Patrick Ewers is the founder of Mindmavin LLC, a company focused on creating new business for professionals in referral based companies by helping to stay top of mind with those people in their network that matter most.

About.me is really about you presenting yourself to the world. It’s your story told by you. I believe that the days of winning huge points with a lofty written bio that speaks of you in the 3^rd person are most likely over.  Here is what we believe works:

Define just one target group

Define a group of people that are most meaningful to you. Understand which group is most relevant to your objective. And focus on that one group. This is absolutely applicable if your goal is to get new business, if you’re trying to present yourself as a creative person and even if you are trying to simply connect with your world of friends. If you can, avoid being everything to everyone. If you try you’ll most likely land between the chairs rather than on them.

Really understand your target audience

Do your best to understand what resonates with this group and what this group actually cares about. What do they find relevant? And, most importantly, learn and describe to yourself what you actually have in common with this group. What aspects about yourself can you emphasize because you think it will resonate with your target audience?

Describe yourself in terms that matter to your audience; highlight what you have in common with them

Typically, a summary includes 3-4 different components, sometimes more and sometimes less. The key is to truly focus on those things that actually matter most to your target audience, to show what you have in common with them and finally to meet them with what they expect.  If you are a professional and you are trying to cater to a professional group, stick to what professionals expect. You may not want to describe yourself in ways that are potentially too creative for this audience to digest. On the other hand, if you are a creative person and you want to excel through creativity, dare to share it. Feel free to express yourself creatively as part of reaching out to the target audience that cares about that.

Above all, be yourself, be genuine and true to who you are

Most important of all, make sure that whatever you do, you find yourself mirrored in it. It needs to sound true to you and who you are. At the end of the day I believe that being genuine is one of your best bets of being successful in everything you want to achieve. Yes, there are people out there that say “fake it until you make it”. It is a statement that at times is relatively popular. My gut feel tells me that only the few people have truly found success with this approach.