By James Chartrand of Men with Pens

If you’re going to put your words on public display, it’s your job to make that content compelling, intriguing, entertaining or informative. If it’s boring… well. Suffice it to say that very few readers are going to be interested.

That’s why your About page has to be just as good as every other piece of content on your site. A well written About page is an extra more tool in your arsenal. It can help you engage readers, encourage sales, enhance trust and increase respect.

Here are some tips on how to write a great About page that pleases everyone:

Know What You Want

Your About page needs to help you accomplish a goal. It’s not there to look pretty; it’s there to work for you. What you need your About page to do depends entirely on what you want to achieve with your site. Do you want more sales? More readers? More clients? Gear your content towards your goal and make your About page work hard for you.

For example, if you want more readers, then write in a way that engages people and develops a bond. Get personal. Tell a story. If you want more sales, then your About page becomes an extra place to pitch the benefits of buying or how your product helps customers get what they want. If you want more clients, then use your About page to convey what you’re like to work with and why you’re different from the competition.

Consistently Stylish

There are some rocking blogs out there, and there are great sites full of entertaining info. But sometimes, you click the About page of one of these sites, and you’re jarred from that greatness thanks to content as dry as breadcrumbs. Be consistent with the voice and style you use throughout your site, and reflect the same personality on your About page.

Don’t switch from sassy blog posts to overly stiff professional credentials. Don’t go from casual class to raving wild child. Don’t switch from swearing like a sailor to top manners and queenly etiquette. And if your crumbly-dry About page is consistent with the rest of your site’s style? Then you need a major content style overhaul, my friend.

Put Yourself Out There

Welcome to Generation X and Y, where millions of people crave personality, transparency and honesty. Gone are the days of About pages listing the year of company founding and boring credentials. Now people want to see who you are, how you came to be here and what your favorite color might be.

That doesn’t mean you should use your About page to tell your life story, reveal your deepest, darkest secrets or go on about unrelated traumatic events. Keep the content relevant and concise. Just add a personal touch and give people a taste of who you are. List a bit of ‘you’ trivia. Talk about how you got started. Show a little of the face behind the online mask.

Don’t Forget the Credentials

While About pages should tell an honest, interesting story, they should also still have those credentials in there. Mention your experience, your education or your skills – just do it with style. Note how long you’ve been in business (if it’s been a while), and indicate any accomplishments that make you stand out. You can also list associations you’re involved in, distinguishing factors, or organizations you support. Do you do volunteer work or donate funds? List that too, because it helps show people what you stand for.

Don’t have any credentials? Just getting started? That’s okay; we all start somewhere. In this case, mention how you learned your craft and why you became involved in this line of work. You don’t have to say when that was, but you do have some backup that makes you a credible provider, authority or business.

Tell a Good Story

Everyone likes to hear a story, and every single person in this world has a story to tell. A bland description isn’t going to interest people, but a story hooks them in every single time. That doesn’t mean listing your bio from birth to now. A long About page that isn’t relevant or that gives too much information isn’t a good read. Stay sharp and concise, with a hook intro, a nice build up, a climax and a wrap.

People like to know the story of what brought you here and how you became interested in what you do. One of the most frequently asked questions I hear is, “How’d you get started in writing?” You could start with something like, “Looking up at the sun one day, it struck me that there was something better than the damp dirt of the cow field I sat in.” That’s a story right there, and it gets people interested in knowing more.

So What Is Your Story?

By now, you’re thinking, “Well, then, what do I write? I don’t have a great story and I can’t write my full history… what’s left?” You. That’s what’s left. What kind of person are you? What makes you the star you are? Why do you do what you do? What makes you special? What makes you interesting? What makes you a good person to work with, or to buy from, or to listen to?

Your turn: What do you like to see on an About page? More importantly, what’s on yours?

About the author: James Chartrand’s mission is to help writers and freelancers get out of the cow fields and get into earning a decent living online. Get more great freelance writer tips at his site, Men with Pens

Photo by Daniel H. Agostini aka dhammza

Help others and it will come back to you.

By Leo Babauta

When you sit down to write a blog post, the question posed in this headline should be the one question you’re asking yourself. How can I help my readers today?

This might seem obvious to some, but it’s not really apparent to many bloggers. I can’t count how many times I’ve read a blog post that obviously took a different route, or how many times I’ve read blogs about blogging that encourage people to ask different questions.

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A guest post from Sean Platt of Writer Dad

As a professional writer, my job is to saturate my days with words and ideas, filling screen or page with sentences designed to inspire. When I first started blogging I actually wondered how I would possibly manage to produce a fresh topic every day of the week. It’s now seven months later and I’m writing on around ten topics per day as my words are sprinkled from dot coms to dot infos all across the Internet.

The amazing thing about blogging, besides the instant access to a global population, is the inordinate amount of writing you must do just to keep your blog in orbit. Before starting Writer Dad, I wrote for only myself, my thoughts merely spun into sentences from within the desert of my own mind.

I sat, wrote,  and pondered. Then I wrote some more.

Blogging is different. Writing for a blog means there’s a ticking clock always behind you. Within a month of my first post, the mood had changed to something more along the lines of: write, ponder, publish, repeat.

It isn’t just about writing the posts. Being an active blogger means you also have comments to answer, an inbox to sort through, and a reader full of other people’s thoughts to meditate and possibly remark upon. Thought fuels further thinking. A few months into Writer Dad and I realized how deep the well ran.

Our brains will keep on giving. So long as we’re willing to feed our creativity, and give our muse her rest when needed, there is no shortage to what we will see return. By the second month I had found my flow. By the third month I was almost on auto pilot, writing now taking the tone of conversation rather than the labor of construction.

At first I started to craft content for sites outside my own, then I began to help friends and colleagues polish copy. By the end of the year, I realized I was effectively writing five or six articles (minimum) day in day out across an unbelievably wide spectrum of topics.

Just like a freelance writer.

Ghostwriter Dad was born.  I swept the floors and opened shop. The same tools I had been using to effectively blog seven days a week had provided me with a razor sharp toolset to deal with anything that fell on my plate Monday through Friday without ever having to feel the flutter of failure.

Lawnmowers, DUI, graphic design, vacation rentals, pet grooming, and bar-b-que grills. Those are literally the first six subjects that bounced into my brain when I decided to list just a few of the subjects I’ve been asked to write across the last couple of weeks.

If you can speak, you can write. If you can write, you can blog. If you can blog, you might be able to blog yourself into a steady career living as a freelance writer.

Sean Platt is a fantastic father and a gifted ghostwriter who also tweets.

Cartoon by Sean DSouza

A guest post by Sean DSouza of Psychotactics

Imagine you were reading a mystery novel. You’ve just finished five pages. The story line is becoming really interesting.

And then you turn the page

And find the sixth page has been torn out. Now that’s really irritating, eh?

But let’s suppose you decide to continue reading anyway

And you move to page seven, and pick up the thread of the story. And you’re reading page eight, page nine, page ten.

And page eleven is torn out. At this point, you’re more than frustrated.

And this is the feeling that many readers have when they read your article.

It’s because you’re not planning your disconnectors.

So what are disconnectors?

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Photo courtesy of ebruli
Note: This is a guest post written by Jonathan from the blog Illuminated Mind.

Chances are, if you’re a beginner blogger, you read a lot of articles on how to be a better blogger. Even experienced bloggers read articles like this on a regular basis.

You’ll probably see stuff like this a lot:

1. How to Catch Your Readers Attention (because you wanted to make them fall asleep, right?)
   
2. Provide Value to People (like you intentionally wanted to be crappy?)
3. Know Your Readers (duh)
4. Tell a Story (so much for all those pie charts you made)
5. Be Remarkable (your plan wasn’t to make them forget?)

And so on and so forth.

But what you won’t hear is this little secret:

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