3 Essentials That Make A Brilliant About.Me Page
We’re already finishing up January 2016, and you might still not have gotten the hang of the three key productivity methods you should try in the new year – or what personal website trends are key in the new year.
That’s fine.
Let’s start with just one… simple.. step. Because you’re a proactive person, a lot of things have changed since 2015, and so it’s time to update your About Me page on your website, blog – or About.Me website.
Thankfully, about.me just released a brand new look and feel to their awesomely simple personal information pages that have been a hit ever since Tony Conrad and his team launched the service.
What can we learn from about.me about creating great ‘About Me’ pages? 🙂
1. About You? Give Us The Essentials
The key to about.me’s success has always been something that you can use when updating your personal information – and that’s being simple and sticking with the key elements you need. That can be a sentence about where you work or what projects you’ve done in the past.
The essential information can also be your contact information such as an email, or links to your social media profiles. In this case, sticking with the essentials means linking the social networks you use, not the ones that haven’t been updated in years.
Example: We Don’t Need All Your Links
The new about.me layouts will put your links in the forefront, but if you don’t use Twitter regularly like I do, it makes no real sense to put it in. Why? The paradox of choice is a phenomenon described by American psychologist Barry Schwartz in his 2014 book of the same name.
Schwartz describes that we, given too many options, will rather not make any choice!
Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Myspace, Snapchat, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Vimeo, Blogger, Fitbit, 500px.Me, Weibo, Medium, Spotify, Strata, one Blog, The other blog, etc.
I might as well link about.me from my about.me page! Meta.
You get Schwartz’s point.
Don’t link to EVERYTHING you have online. Instead, choose the networks and websites you want to promote! In my case, I should get rid of Foursquare and instead focus on Twitter where I already have more than 20,000 followers.
2. Write Your Description As a Pitch
The great thing about about.me is that it doesn’t give you all the options and forces you to be concise. Writing your personal description is a prime example.
It’s not your whole life story, a biography or CV.
It’s a few sentences that will give us the essential (remember?) information about you. The best way to pull this off is to think of it as a 30-second pitch, such as the ones startups have to present to investors. With limited time (or space in our case) available, you’ll stick to the most important information for the people visiting your new about.me page!
It’s 2016, So Don’t Forget To Update
While the essentials mostly don’t change from year to year, sometimes they do.
You might already have your bio written, but today is the day you should take the 10 minutes to go over it – and see if the most valuable information – is still as important. Have you done something “more essential”? Update your bio, just like about.me did with it’s new layout!
3. Pick The Right Color
The new about.me also simplifies the choice of the color of your profile. There are five choices. While it might not be a paradox of choice, here are some essential pointers (keywords) on how to choose between About.Me’s colors:
- Orange: Creative, Warmth, Loyalty, Friendly, Strenght
- Purple: Royalty, Diplomacy, Fashion, Sorrow, Suffering
- Blue: Stability, Leadership, Strength, Comfort, Dependable, Coolness, Truth
- Green: Life, Growth, Healing, Environment, Relaxation, Freshness
- Grey: Stability, Security, Authority, Strength of Authority
Got it? Great
Now open up about.me and update your existing page, or create a new one for free. It won’t take you more than 10 minutes, and you’ll have a personal website – at least a simple on, finally online – in 2016! Updated, as well!
