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It’s not about you! How to write a great about page

Write a great About Page

Do you feel awkward writing about yourself?

Is your About Page full of generic and faceless images, or rambling stories with no real connection to the work that you do?

  • How do you come across as professional, yet friendly and approachable?
  • How do you showcase your qualifications and credentials, without sounding (and feeling) like a show off?
  • How much information is too much information?

Your About Page is one of the most important pages on your site (and one of the most visited – check your Google Analytics and see if I’m right.) It’s a prime opportunity to connect with your audience and start building a relationship that will help them grow to know, like and trust you.

People arrive on your site from all sorts of directions. They could follow a Facebook ad to a landing page; they might discover you via a blog you’ve shared on Medium or LinkedIn, or could simply arrive on your homepage by punching in the URL.

Once they’ve checked out that first page, what’s their next most likely action? They want to find out who is behind this website and what else you can do for them, so they head over to the About Page.

The key to writing a great About Page is to remember this golden rule:

Your about page is not about you. It’s about how you help your customer.

Everything you include on your About Page should be written with that in mind. Focus on letting your customers know who you are, what you can do, and why they should trust you – and showcasing your personality too.

Here’s what you should cover in a great About Page:

  1. Show your customer that you get it – Let your customer know that you understand their problem.
  2. Show them you can help ­– Introduce yourself and explain why you’re the right person (or have the right product) to help them get it sorted. This could be by sharing your credentials, or telling a personal story of how you came to your mission or to create your product. Don’t feel like you have to give a full CV or outline every piece of paper to your name – focus on what your audience needs to know to trust you with the task at hand.
  3. Show them how you help – give a brief outline of what you do, so they know how they can work with you.
  4. Show your pretty face – In the online world it’s especially important to build trust and confidence, especially if we are asking clients to hand over credit card details. Let them see the person or people behind the brand, with professional yet relaxed images of you (and your staff), in your office or home environment.
  5. Keep it real – If you’re a one woman shop, don’t be tempted to use “we” or the third person (for example, “Here at Sarah Jones Consulting”) to give an impression that you are a bigger operation. Besides, if the client is dealing with Sarah Jones Consulting, more than likely they want Sarah Jones to be the one doing the work, not some unnamed colleague.
  6. Cut the fat – Don’t tell random stories about when you were a kid, unless they are directly relevant to the way you help your audience now. And chop out any unnecessary fillers like “nice to see you here”  – to someone who does not yet know you, these risk coming across as shallow or insincere. Instead, use the suitcase theory of writing – pack all the words in, then chop half out.
  7. Let your personality shine – If it works for your audience, don’t be afraid to use casual language, or slip in the odd joke. Allow your audience see a little of the person behind the brand and they’ll feel more connected to you from the get go.

Keeping the focus on how you can help your customer makes it much easier to keep your writing concise, useful and focused.

Click here and check out my brand new About Page Copy Kit – a video lesson + workbook that will take you step by step through the process of creating an About Page that showcases who you are and what you do without resorting to a cookie cutter.

 

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