wide, with the subject centered.
- Add the contributor’s bio. You can include HTML in the bio field for links (e.g., video series, podcasts, books, or major stories on other sites).
- By default, the path for the author profile is /authors/firstname-lastname. You can customize it in the Profile URL Slug field.
- Select Save again when you’re finished. Author profiles are cached, so it may take a few minutes for them to update.
Optimizing author profiles
Author profiles are helpful for audiences and crucial for improving search results. Studies have shown that Google uses pages like these as a means of evaluating authority. We recommend making the information on author profiles as complete as possible.
Bios should include the following information to maximize optimization:
- topics or beats the author covers
- credentials such as education, job titles, and companies they’ve worked for
- links to any public appearances
- links to any especially popular features they have done
This variety of information tells Google that they should be trusted as a subject matter expert, and helps improve discoverability for content.
Examples of author profiles
In this example from Vox, you can see Julia Belluz’s profile image, title, and bio - all of which are set in the author profile. Her contact information for Twitter and Facebook were set in here own user profile, which she can update directly.