Your Blog Profile Page – Blog Authors Should Be Knowable

In the previous two posts, we’ve been looking at how important it is to personalize your blog. In yesterday’s post you explored how to choose and place a profile picture on your blog. Today we are going to discuss the importance of an about page or profile page. A well written about page can give your readers personal insight into who you are. If done right your profile page will also engender feelings of confidence in your experience, boosting your readers’ belief in your expertise and authority to write about your given subject. Your about section will add the human element to your blog.

This elevates it from being just a collection words, to an extension of a real and knowable person. Humanizing your blog with your personal presence will help you build a strong sense of community with your readers. And finally your about page will give you an opportunity to encourage users to connect with you, in various ways that can help build an online community network that centers around your blog.

I know from roaming around the web and exploring countless blogs, that many of you fail to have any kind of about page. No links to personal profile pages, nada. It will cost you nothing but a little time and effort to tap into the power of you! So let’s add that about page or beef up your existing profile page shall we? Here’s what we will be covering:

• What you should say about yourself.
• Providing options for readers to connect with you.
• How to add your about page to your blog.
• Options for linking to your about page.

What you should say about yourself on your about page will vary according to your blogging purpose and your own personal comfort levels. Even so, any good profile section should include:

• An introduction, including your name and possibly where you are from.
• A statement about why you write your blog – a bit about your motivations, intentions and goals.
• Some personal information, such as: hobbies, interests, experience, education, etc.

The above list may seem a bit generic, but you will have to decide what to include and what to focus on. If yours is a professional or business blog, you will want to put more emphasis on areas such as your education, your experience and related accomplishments. This might also be your focus if your are sharing information or instructional tutorials. If you are blogging for a cause then your group associations/affilations should be added and included with your personal experiences relating to your cause. If you blog just for fun or to entertain you will probably be more inclined to reveal personal information and include things such as personal interests, your taste in music, movies, books, etc. A little careful thought about why you write your blog, combined with what your readers are probably interested in will help you craft and effective about page. The nice thing is that you can adjust, improve and tune it up over time so that it grows with you and your blog.

For further inspiration, do a little blog surfing and sample the about pages that others in your blog niche are using. You will quickly be able to tell what things work and what don’t by assessing which profiles appeal to you the most.

Providing options for your readers to connect with you from your profile page is very important. Remember we have established that your about section is part of a strategy for building an online community that is centered around your blog. So take the opportunity to give your readers as many ways as possible to connect with you on other online communites to which you belong. Do this by providing links to your online profiles, so they may: bookmark, join or follow you accordingly. I’m talking about any communities you have joined such as My Blog Log, Twitter, Friend Feed – you get the idea. If you’ve done it right then each of your profiles in these communities will link back to your blog. Picture your blog as the center of a wheel, on the outer rim of the wheel are places online that connect to your blog (your online profiles for the different communities you belong to) the spokes of the wheel are the connections running between you and those online outposts. Your blog is at the center of the hub and all the spokes lead back to your blog. The more “spokes” the more “folks” will be able to find you.

You should also include a link to your contact page so anyone viewing your profile can email you. If your blogging platform doesn’t provide an email option check out Kontactr.com, Foxyform.com or VisitorContact.com. These are all free options that you can use to set up a contact page so your blog readers can send you email. They all offer spam protection and since they’re free there is no excuse for not providing your readers with a way to reach you directly!

How to add your about page to your blog will vary according to what blogging platform you are using. Some, such as blogger include the ability to build a linkable profile that you can display in your sidebar, complete with a profile picture. You can access the profile options in blogger from your dashboard:

Other platforms such as WordPress provide the ability to set up pages that are separate from blog posts that can be readily linked to from your blog template. Other platforms may or may not have such features, your best bet is to check the user documentation for your platform. Or you might try an online search to see if others using the same platform provide any instructions or tutorilas for adding an about page.

A quick and easy way to provide an about page on any blog, is to creat a back-dated post, one that is dated to before the creation of your very first blog post. Remove or close the commenting option for that post, add a photo of yourself and your profile information to the body of the post and publish it. Then it is a simple matter of creating a link back to your profile page, either in your navigation menu or in a sidebar link.

There is another option for providing an about page that can be quite effective. You might want to consider using an off-site profile page, hosted by an online service, that you link to from your blog. An external profile page has many advantages and there a number of options to choose from. As a result, I have decided to address these in a separate post and we’ll talk about them in more detail tomorrow.

Options for linking to your about page are pretty basic. You can put a link to your full profile page in your navigation menu, most people just label this as “About” or “About Me”. Another good option is to put a small excerpt and image on your sidebar with a link to your full profile page. Don’t be shy, use both options and give your readers a better chance to realize that you do indeed have a profile section. If you are only going to give them one option, I strongly recommend using the abbreviated profile in the sidebar and definitely include your profile image. This is the most visually appealing option and is more likely to get people to click and visit your about page.

If you don’t have an about page I hope this article has got you thinking about the benefits of adding one. If you already have a profile section maybe this post gave you some good ideas for beefing it up and making it more effective. Please leave comments and let us know how you use your about page. Any hints or tips are welcome!

Stop by tomorrow for the next exciting installment:
Online Hosted Profile Pages – Alternatives To Your Blog About Page

The first two posts in this series:

1. Putting A Face On Your Blog – Don’t Be A Mystery Blogger
2. Choosing & Using A Blog Profile Picture – Putting Your Best Blog Face Forward