Hi! I'm looking to update my personal website and also working a side project and find it incredibly difficult to get the wording right, especially in the about sections, I end up writing and re-writing it over and over and never finish π! Any tips on how to write informative, snappy content?
Hey Kerry β I write About pages as one of the services I offer...here are the things I've found are important and make for an effective about page/section:
Communicate your why β the biggest mistake people make is to talk about themselves too much! An about page is an excellent opportunity to emphasise your key messages again...
Focus on 'them' and not you β again, a bit counter-intuitive when it comes to an About page/section, but this is a great place to connect with people there...why should they care about you/what you do? What hooks can you give them to connect with you as a person? (e.g. on my about page the bit that many people have mentioned is when I say I'm 5ft 1.5 inches tall β and the fact that the 0.5 inches is important when you're that size!).
Use bullet points β it doesn't work for every one/all websites but I can get quite a lot of info on my page by using bullets and it's easily readable and skim-able for people.
Get someone else to write it and/or ask other people questions like "What is something you see about me that I might not see myself?" or "What one word word would you use to describe me?" βΒ this will give you insights you might not have yourself and help you see possible blind spots!
Hope that helps!
Hi Kerry, it looks like your project speakerslive isn't working anymore.
Hi!
I'm not a native English speaker, so I always find myself in this situation. Recently, I've tried a few tips that have helped me:
Write a lot of content. Don't stress the wording early, don't edit too soon as it blocks your mind. Just try to write anything you want to say even if you don't like your wording yet. After writing 2x-3x of you need, your mind warms-up.
Copy/See inspirations: I find similar websites to mine that I like their tone or wording. Eg. when doing https://usenoor.com landing, I looked at superhuman.com and twist.com, to use some of their phrases, word choices, or how they convey meaning in a short phrase) same for personal websites (eg. https://mxstbr.com , whatever you find interesting)
Send it to 1-2 friends, after you wrote what you can. I asked @Clo_O on Women Make to proof read, and she wrote lots of recommendations and suggestions.
Google synonyms: I sometimes find similar words by searching " synonym" in Google. Search "snappy synonym" I get "concise","crisp", "bright", "elegant".
Cut: Find phrases, sentences, and words that you've repeated, and remove repetition or replace a sentence with a concise word (often native-Englishers are good at this). Save the parts that don't belong to the topic at hand for later.
"Bullet-point -> text" technique: After you wrote all the text you could on the topic, summarize it to bullet-points and keep them very concise (it's for yourself), and now start writing again based on the bullet points (important first). It helps you to cut the fluff
If you told us specifics you need help with, maybe I could help better.