How to Write An About Me Page
How to Write An About Me Page
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
Today, on The Brandmerry Podcast (yep, this is the full transcript, choose to listen above or continue reading) we're talking about your 'About Me' page. My goal is that you have everything you need to craft an ‘About Me’ page that is going to work FOR your brand, not against it!
One of the key beliefs we have over here at Brandmerry is that your website is important and should work FOR you. It's not enough to just get views. You want your website to actually convert into revenue.
There are a few things that we know about websites.
Number one, we know that the homepage is typically the most visited page, especially if you're utilizing SEO strategies, search engine optimization, which is one of our trainings inside of Brandmerry Academy.
Number two, the second most visited page is your 'About Me' page. That tells us a lot of juicy information about your 'About Me' page, including that people care about the story and the person behind the brand.
If you've ever asked yourself, "Well, I don't think people care. Do people care? Do people care why I created this? Or do people care what has led me to this moment in my life and why I launched my business?"
The answer is, "Absolutely they do.”
It also tells us what we should include on our 'About Me' page.
A lot of other branding and marketing experts will tell you that your 'About Me' page should be 100% about your ideal customer. I do not believe that is true. I have not believed that from the beginning. And I stand by that five years later.
So, today we’re diving into your ‘About Me’ page so you feel confident crafting yours. This is a continuation of episodes and blogs where we’re giving you fundamental pieces for building your brand.
We have talked about your brand’s mission.
We have outlined the difference between branding and marketing and where you should start.
We have talked about your brand values.
We've talked about jumping ship in your marketing and today we're going to talk about your 'About Me' page because it is incredibly important.
YOUR ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE IS ABOUT YOU
Let’s just set the record straight that your 'About Me' page should be about you!
It should be about the person behind the brand or the people behind the brand.
If I'm a consumer and I'm on a website and it says, 'About Me' at the top and I click on that, and then the whole entire page tells me nothing about the person behind the brand, why they started their business, why they choose their products, anything like that, I’m incredibly turned off.
I didn't click through to learn more about myself.
I clicked through to learn more about you.
It's helping me in my decision-making process.
Over on the Brandmerry blog, we have a blog post on the consumer buying process and the different stages customers go through before making a purchase decision.
When someone is at the evaluation stage, where they are looking at the different solutions to their problem, that's when we find that people love to visit the 'About Me' page of a brand because they want to know who the person is, the mission, and the values behind a brand. That information can help them with their decision-making process.
So your 'About Me' page is incredibly important. It is often what I recommend to be the second page that you create on your website, as it's the second most viewed.
YOUR ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE FOR CONSUMERS
You also want to think about writing your ‘About Me’ page for a consumer.
Think about if you're buying a skincare product and you're at a place where you're looking at two or three different brands and you go to an 'About Me' page, what do you want to see?
What do you want to read?
Last year, we were buying a new mattress. I was going between a few different companies. I had narrowed it down and I was looking at the story behind each one and that's how I ended up choosing the bed that we went with because I loved their story and I love their mission and I love the way that they shared that. That pulled me in and it made my decision for me.
The decision was because of their story and I even went with the most expensive option!
3 TIPS FOR WRITING AN 'ABOUT ME' PAGE
TELL A STORY
As we talked about in the brand storytelling episode, don't miss the opportunity to tell a story.
Storytelling is incredibly powerful and incredibly important. It's going to build that connection, that trust with your audience.
I've signed clients because of my 'About Me' page.
I have had people reach out to me and submit an application for 1:1 consulting. We’ll have a conversation via email and I’ll answer questions to support them in their decision. Then I'll get an email from them 24 hours later that says, "All right, I'm ready to go. I just read your 'About Me' page, sign me up."
Your ‘About Me’ page can be one of your most powerful assets. And you're going to get the most out of those pages if you are actually telling a story.
Keep reading for my top tips for writing yours.
INCLUDE PERSONAL PHOTOS
I love brand photography. It's one of my favorite ways to enhance the branding experience and I encourage my clients to have a professional photo shoot for their brand because photos are incredibly powerful and we know this.
Photos are also linked to improving brand affinity which is a deeper level of connection, typically through mission, values, and trust that a consumer has for a brand.
Photos are a great way to build that brand affinity because through photography, you can share different moments and experiences in your life that allow your audience to say, "Oh my gosh, I know them." Instagram's a great example of this in action.
Utilizing photos to showcase whatever story you're telling.
So showcasing these different photos is a great way to build that connection.
For your 'About Me' page I recommend not loading it with a bunch of professional photos, but putting in more lifestyle-type photos. Showcase photos of you at different places, in different outfits with different facial expressions, maybe you with your children, with your dog, on a trip or with a glass of wine.
We follow people and we're like, "Oh, I know them," or "They did this," or "This is so-and-so's favorite wine," or "Did you know, so-and-so's dog?" and we feel like we know them!
Focus on showcasing what you're saying on the page, through your storytelling in the photos; not just typing out your story, but showing your story visually through photography.
HAVE A CALL TO ACTION
When it comes to brand storytelling to move someone through to purchasing a product, we can't just tell stories to tell stories. We have to have a call to action.
On an 'About Me' page, I love to have two CTA’s.
The first CTA is a click-through to your product or your service. If your ideal customer has read all the way to the bottom, they're probably pretty committed. And if they're further along in the buying process, say stage three or four, they're ready to make a purchase decision and having that button there can be incredibly powerful.
In addition to that, and below that, I love to share a lead magnet. The second CTA should be your free gift/ lead magnet to capture their attention.
Again, if someone has read your full ‘About Me’ page they're committed, but maybe they're not at a place where they're ready to invest. So having a way for them to opt in to your email list through a lead magnet can be incredibly powerful for capturing their information and being able to stay in contact with them.
So those are three must-haves for your 'About Me' page.
Your story, having photos that show different moments in time, not just professional photos, and a call to action. Typically, a link to go purchase your product, your service, or your product suite page, and your lead magnet opt-in.
HOW TO WRITE YOUR 'ABOUT ME’ PAGE
Now I'm going to share with you my insider, super complicated, never-before-released method for writing your 'About Me' page!
Brace yourself because it's easy. We overthink things all of the time when it comes to writing our copy, and one of the reasons that I encourage my clients to write their 'About Me' page, in the beginning, is because it's great practice in writing your story and pulling in pieces, like your mission and your values.
STEP ONE: IDENTIFY 3 TRANSITIONS
To begin, think about three transitions that have happened in your life. These can be three moments that are close together in your timeline or they can be spread out over the years. The timing does not matter, but I want you to think about these three transitions as a launching-off point.
Identifying these moments can include:
A moment where something changed in your life.
Something happened to you and you had to change course or direction.
You made a decision and you changed course.
You learned a valuable lesson and you decided to do something different.
Think about these pivots or transitions. No more than three for our purposes here.
Write each of these out!
STEP TWO: PIECE IT TOGETHER
From there I want you to write out each of those different things and then piece them together and you have an 'About Me' page!
There's one last part of the process, but I want to share my three with you first as an example of steps one and two.
My first transition was when I decided not to go to college right after high school. I was the Salutatorian of my class. I had gotten an incredible scholarship to Loyola University, and I decided that I didn't want to do that. I had a long history with perfectionism and was just at a place in my life where I was not happy and was ready to take bold action and do something that felt good for me. It was the first time in my life that I had made a decision that went against what everyone around me wanted for me. And it was a big deal.
In this first transition, I'm setting the tone. I'm saying, "Oh, this is who I was and then this happened in 2005." The more dates that you can use, the better. Those are incredibly helpful for markers and a great way to keep your audience engaged.
Next, I talk about how I wanted to be in musical theater. To be a star on Broadway, and was going to school for that in 2008 when my brother was diagnosed with cancer. I go on to talk about going through that experience. I don't go into every detail about that event. It's not necessary. It's sacred to me. I don't need to share it with everyone, but that was an important part of my life and did impact the business that I have today. So I share that piece of the puzzle.
Then I talk about after losing my brother, marrying my husband and finally present the third transition which was the birth of my son. This transition is where I focus the majority of my energy because that is what ultimately led to my business.
The birth of my son got me thinking about what I wanted to do with my life, what I wanted to create, how I wanted to be home with him and that ultimately led to the creation of Brandmerry.
You can head here to read my full ‘About Me’ page, in fact, I encourage you to do that!
It's a great case study.
What I want you to focus on is that I've led the reader through three transitions. I've also recognized how my audience can connect with those pieces and highlight those elements throughout.
Some of those elements are:
Perfectionism. So many people in my audience and my ideal customers are recovering perfectionists or perfectionists, or they are starting their business or doing something that's different from what they originally were doing. So by sharing that first transition, there's that connection piece.
Grief and Loss. We've all experienced grief and loss. Maybe it wasn't your sibling, it was someone else or something, but we can all relate to that feeling. And that is something that connects us and many of my clients and my customers who have had these moments that have triggered the mission that they have, or has triggered them to do the work that they do in the world.
Starting My Business. My community is also made up of people who want to start businesses or have businesses. So we all have that moment where we're like, "I'm going to do this dang thing," and that's why I share mine.
Choose your moments very strategically based on the connection for your audience.
And then finally, what you want to do is lead to where it is now.
We always talk about a beginning, middle and end to storytelling. But with an 'About Me' page, it's like a beginning, middle, and here we are now, continuing into the future.
STEP THREE: SET UP THE BUSINESS
Don’t think about an end to your ‘About Me’ page, but rather the next steps!
This is where you want to share your mission statement, talk about the work that you do, and lead to that work-with-me page.
It’s also where I recommend including your Hook, i.e. who you are, who you serve, their struggle and their desires.
If you sell a product, you can talk about when you recognized there was a need for your product. Maybe you went through a period where you talked about where you tested a bunch of stuff and it didn't work and you felt defeated and then you finally got the prototype that worked and you put it out into the world. And here's where you are now.
If you have a t-shirt clothing line that uses organic cotton, why did you decide to do that?
There are so many different things that you can do. Don't limit yourself because of the product and service that you sell. Focus on telling that story about the person or the people behind the brand because that's what the 'About Me' page is ultimately intended for.
Inside of my program, Brandmerry Academy, we take a deeper dive into what we call the heroine's journey, which goes into more detail on crafting your story, showcasing multiple peaks and dips in your story and how to craft it!
However, for years and years, the three transitions were all I taught and used and still to this day it’s the structure I use for my Brandmerry ‘About Me’ page.
LENGTH OF YOUR ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE
Here's the last thing that I'll share with you before you go forth and write your 'About Me' pages.
Don't stress about how long it is when you're writing it.
Just write it.
Either write it in a Google Doc or record it and transcribe it if you find that you filter yourself. Whichever strategy works for you, write it and then clean it up. Don’t filter yourself to start or you’ll miss out on crucial elements of your story!
We limit ourselves in our storytelling abilities by trying to create the finished product when we first write it. And it never works that way.
People don't write their finished book when they first write their book. It goes through tons and tons of rounds of edits. And I'm not saying you're writing a book and we don't need to spend months and months on your 'About Me' page, but just write it, tell the story, focus on the connection then go out and make sure you've touched on these pieces I shared in this post.
CONCLUSION
I hope that you now understand how important your website is and how powerful your ‘About Me’ page truly is. And that your 'About Me' page is meant to tell the story behind the brand, not to say, "Oh, and I'll help you do X, Y, and Z," and that's the only thing on that page. Please don't do that.
Utilize the steps outlined in this blog post today and share your new ‘About Me’ page with me on Instagram @michelleknightco so I can celebrate with you.
If you want to take a deeper dive into building your brand make sure you sign up to watch the Build A Better Brand Method. It's a free on-demand training and you can go to betterbrandmethod.com to get signed up.
Inside of that training, I talk about identifying your story and the importance of your story inside of the branding process, as well as giving you my six-part framework for building a better brand.
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DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES
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MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
