5 Tips For An About Page You Can Be Proud Of.
Your About Page is your secret weapon, you just don’t know it yet.
Maybe you’re the person who didn’t put much thought into your about page, you started your business and just threw a pile of words on the screen one late night, and haven’t given it another thought since.
Or you’re the person who thought WAAYYYY TOOO MUCH, so much in fact, that somehow you created a CV that says nothing of who you are, and what you believe.
Or maybe you’re someone else entirely, it really doesn’t matter.
Whoever you are, whatever you do, if you have a website, your about page is your most important sales weapon. It’s often the reason why someone works with you instead of someone else— or the other way around, but I’m a cup half full kind of guy.
A great About Page isn’t a perfect list of accomplishments, awards, and bravado.
A great About Page is a carefully crafted masterpiece
that leaves you charmingly vulnerable, and undeniably YOU.
Simple right?
Except writing about yourself if terrifying and awkward… until it’s not.
Tips to get you started writing an about page you can be proud of.
1. Speak in the first person.
Stop acting like you are such a big deal that someone else is writing your About page.
Seriously, just stop it. It’s weird— unless you are part of a bigger team, or maybe you’re Oprah.
You are likely not a big deal enough to say things like “Geoff has always been a thought leader, even amongst his peers at nursery school he was nominated king of the playground... and a benevolent king he was.”
It can make you look insecure, possibly as if you have something to prove.
2. Hire A Professional Photographer
Stop Catfishing your clients.
We all know those people whose Facebook profile picture or Tinder account doesn’t look like them.
It can feel unsettling to meet someone in real life, or zoom for the first time and not be able to recognize them from the photographs on their About Page.
Meeting a client is like having a first date. We all know how much we’d trust someone if they showed up for a romantic rendezvous with a different face than the one in your profile picture.
And further more, no one swipes right on the blurry photo, with the bad lighting, and the artsy angle where you can mostly just see up their nose.
Business is no different and so with all the love in my heart, I must tell you…
A selfie in your bathroom,
or a photo from the last wedding you attended
is not good enough.
Maybe you’re thinking, “Well mine aren’t that bad.” But folks, they are.
If you want your clients to hire you, to give you their hard earned money, you need to show, and believe that you are worth it. If you aren’t willing to invest in your business by showing the world who you are, and how you view yourself, by investing in good headshots and content photography then why should anyone invest in you?
In today’s world good images are accessible enough that people will settle for nothing less.
3. Be Real
No one is interested in your white picket fence, they want the slightly worn one, where the gate fell off long ago.
In other words, they aren’t interested in the Instagram-perfect version of your flawless life. Okay, well, they’re a little bit interested. Of course you should put your best foot forward. Of course this is not the place to talk about how your dirty socks always end up under the bed, and that you lose your keys and wallet more often then you’re willing to admit to anyone. Including yourself…hypothetically.
But it’s also not the place to pretend that you never do anything quirky or even a tiny bit embarrassing.
Why, you ask? People kind of hate those super perfect people. They want to know you’re amazing and funny and talented, or deep and artsy, but they also want to know that you don’t think you are better than them, or at least not always ;) They want to know that they shouldn’t be embarrassed at their existence while in your presence.
Your clients want to connect with you in all the spots, good and bad.
They want to know that you have terrible awful but hilarious bed head just like them. They want to know that sometimes you eat all the chocolate bars and drink way too much wine. They are hoping that every once in a while you too are neurotic about this one particular thing and sometimes, just sometimes, your life is less than magazine worthy.
Don’t get it twisted though: they don’t need to know about your childhood trauma, your messy divorce, or the fact that you haven’t brushed your teeth in three days. Unless it’s to further the point of your story, and you’re speaking from the scar not the wound. You keep that shit to yourself!
4. Good Design Is Your Friend
No one is actually reading your site.
It’s an inconvenient truth.
People aren’t really reading your site. I know, it’s so sad. You put all this time in, you cried while painstakingly choosing the right words, and after 73 hours of work you still aren’t sure it’s right.
Fuck them right? How dare they not read what you’ve got to say? But they just don’t. It’s not their fault. The world is an overwhelming place and our brains jobs are to sort out what’s “killer” and what’s “filler”. Turns out our brains are tired, and the easier we make it for them, the better results we are going to get.
Research shows (look, I’m not making things up) that only 16% of people on your site will read the whole page. That means that 84% of the people that grace your tiny corner of the web will only scan over your words.
Your perfect client can make their way to your website, have all the right words in front of them, and still miss that you’re the one for them, if you don’t make it incredibly simple.
What ever shall you do then?
Write and design your website in a way that draws people in.
Make it easy for them to scan. Put the important shit in bold. See what I did there?
Use headlines that aren’t only catchy but also tell us something.
And create visual interest with the use of photographs(::ahem:: hire that photographer) and graphics.
5. Don’t Forget To Brag A Little
The work doesn’t speak for itself.
It should. But it doesn’t. If you don’t brag about yourself, at least a little bit, how will your clients know how awesome you are?
Newsflash THEY WONT! You are going to have to do it yourself.
What inspires you? What makes you special? Who has nice stuff to say about you? What amazing training, genius or specific combination of skills do you have that makes you an amazing catch?
TELL US!!!
