I receive more comments and compliments on my About page than any other single page on Feels Like Home, so I offered to share some information with you on creating a rocking About page.
Why You Need an About Page
Why should someone read your blog? If I’m new to your site, I want to learn about you. I want to know what your hook is. What makes you special?
Your existing readers want to know who you are. They are already reading your stories, and they want to know more about the person behind them.
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” only works for the Wizard of Oz. (Wait a minute. It didn’t really work for him, either, did it?)
Whether they’re established or new, your readers want to know the person who’s writing the posts. Whose stories are these, anyway?
6 Tips for a Fabulous About Page
- Include at least one photo. Include a few if you feel so moved. Let readers see who you are.
- Show off your voice. You write every day in your unique voice. Make sure your About page sounds like you wrote it, no matter what you decide to write.
- Be unique. This isn’t a resume; don’t just list what you do and what you have done. Tell about you – your soul, your passion, your favorite necklace. Talk about the essence of what makes you you.
- Write in first person. This isn’t a bio on the back of a book; it’s your introduction to current and future readers. Don’t write it in the third person.
- Tell a story. Your About page shouldn’t be a blog post, but it might be easier to talk about yourself if you frame it as a story. Is there a story that you always tell the first time you meet someone in person? That might be just the one for your About page.
- Explain why. Why do you write about whatever you write about? Why did you go bungee jumping in college? Why do you love jewelry so much? Explaining your motivation makes you much more real to your readers.
- Include a few links at the end. Do you have a certain tag that readers might like to explore? Link it at the end. Or are there posts that give a lot of information about you as a human being? Include them here.
