thoughts on biz “about” pages
By alice | February 8, 2010
It’s de rigeur these days to have a “story” for your business. The story is a history of how you came to be a business, but its purpose is to connect people with you, make you seem human and real and like you’re doing more than just trying to make a buck selling cakes etc. A lot of businesses have some other theme to their “about” page, describing what they do, or what’s important about them, or using some other way to be human and connect.
I feel that the goal of this page is sharing who you are- it’s “about you”, after all. But it isn’t easy to get right. I hate my business story at the moment. I’ve written a few, and they all start to feel silly after a while. Maybe they just go out of date or maybe they are just silly. Trying to write a business story that isn’t silly is like trying to write a CV that makes you look good without being pompous. Tough.
Common mistakes of small biz “about”/ story pages I have noticed:
1. Being too personal- eg. your whole life story with photos of your travels and tales of your spiritual growth. May not have much to do with cakes really.
2. Being too impersonal- basic facts about what you do, with no sense of the human being behind the widest ever range of punk rock hot-dogs in your town.
3. Missing out the best bits of who you are. You have 3 awards for “best drag show venue in town” but only talk about your authentic beers hand-brewed in your back yard for 38 years.
It can be hard to find out your own best things, which aren’t necessarily just making cakes or beer. Who are you anyway? Hugh Macleod’s new slogan sums up what it’s all about, but figuring out who you are is paradoxically an ongoing process as well as a deep and simple one.
Minor diversion: there’s a brilliant show on the Logo channel called RuPaul’s Drag Race 2. It’s a project runway-style competition for drag queens. But all small biz and marketing people should watch it, because drag queens are about nothing if not branding and entrepreneurism. They are multi-talented, and they know how to fill in the gaps in their talents with personality. Drag queens absolutely exemplify the idea of knowing and selling who you are. They do it in a creative way that involves invention and reinvention. Some people call that inauthentic, but I think they’re missing the point: why would the everyday drudge be more authentic than the life one chooses to create? RuPaul said on this week’s show, “Remember who you are- and always deliver!” Quite so.
Quote from Pedro Almodovar’s All About My Mother: you are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed of being.
4. Trying too hard to look cool and groovy. Quirky photos and jokey captions and unrelated worldwide travelling photos can be charming, or they can make you look a bit naff. Although, does anybody else think that except me? Maybe not. Coolness is vastly over-rated, on the whole. I may have to take this one back.
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I’m not saying everyone who does any of the above necessarily effed it up (RuPaul’s catch-phrase = “Don’t beep it up”). Just that they are things I’m trying to avoid myself. It’s usually better to put something out there than to try to maintain some uncrackable facade, and anyway you can always change it later if the cracks get too bad. Thank God!
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