Why An ABOUT Page Is So Important - Part III of Fine Tuning Your Blog
Who are you?
What do you do for a living?
Why should I care what you write?
I want to get to know YOU, not just your writing.
That’s why you need an ABOUT page. And a well-written one…with some details and thought.
Too many people ignore their ABOUT page. Awhile ago (can’t remember where I heard about this), there was a meme going around about doing searches on Technorati (I think) for all the default About pages that people never change from the WordPress theme setup. Funny, but sad…so sad…
Over the month of October, my About page received 302 unique visitors, with an Exit % of 33.7% (which means 66.3% of the people that visited the page went on to other pages of the blog.
Recently, I updated my About page using Laura Allen’s 15 Second Pitch. The goal was to get more people to contact me.
Specifically, I wrote:
Give me a call for a free 30 minute consultation to find out how I can help you build your business.
Since that’s gone up, 3 people have gotten in touch with me. They emailed (no calls yet!) and the dialogues have continued. One person asked me some advice on a business idea he had. That was a great honor for me, and it’s been uber-fun chatting with that person. The other two were looking for help/advice on their blogs…
I can’t be sure any of these people checked out my About page (I didn’t ask) but it makes me think that putting a call to action there has helped. It certainly doesn’t hurt!
The two biggest mistakes people make (short of not writing a proper About page at all) are that they don’t including contact information and they don’t update it. Even re-reading mine for the purpose of writing this blog post, I notice some tweaking that’s needed (although I’ve got plenty of contact information.)
Here’s what I know (from my research, testing and validation):
- If you don’t have an About page you’re missing out on opportunities.
- If you have a crappy About page you’re missing out on opportunities.
- If you don’t update your About page regularly you’re missing out on opportunities.
- If you don’t include your contact information on your About page you’re missing out on opportunities.
Go read your About page now. Please. Fix it up. Tell me who you are, what you’re about, why I should care, and how I can get in touch. Cause I will…and so will a ton of other people too.
This is the third part of a multi-part series on fine tuning your blog through research, testing and validation. The first part was Increasing RSS Feed Subscribers. The second part was Making Money From Your Blog.
QUICKIE: More on Why An ABOUT Page Is So Important…
Wow! This must be a day when everybody obsesses about their About Me page. Just after posting about Copyblogger’s Why People Want to Know What’s In It For *You*, I found a fresh-today post from Ben Yoskovitz on his Instigator…
you know, i think i’d like your help with this. i think i can do pretty well with it - i have really decent traffic and it might be a way to help ‘convert’ visitors, you know? let’s talk about this in the next few.
Julien - ping me sometime I’m happy to help if I can. I’ll check out what you’ve got too…
[…] One article that I find highly beneficial for about pages is A List Apart’s article on choosing your about page robot. Another great article I stumbled upon explains the importance of a good about page. […]
[…] Why An ABOUT Page Is So Important “Go read your About page now. Please. Fix it up. Tell me who you are, what you’re about, why I should care, and how I can get in touch. Cause I will … and so will a ton of other people too.” Ben Yoskovitz is quite a curious fellow who wants to know all sorts of things about you and he is not the only one. About pages are often (depending on the subjects you cover and your audience) the most visited static pages. The point is that you will miss out on opportunities if you don’t have a decent About page. Since we should embrace the opportunities that present themselves that is a compelling reason to finally get that About page written or updated. […]
[…] connecting with people. To do that, you need to present your blog in a personal way. That includes writing a good about page. And for good measure, why not include a photo of yourself as well? Tags: blog tipping, blog […]