Is Your “About” Page All About You?
When people come across your personal blog and are trying to decide whether or not they want to make your daily life a daily part of theirs, your “About” page is often the first place they look for more information. While it’s never going to be the most visited page on your site, when it comes to turning visitors into readers, your “About” page is very important.
Personal blogs are often introspective but if there is only one page on your site written specifically for your audience, I think it should be this one.
So how do you write an “About” page?
The Good Advice
In How to Write the Perfect ‘About’ Page (by Numbers), Skellie points out that although many “About” pages are the digital equivalent of the author bios found on a book jacket, the “selling text” on a book jacket also contains a blurb and the priorities are clear…
The blurb should always come first.
- What does your site have to offer?
- Who is it written for?
- What are the benefits?
Then, the bio.
The Difficulty With This Advice
If you’re anything like me, you might baulk at the idea of defining your audience and unless you have some megalomaniacal tendencies, you might draw a blank when it comes to perceiving any benefits for those reading.
I’m joking about the megalomaniacal tendencies, of course. Some people are naturally skilled at selling themselves and some people have learned those skills the hard way. I think the majority of personal bloggers, however, are fairly humble about what they do and find it difficult to assess the value of what they labour to create.
But humility isn’t always a virtue.
Most people don’t like a braggart and we try to avoid seeming like one, even to ourselves. We talk down our commitment, our achievement, our talent. Because it’s the polite thing to do.
However…
It’s Still Good Advice
If you are stuck at the idea of “selling” yourself and your blog, step back and look at it from the other side of the glass: This advice is polite.
As Skellie says in her article…
Personal bloggers don’t get out of this one. You still need a blurb, you can still explain what your site has to offer, who it’s written for and what the benefits are. You’re writing for an audience, just like anyone else.
If you’re introverted like me, your focus is most often turned inward. When writing your “About” page, however, you need to switch gears and focus on your readers.
Because your “About” page is actually all about them.
Can We Workshop This?
The line between us and our blogs is pretty fuzzy so separating our “blurbs” from our “bios” in the linear way described above is problematic. What I’ve written above is mostly philosophy and I’m not entirely sure how we should put it into practice.
If anyone would like to volunteer their “About” page for dissection by the community here so that we can workshop it together, let me know in the comments or via my contact form. I think it could be a really useful exercise.
In the meantime… Whose “About” page do you love, and what makes it work? Do you love your own and, if not, what don’t you like about it?
[A Note for Blogger Users: Obviously Blogger doesn’t have the ability to create static pages but you can still create a psuedo page by writing an “About” post, backdating it so that it doesn’t display on your front page and then linking to it from a text widget in your sidebar. Tip from Sephy at Sephy’s Platzish]
UPDATE: Lightening has kindly volunteered her About page for us to workshop. The workshop will run in 2 weeks time, so if you’d like to familiarise yourself with her blog you’ll find her at LIGHTENING. Pop on over. She’s lovely.
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16 Responses to “Is Your “About” Page All About You?”
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Oh my About Me Page sucks! I wacked it together really fast just to have ’something’ and have intended to work on it but keep putting it aside! Can’t wait to see if someone volunteers to have theirs worked… I am not game! LOL
Blogger users do have an “About Me” section. It is in the sidebar, can say anything you like, and is part of one’s full profile, the whole of which can be accessed with a click. Or you can limit the profile to whatever appears in “About Me”.
I can see already from what you’ve said that it does not really include what I offer readers. I did that in the subtitle/description of the blog. Instead the “About Me” is full of personal details so that if old cronies are looking for me they can actually find me, and professional details because it was originally intended as a poetry blog (but it mutated) … and I fear it’s incredibly dull, and oh wot-the-heck, if anyone would like to have a look and tell me the brutal truth, please do!
There’s actually a lot of other self-obsessed stuff in the sidebar too. Is it all too much, or does it soften the dry professional bits?
Of course I took a look at yours, kate, and it’s delightful! Makes me think I’d really like you - and also tells me that your blog is probably not for me as I am a bit beyond my child-rearing years and have never been able to sustain a garden. So all in all, I think it does the job.
Kate - I hope someone is game to volunteer too!
Rosemary - The reason I included that “Blogger” tip was because I think there are some benefits of doing that over simply having the link to the Blogger “profile” page. Those profile pages are severeley limited in their formatting options and lack any visual connection with your blog. Basically, they’re impersonal.
I think that when we work on our site design to make it reflect our writing and our personality we deserve to have our “About” page reflect that too. Setting up pseudo pages like this would also make some space on your sidebar, because you don’t have to try and fit everything there.
I have done that on our website-in-a-blog, Life Magic. Just a little bit of the profile ‘About Me’ in the sidebar, and a page each for Andrew and me.
My friend the Atlanta poet Collin Kelley created another blog at his same profile for ‘About Collin Kelley’, which he keeps fairly static. It’s linked to his main blog, and has only two posts, both displayed, with a lot of information, and he has also used the sidebar well. It doesn’t need a lot of updating, but that’s possible when required. Another option! (I can’t make his link work, but Google him and it’s easy to find.)
I only recently updated my about me page and it was only after ages and ages of dust gathering. I used some of the ideas I read in an article aimed mainly at business or niche bloggers. I wonder if my direction is too poor on my blog? The about me page really brought it to my attention.
Yes, Rosemary. That’s exactly the kind of thing I meant. I think it’s much nicer for readers to see that info within your design, instead of feeling like you’ve navigated away from the site. (Or, at least, it is for me. :))
Lee, I think you’ve started with telling readers what your blog is about but perhaps it the “about popular culture and stuff” that’s bugging you. I’m going to talk about the idea of “niche” blogs soon because that’s a big issue, but looking at your tag cloud, there seems to be a lot of coonsistency to me.
Question - how does one backdate a Blogger post, does anyone know?
Hmmm, I dunno. I think this may be a case where different strategies answer different needs - on Blogger, I mean. I just began yet another blog and need little ‘About Me’ there. I think it’s nice to have it all in sidebar, MORE not less integrated with site design. Same with my other personal blogs, even though they contain more info. People can look from posts to sidebar and see at a glance who this person is who’s writing.
But on yer actual website we did want much more information, and two complete separate pages on each of us was the only way to go.
… I can’t see a thing wrong with Lightening’s!
SnakyPoet, I will chase up the information on backdating Blogger posts for you. Alternatively, you could visit Sephy at Sephy’s Platzish (worth a visit even just to see the photos from his winter walks) because he is always happy to write a how-to and has a standing invitation for requests, which you can leave via his contact form.
I agree with you that different sites have different needs in terms of About pages. And I like Lightening’s About page too.
This is more an exercise in seeing how what is generally considered “best practice” translates when applied to a personal blog. Together, we might come up with something brilliant, or it might be a disaster. But I think it will be a useful exercise either way.
My About Me page was done before I launched the blog. At that stage, and still now, with a new blog I found it hard to define who its written for, what it has to offer etc. I haven’t set out to have a niche blog, other than a personal one, so it all feels a bit vague at the moment.
This is something that I will need to update as the blog evolves I guess. If anyone has any immediate suggestions though on something that I may have missed feel free to let me know
I don’t have an about page… and it’s intentional. I used to have an about page, and a lot of personal information(even the most abstract piece of information can be used against you), but since I’ve come ‘back’ online I’ve since deleted it to keep my information private. I gripe about people and work on my website and the less information that connects me to my ‘real life’ on my blog the better for people I may choose to write about.
With that said, ever since I read this post I’ve been thinking about getting an ‘about’ page still online with more personality type information rather than identity information.
Just to go off topic for a second, thanks for letting me advertise on your blog!
Thanks Lani, Sephy was very helpful. For others who might want to know this, he said:
To change the date on a post in blogger, click Post Options when in the Create/Edit post window, and then edit the date and time of the post, then save the post.
That’s it
SnakyPoet - Sephy’s great, isn’t he? Thanks for posting the answer here, too, for others. You’re so nice!
As just explained on your “Traffic” post, I - the artist formerly known as SnakyPoet - am reverting to using real name in these posts cos someone said bloggers should establish a brand name, and for my writing I’d like my real name to be the one that gets known. (Also, on any Blogger blogs, that is what will display anyhow, being my Blogger profile name.)
So much for name, what about occupation? Similar advice (from Dosh Dosh) said to be clear - no fancy made-up titles like Creative Director, but rather a useful description like Plumber (if that’s what you are). And if you have several occupations? Choose one, she advises. Ah, this has always been my problem. What to call myself? I guess on the web I’m mainly a Writer. Or should I say Poet? But then, must I really leave out Reiki Master and Psychic Reader? Well, perhaps, since I don’t do those things online. But in a personal blog, don’t they add to what makes me interesting? Or are professional details irrelevant anyway in a personal blog?
I don’t know! I’d like to know what others think. In fact will very likely blog on it sometime soon, but right now am wearing my “Teacher of Creative Writing” hat and must get off the computer and do preparation for class!
The other thing that you can do in Blogger is create a new blog entirely as your about page and then link to it.
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