How to create aliases in terminal

I just installed mysql on my imac and in the documentation it suggests that I create an alias for the mysql server path so I don't have to keep typing out the long path.

it suggests to create an alias called 'mysql' for the path '/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql'

I tried this by doing the command 'alias mysql=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql' which works while the terminal is open. But as soon as I restart the terminal, the alias is no longer there.

I tried creating a .bash_profile but am unsuccessful in this as after this file is created and I open terminal, it has some errors and the aliases don't work.

If you could please help me figure out how to get these aliases to work, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks, Chris