Learn how to make your about page stand out from the crowd with easy and practical tips that you can do right now!
Hey there, you’re listening to The Marly Dice Podcast and I’m your host Marly. As always, thank you so much for listening in. If this is your first time here, welcome! I’m so glad you found your way here. Today’s episode is entitled, “6 Easy Updates to Make an Awesome About Page on your Blog,” and I think at least a few of these may be some new ideas for you.
Now, if you’re anything like me, your about page is probably one of the first pages you ever made on your blog. I can remember starting my blog years ago and rewriting my bio, which was comprised of a couple sentences, over and over until it felt just right. I was so eager to get just the right bio. And then that was it, I was done. A check mark on my to-do list.
Does this sound familiar?
There are so many things we as bloggers have to do, especially when we’re just starting out, and many times bloggers like to make their about page and then forget it, for months and months and months.
It just happens like that because there are so many tasks we’re doing daily, like social media and writing blog posts.
So, your about page just seems to sit there, with those couple sentences or couple paragraphs that give an inkling about you along with a photo of yourself.
Does this sound familiar?
If this is the case for you, your about page isn’t doing you much good. But it can do you A LOT of good.
Now, your about page isn’t something that necessarily needs to be updated all the time, but it’s all not a page you should just forget about after you make it.
It’s important to keep that page up to date because, chances are, it’s a highly visited page on your blog. Which side note – when’s the last time you checked your about page’s ranking?
You should check that periodically, along with your top visited pages. You can do this easily in Google Analytics. If you have a way to jot this down, here’s how you do it. Pull up Google Analytics, then select your timeframe in the upper right hand corner, then on the left, select Behavior, then select site content, then select all pages, and you’ll be able to see your top performing pages. I could chat all about Google Analytics, but that’s another episode.
A lot of times, bloggers’ about pages consist of a photo of themself and a few ‘bio’ sentences that may be enough to make up a paragraph. And then… that’s it.
If this sounds anything like your about page, then listen up because you’ve got work to do.
If you want to stand out, drive more traffic to other pages of your website, get visitors to sign up to your email list, and lead users to your social media pages, (and you should want all of that), then it’s time to spend a little time sprucing up your about page.
The good news is that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Chances are you already have a lot of content on your blog done, so you just need to find ways to link around to all your offerings, content, products, email list and social pages.
I’m also going to be chatting about how to really stand out from the crowd of bloggers, because having a mediocre about page is not going to help you achieve that.
You need to really put some thought about who you are and what you want want your readers to know about you, into your about page.
So, without further ado, here are 6 easy updates you can make right now to make an awesome about page on your blog.
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- Add updated photos that capture your brand. If you’re working with a photo of yourself from 2009, I think it’s time you swap it out. Especially if your readers are seeing your face somewhere else – like Instagram stories and you’re doing videos of you talking – and then someone hops over to your blog, and you look ten years younger on your blog photo on your about page – they may question if they’re even on the right blog.Having an old photo that looks grainy or is just dark and hard to see also makes your blog seem outdated.So, do yourself and your visitors a favor and put a newer photo of yourself.
If you want to take it a step further, you can add photos of your family if you want.
The key here is that you want not the photos that you incorporate on your about page to be not only new-er, but also to be ones that represent your brand.
By the way, if you need help with branding, after you’re done listening to this episode, make sure to go to episode #24 entitled ‘What Bloggers Miss when Branding Their Blog.’ I chat all about branding, both the esthetic side of it and the messaging side of it. It’s a good listen.
To the point of branding, if you use a photo editor and a filter on your photos on Instagram, you should also be using that same filter on your photos on your about page – and across all parts of your blog and brand.
And, by increasing the amount of photos of yourself and your family, you’re providing more content for your readers. Now don’t go wild here and add your family photo album from the last 3 years, but adding several photos of yourself and family helps your readers connect with you.
Again, just make sure the photos that you do add are on-brand, that is, they are filtered the same way as your photos across your blog.
In my humble opinion, a few photos is better than one.
- Y’all, spruce up those couple sentences that you have that you’re counting as a bio about yourself.Listen, people may first follow you because they love your decor and DIY projects, but they stay because of YOU. They want to get to know you. Give your readers some insight into you.Here are some ideas for things you can write about in your bio to spruce it up.
Tell your readers about your life, your family, why you started a blog, what you hope your blog helps your readers do.
Tell your readers something unusual about yourself. Tell them something about your past, something that makes you who you are today, something that not a lot of people may have done. Tell them about all your favorite things, outside of decor. Tell them about your favorite food, movie, color. Just because you have a blog about home -decor -DIY, doesn’t mean you can’t talk about other things.
Your goal here is to stand out. Don’t just write two sentences and call that good enough. Be better than good enough.
- Add a way to subscribe. Write this one down because this one may be the most important one.Having a subscribe button on the main page of your site is good, but you want to make subscribing to your blog the EASIEST thing someone can do. And, you want to tell your readers to subscribe, often!!And you want to give them a reason to subscribe. You can give them something, a freebie, also known as a lead magnet, in return for their email address.
So make a freebie for them. Your freebie could be anything under the sun that you think your readers will benefit from. It could be a fun printable, or a handy checklist, or to a library of printables, or it could be an eBook.
It’s a good idea to have this on your about page, your home page, in pop ups, if you have those, and in so many other places all over your blog.
I think having a great freebie on your about page is great because 1. A lot of people are already coming to this page on your site and 2. You’ve just told the reader all about yourself (remember #2), and you’re ‘know, like & trust’ factor has now gone up having learned about you, which means having a lead magnet on this page is a no brainer!
- Repurpose your content & send readers to your blog posts. You’ve already done the hard work of creating awesome content. Use your about page as a marketing tool to get people to check out those blog posts you worked so hard on to create.I love repurposing my content and linking to it on other pages, especially my about page. You can go to abrickhome.com/about to see what I’m working with & how I spruce mine up. By the way, I may or may not still have these examples I’m about to talk about up on my about page, but you can still get a general idea of some examples either way.One section I created on my about page is called “some of my faves.” In this section, I repurpose some of my photography content by showing several images I had previously taken for posts in a reworked manor, with copy on top the images.
Then I link those repurposed images to the accompanying blog post.
So, for example, one of my faves in this section is our vintage chair makeovers. I found a picture I had taken of them that was in the original post, added the text “vintage chair makeovers” to overlay on the image, and then linked that new image to a post about them.
Another way I repurpose my content is by having a section called “get inspired” where I show photos of my spring home, my winter home, my Christmas home etc. It’s basically seasonal focused and shows my best work. It’s a portfolio, if you will, of my best or favorite images from posts.
What I do here is I grab a photo from various posts on my blog – again, I usually choose my favorite image or best performing image from each post – and then post that photo on my about page and link to the blog post it goes to.
What’s cool about this is that I show my best work from my blog all under one place. And, I typically know it’s my best work because the images I choose will either be ones that performed well on Pinterest or got tons of saves and engagement on Instagram.
Then, a reader can quickly scroll down this section and see tons of beautiful images and if they feel inspired by an image, they can easily click on it and see more similar images to that one in the blog post it was in.
This is such an easy one to do that will really beef up your about section because this content is already created. You’ve already done the work. Just go through your posts, grab your best images from those posts, repost the images to your about page, and link to the original post.
This will show your readers your best work and encourage them to continue clicking around on your site and viewing your amazing content.
- Add a section to immediately help the reader. Sometimes readers will pop on a site and not quite know what the intention is of the site. As content creators, our goal is to deliver valuable content that helps our reader.We want to make it as easy as possible to #1. Tell the reader how our content is going to help them and #2. Tell them quickly how they can best navigate our site. This can include helping your reader easily find important content or leading your reader to other resources you offer. It can be as simple as pointing a reader to your Facebook page if you do weekly FB lives about decorative painting.You have to remember that just because a reader ends up on your site doesn’t mean they’re going to go through every single page on your site. They will probably hop over to your about page, so make it easy for them to understand how you serve them.
The way that I go about this on my about page is to offer a section called help me, help you. In this section, I ask the reader to pick what they want to do, such as beautify your home, start a blog, or grow your blog because those are the main things that I aim to do on my blog. Under each of these, I list out ways and resources I help the reader do this.
If they want to beautify their home, I link to my Instagram account because this is where they can see home inspiration and where I post lots of photos. I link to a subscription form to sign up for emails because that’s where I tell my readers about new posts about beautifying their home. I link to one of my boards on Pinterest that I pin pretty images to all the time. And, I link to a shop my home page, which again plays off the beautifying your home aspect.
I make it as easy as possible for a reader to understand the various ways I can serve them.
You reader may just recently have found you which means that they need to learn all about you. You can easily point them in the right direction depending on which type of content they’re seeking.
Divying up your content is a good idea so that a reader will follow you in different places and become a really loyal follower. So, instead of making only blog posts, maybe you reserve painting tutorials for Facebook lives. I’ll use that example again. That’s a good way to get your readers to follow you in other places. Give them new and different content than what you’re offering on your blog.
If you do divy up your content in some form or another, this is something you should make sure you tell your reader on your about page.
This section can be great for pushing readers to your social media pages. And it’s always a good idea to try a couple different ways of linking to social. Having buttons is good, but try to also link directly to words. Some readers prefer clicking on links that are linked to words and not symbols or buttons. I’ve always been an advocate of mixing things up so that you appeal to different people.
All of these things show your reader that user friendliness is at the top of your priorities.
And, I think, as a reader of other blogs, I always want my experience on a blog to be easy and user friendly. I want to quickly be able to understand what I’m going to get out of a blog and be able to easy be served.
And, I remember the ones that are user friendly and I don’t remember the ones that aren’t.
- Add a section for shopping your home. You might be like, wait? I have an entire page on my blog dedicated exactly to this, with images of my home, and it’s all about shopping my home. That’s great if you do! Who says you can’t put a condensed version on your about page?The thing is, you can put whatever you want on your about page. You aren’t limited to just putting a bio and a headshot. You can put whatever it is that your little heart desires.You work hard as a blogger, and you want to get paid for all your hard work. So, add a section where your promote affiliate links, like shopping your home. Just make sure to properly disclosure they’re affiliate links. If you’re part of a program like reward style, you could add your reward style feed.
However it is that you can incorporate a shopping feature into this section, do it! It can be as simple as, for example, showing an image of your home with some affiliate links under it, of the products you used in that photo. Or, it could be more robust and you have, say, a photo of each room in your home with links under it.
The message here is this: don’t limit yourself on your about page.
Your about page can be whatever you want it to be. It can include so much more than just things about you. Of course, you should definitely have a substational portion of it be about you, but there’s room on that page to promote other things.
You should be encouraging your readers to keep reading. You should be encouraging them to sign up for your email list. You should be linking to your social media pages. You should be showing them your best work. You should be doing something different – telling them cool things about you, thing that resonate or things that are unusual – something to set yourself apart from the crowd.
How can you become memorable to your user? That’s your homework. I’m kidding. But you should really think about this.
If you’ve stuck around until now, thank you so much. Because you’re still listening, I’m going to give you a bonus update you can make on your about page just because you’re THAT awesome.
So here’s the BONUS! Add a video to your about page! This idea isn’t necessarily easy, but videos are a huge way to separate yourself as a blogger. There are tons of bloggers doing video but still there are a ton that aren’t.
Your video could be a quick video of your face where you offer a ‘hi’ and a quick message for your readers. Or, it could be a video of you decorating or doing a DIY project, like b-roll. Or, maybe it’s a video of a bunch of different images you’ve captured of your home and projects, so it’s like a collage of your best work.
Adding video – any type of video – will help you stand out and will make you look more professional, as long as your video is not too poor of quality.
- Add updated photos that capture your brand. If you’re working with a photo of yourself from 2009, I think it’s time you swap it out. Especially if your readers are seeing your face somewhere else – like Instagram stories and you’re doing videos of you talking – and then someone hops over to your blog, and you look ten years younger on your blog photo on your about page – they may question if they’re even on the right blog.Having an old photo that looks grainy or is just dark and hard to see also makes your blog seem outdated.So, do yourself and your visitors a favor and put a newer photo of yourself.
So there you have it. Those are several ways you can update your about page to make it awesome!
As always, thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe on iTunes so that you’ll be the first to know when a new episode is released. And if you loved today’s episode, I would love it if you would take a second to leave me a review on iTunes.
Have a wonderful rest of your day!
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