Today I want to set us all a little homework – a challenge of sorts – to update your blogs ‘About Page’.
This challenge evolves out of the embarrassing realisation that my own about page here on ProBlogger was dated and in need of a refresh.
It had been well over 12 months since I’d last looked at it – in that time I’d ended some projects mentioned on the page but also started new things like the ProBlogger Event – embarrassing!
It is particularly embarrassing because a blog’s About Page is often one of the first places a new visitor to a blog goes to check out what the blog is about, who is behind it and to make a decision whether it’s a blog that they want to subscribe to!
Many bloggers I speak with report that their About Page is one of their most read pages on their blog – get it wrong and you could be losing readers, hurting your brand or just looking dated.
So today I did a quick update of the page to fix the obvious problems and have put a fuller rewrite on the cards for the next week.
I also thought if my about page was dated – there must be a lot of others out there with similar issues so lets do a group challenge of sorts and all refresh out pages together!
There is no right or wrong way to write your about page but if you’re looking for a bit of inspiration check out this previous post on the topic – How Your About Page Can Make or Break Your Blog which gives some practical tips including:
- Introduce yourself
- Remember the mantra: What’s In It For Me?
- Sharing Who the Blog is For
- Being Personal – but not too personal
- Determine the goal of your About page
- Always end with a call to action
Once you’ve updated your About Page – please link to it below in comments so we can see the approach you’ve taken (I’m sure we could all learn a lot about creating great About Pages through seeing how each other does it).
Great tips. I had my son and didn’t update this in my about page until a few weeks ago. I just need to know update my photo which is a bit dated . But here it is… Let me know what else I should update
http://theparentingfiles.com.au/about
Great work darren , I love when you make out a strateigy like this, Search blog about page on google and this post would be on top, Because of no of about page links it has, ver nice
My about page is signifying that people should share more about success , here it goes
http://mysuccess-stories.com/your-success-story/
Thanks for the reminder…newly tweaked About page here:
http://theprovencepost.blogspot.com/p/about.html
This is harder than you think! Here’s mine http://shambolicliving.com/about/
Great challenge.
I actually had to go and have a look at my about page myself. Now that I updated it, I kinda realized how I am moving forward with my blogging as well, I had more to say and more things to add. Wouldn’t have thought of this myself, not any time soon. Thanks!
Great reminder Darren. Made me look at mine with a very critical eye and completely rewrite it. If anybody has any feedback, I’d be grateful:
http://freedom-blog.org/about-me/
Thanks
Andrew
I suggest aligning text to the left – center alignment can be awkward to read on a computer screen. Just my $0.02. :)
Thanks for this post. My page is in Spanish, but I want to have the version in English as soon as possible. To people that can understand Spanish that would be great to have some feedback. Thank you so much.
I think many bloggers and website owners forget about this important pages. I have also wrote an article related to this. It is definitely very important to have that kind of page and keep it update.
Ha! I could have written this exact post. I recently finally got a look at my blog’s About page and like you was a little mortified at how out of date it was. Now, I’ve added more of my favorite type of testimonials — screenshot tweets I like to call “Tweetermonials” — updated my accomplishments and the growth of the blog and my community site, and more. Also shortened it up a bit and got it subheaded better for more scannability.
Seeing this today made me give it one more read and I gave it a few more tweaks.
Here you go: http://www.makealivingwriting.com/about-carol
Enjoy! See you at WDS, Darren…really looking forward to your talk with ChrisG!
WOW! You people actually are the encouragement I look up to when ever I feel I would not succeed as a blogger. great work. do suggest me as to how to become a better blogger.
Menaka Bharathi
Hey Darren, thanks for the reminder. I’ve also updated my About page today.
I had a question to ask: I see most bloggers don’t allow comments on their about page, you’ve also disabled the comments on that page. Is there any specific reason for that? Why should I disable comments on About page?
Hi Ehsan, I think in general we do not want comments on any of our pages, but on our blog posts only.
I know this is how I’ve set up my blogs and the majority of bloggers too. I don’t think open comments on pages would be that useful anyway.
Great reminder. I did have some old content on there that need to be removed and reworked.
http://achievethegreenberetway.com/about-mike-martel/
Oh, thank you Darren. Mine definitely needed updating . . . and that brought to mind the Welcome page I have on Facebook with much of the same content. YIKES! So I re-did them both:
The Boat Galley About page:
http://theboatgalley.com/about/
The Boat Galley’s Facebook Welcome page:
https://www.facebook.com/TheBoatGalley?v=app_115462065200508
Hey Caroline, I think your About looks wonderful.
One suggestion: at the end, perhaps decide what call to action you want most and use that. I think you have too many there: FB page, opt-in, book, and people may get confused with too many options and do none of them. My 2 cents :)
Thank you for this post! I made some adjustments to our About page as a result. Any constructive feedback is welcome – thank you again!
Add me to the list of people mortified by their about page. I’ve done some tweaking today and will do a complete overhaul this weekend. Here is the link to my about page. http://joyreturns.com/aboutcontact/
Thanks Darren for this homework. Now off to do the “other” homework – dusting, sweeping, laundry, etc…
What a great reminder! I just updated my page at http://lisabrowndesign.blogspot.com/2011/08/about-me.html :) Check it out, and feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear what you think. :)
Lisa, I love the layout of your blog, exquisite for a blogger blog (no offence, just that the options the make it wonderful are not that many :)
Perhaps one things to change is to make the font 2 points bigger, it’s a bit tiny at the moment and not so easy to read. Great job with the About page!
Hi Lisa,
You about page is great, you make life more beautiful. do suggest what I have to do with my about page, and how to go about increasing traffic .
Curious… does duplicate content like this adversely affect search engine rankings? Isn’t this blatant copyright infringement?
Coincidentally, I just updated my About page this morning to make it more personal. I still want to add a video. But I’m not quite sure if it’s where I want it or not.
http://www.handsonhomebuyer.com/blog/about/
Great idea to add a video! I have one that would be perfect, but never thought of adding it. Duh!
Pamela, your About looks great! I would not change a thing :)
Hi Carolyn,
a video idea seems great and it is actually the call of the day nowadays. it would surely be good to add.
Menaka Bharathi
Thanks for the advice, Darren. I had never created an About page for my blog and realize now that it is an important thing to have.
So, without further ado:
http://julipedia.meroh.net/p/about.html
By the way: keep up the good work! I only subscribed to your blog (after following the lead from the “Six pixels of separation” book) a week ago and I am enjoying the content very much.
I tried to give the reader an overview of what the site will be, how it can help them and a brief personal introduction. I get quite a few people signing up to the newsletter from this page so a call to action may seem a bit commercial but it works. http://www.thejunkmap.com.au/about/
Lara
PS. Will there be virtual tickets this year for PB Event? I can’t make it to the Gold Coast but still want all the info!
Hi Darren, I’ve actually just been updating my about page, so this was good timing! I’ll have a look through some others now, thanks!
I’m really pleased with how mine is right now. I have a new blog and it hard to write what a blog is about because I don’t have a lot of content yet, but I refine it often.
http://nataliafamilia.com.au/about/
I just updated my about page. I’m not sure if it’s up to standard though. http://iamjenxi.com/about/
Clean page and self explanatory! Hey Jen Xi would you mind giving me a few suggestions..
Menaka Bharathi
My newly revised About page is here: http://www.pm4girls.elizabeth-harrin.com/about/
I have revised my About page too, thanks Darren I had no idea how childish my About page had been for years, check the updated one here: http://simpleindianmom.in/about/
I took your post as an incentive to review my About page, and so I visited my site’s source code for the first time in a while. Know what I found? A huge chunk of unbidden code that had been treacherously inserted into dozens of pages on my site, including my About page. Apparently some sort of virus. Took me all day yesterday to clean it out of there.
Anyhow, I deleted some info on my About page and replaced it with the Pivot questionnaire from “Inside the Actors Studio” (What’s your favorite word? What sound do you love? etc.)
http://www.cyberquill.com/about.php
This is a very good idea, to check your About page from time to time. I call my page “Author”
http://victortravelblog.com/Victor-Tribunsky/
Though my blog is very small yet due to lack of time, can you pls give me some advise on my About page:
http://www.smallbusiness-strategy.com/about-smallbusiness-strategy/
thanks
Hey Carsten, I would reduce a lot bc people won’t like to read such a long About.
Also would be nice to have your real pic there and take out the ad image from the post. And can you take the date out at the end, as it makes people think your blog has not been updated in a long time, which does not look very professional :)
Thank you for taking the time to write this post. mine is pretty up to date, but I realized that some of the information is not current and this was the perfect time to fix that. :-)
http://www.alifeoflight.com/about/
A great advice as always. I think I missed always end with a call to action. Will update my about page. Thanks Darren.
Our blog is fairly new, but our About us page was already old news – appreciate the timely reminder to update!
http://2coffeecups.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html
Great article I think my page is pretty good, but of course, can always use some opinions on it. Here is my link
http://www.nycstylelittlecannoli.com/p/about-me.html
Thanx for the post !!
Rosemary
Hey Rosemary, I’d have a picture of you rather than repeating the same images that you have in the header of the blog. Also maybe format the text a bit better so it’s easier to read? More white space and some headings would help.
At the end, would be great to have your social media links rather than email, many people do not really use the email that much to send a message :)
Here is mine: http://www.singularinsanity.com/about-me/
I’m missing a call to action, about to add that now…
It is too important to be personal in About us page. Because, we must make the visitors believe in our identity. Further, we must leave a way for the visitor to contact us.
Creating About Page for a blog is very necessary but i was also confused when creating About Page for my blog, but now this post really helps me in creating an awesome About page for my blog :)
Good write up! I know for sure I am very guilty of not keeping an up to date About Us page on my blog. This article reminded me it should be on my list of things to do. Thanks!
My ‘About’ page has probably been one of the most challenging pages for me as I’m not sure how personal it should be. This post has been so incredibly helpful. I’ve reworked it and he’s what I’m working with
http://www.forherbyher.com/about/
Any advice would be wonderful.
Awesome advice here, Darren. I’ve owned my own name as a domain for years. I put off doing anything with it because I wanted to have it all perfect before I got started. Now all I have is my about page as my landing page and the second day I added the blog part to my site.
My about page is here: http://danielgtaylor.com/about/
Thanks, Darren! I didn’t even think about having an About page on my new blog until I read this post.
I made my first attempt (below) using the guidelines you mentioned.
http://thirtykdays.com/about/
Great reminder to revisit the About page – which I hadn’t done in over 6 months. This article reminded me that I’d wanted to go back and add in some links to pages where I mention what topics I write about. Any other tips welcomed! http://www.bewebsmart.com/about/
Ooh, one more thing I must do. Thanks for mentioning linking to previous posts!
Great Work,I will surely follow all these,as my About page is still incomplete!
Thanks and stay Blessed!
Challenge taken sir!
I made mine much more personal…but that’s the direction I’m headed with my content, too, so it will help separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of my community. I also made it much more clear who my content is for.
Here it is: http://mjuliana.com/about/
Thank you for this challenge! Updating my About Page has been on my to do list forever!! And now it’s done: http://www.idreamofclean.net/about/
Please watch the video “Glass Walls” with a very important message from Paul McCartney