Do You Have an “About Me” Page on Your Blog?
Think about it, you read an article or story and if you enjoy it you are likely to look to see who the author is, right? You’re intrigued. You want to know more about the person. Novels normally have a have a biography of the person, while articles online or in a magazine usually have a paragraph or two.
I know I read those, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
But there are a number of bloggers (geneabloggers included) who choose to remain effectively anonymous online. That’s their choice, and I say ‘each to their own’, they have their reasons. But there are some compelling reasons to have an About Me page on your blog.
Let me start by saying that I see the usefulness of an About Me page on my own blog. I use Google Analytics to keep track of my blog stats for me, and using that I can see how many people look at what posts each day (or even hour if I wanted to). And from that I can see that my About Me page ranks in the Top 10 looked at posts on most days. So that tells me that people are interested to find out more me, and about who is writing this blog.
I’m not saying your have to have your whole life story written there, but just enough to give those reading a sense of who your are. Besides, it adds a small personal touch to your blog, and that’s also important.
My own About Me page which you can read here, is small, but I think it says enough. It includes my name, where I’m from, approximate age, experience in genealogy and my goals! But it can say whatever you want it to. I’ve seen some very extensive ones, and some very short ones. There’s no real rules.
Apart from that, if you are a member of the GeneaBloggersTRIBE, Kate Challis compiles the Blogiversary details using info from the About Me pages on each blog, and here she’s writes why she finds About Me pages so important, and gives suggestions on what she feels you should include. All of which are good suggestions by the way.
Not only that, potential extended family could well find your blog thanks to Google and cousin-bait, and would like to know a little about you before sending you an email saying “hey, I reckon we’re 4th cousins, and I can tell you all about the lost branch of your family”. But with no About Me page, they get no sense of who you are, and my hesitate.
So my suggestion is that unless you have a very good reason (and I know some do), whether you are a professional genealogist or just a hobby researcher and blogger, or even a blogger on other topics, add an About Me page, as it adds immense value to your blog.
2 Responses to “Do You Have an “About Me” Page on Your Blog?”
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I’ve always had an ‘About Me’ page on my blog, mostly because I started it to connect with / find new family members / other genies with similar interests etc so I want them to know the person who is writing.
Exactly … well done Carole!