Writing a good ‘About’ page
To really capture your audience and to get them to relate to you more I believe it is crucial to have a few key things on your blog / website. One of the most crucial ones is the ‘About‘ page.
Apart from letting your readers know a bit more about your blog, you can also tell them a little more about yourself so that your readers have a better connection with you and what you write about. You don’t need to get intimately personal, but share what you’re comfortable with.
Here’s what I put on mine;
My name is Mathew Packer, my friends call me Matt or Packer. I live on the east coast of Australia in a beautiful city called Newcastle with my fiance Cath, and our dog Cherry Bomb.
I’m a fiance, photographer, blogger, entrepreneur, freelance web designer, marketing genius, editor, 9-5 worker, golfer, sometimes-handy man, and generally a pretty nice guy.
Another thing that I think is very important these days in blogging, particularly when their is advertising revenue involved, is to actually write a disclosure statement.
Time and time again I read articles on peoples blogs where they’re promoting some form of advertising or the latest and greatest pyramid scam / scheme but they don’t actually use it themselves or even worse they’re just signed up as an affiliate to promote it to their readers who in turn are the ones who actually put the time and dollars into the scheme.
When it comes to reviewing products and making recommendations on them, inform your readers if have an existing relationship with the company who have sent you the product. Recently I’ve seen a couple of fairly high profile bloggers recommending products of brands who were advertisers on their websites, yet they failed to inform their readers of that existing relationship and were scrutinized for potentially providing a very bias review.
As an example, here’s my statement;
I will not write about advertising channels, search engine marketing techniques, or even products, that I do not use. This won’t change under any circumstances so please do not contact me about endorsing anything unless you’re prepared to send me a free sample, and unless you’re prepared to receive genuine and honest feedback about it.
The reviews that i have published are based on time I’ve spent with the product and are very honest. If I don’t like it I do inform my readers, and on the flip side if I receive excellent service or I’ve found a product that is very good I also tell me readers. This has always been the case, and will continue to be the case. The banners on my blog are all companies that I have bought things from and received excellent service, they are companies I am happy to recommend based on that and that alone.
What other things can you put on your ‘About’ page. The list is endless really, but for some ideas here are a bunch of different ‘About’ pages from other bloggers who I think understand the importance of having the About page;
- Darren from Problogger.com
- Dan Boud from Boudist.com
- Chris Garrett from Chrisg.com
- Skellie from skelliewag.org
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