Are you working on a passion project in addition to your 9-to-5? What about building your own business? We understand how busy life can be when you’re trying to create something. That’s why many people, from all around the world, have chosen about.me to create a quick and simple, yet professional presentation of themselves.
Now, it’s your turn.
Follow these 10 easy steps to make your about.me page work for you so you can get back to working on what you care about.
You’ve got people to meet, things to do, places to go. And you’ve got a great story to tell about yourself. You can use your resume to tell others who you are, but that doesn’t capture the full picture of you. Maybe you’re a student just starting his career or an artist who would prefer to highlight her body of work instead of writing about it, or a realtor looking to show off his personality. That’s why we’ve created Backstory. So you can, in a more visual way, showcase who you are both professionally and personally.
Adding a Backstory to your page connects your resume, portfolio and about.me page to showcase your skills and aspirations. Through Backstory you can relate your story and more easily connect with others, because that’s how people connect, through stories. It’s rare that people get excited about lines on a resume. It’s just a listing of facts and dates. So what that you worked for a law firm for two summers? The interesting part is what’s never written on your resume. The picture of you traveling the world and the story of how your experience abroad inspired you to go into law even though you studied biology in college. With Backstory connected to your about.me page, it’s easy to make this story come alive, and connect with people on a personal level. This could lead to the door opening for professional opportunities including work collaborations, jobs and hopefully an expansion of your network.
And whether or not you already have an about.me page, it’s easy to set up a Backstory. Plus, you can customize it however you want and turn the different sections of your Backstory on for public view when you’re ready. Try it out, let us know how you like it, and as always, have fun with it. Because it is your story and this is your chance to share it.
Learn more here.
Creative types view life as a journey of self-expression. Thus, creative professionals can find it hard to identify with platforms that don’t give their users the opportunity to express themselves visually. Creatives observe everything. Naturally, this is reflected in their professional careers: they pay excruciating attention to detail, ask big questions, and aren’t afraid to take risks. The about.me platform enables creative types to showcase their work without losing touch with their personality.
Brett Henley‘s page is a great example of how creatives can tell their story on our platform, and foster engagement amongst users. Since the last time we checked, it seems like Brett has updated his page a little bit and we can learn from both versions. In this post we’re going to dissect his page so that you too can create a compelling page, whether or not you consider yourself a creative type.
Background Photo
Brett clearly understands the rules of photo composition. When you’re selecting your background photo, try to keep these things in mind:
Headline + Biography
Remember, you are more than your job title. Be creative in the way you write about yourself. Oftentimes when asked what we do in our careers we say, “Director of…but really I do X, Y, and Z.” Use this space as an arena to explain that X, Y, and Z, but don’t forget to tell your story not just professionally, but personally, too. On Brett’s page, instead of just writing “Co-Founder and Writer,” he showed his personality by using phrases like “Chief Smasher of B.S.” and “Instigate where needed.”
Whether you’re making a new about.me page, or updating your existing one, take a step back and view it as an empty canvas waiting for your creative expression. As always, if you need help or just want some feedback on your page, feel free to send us a tweet or visit our support page. Don’t forget to visit Brett‘s live page and send him a compliment!
The team has been making lot of progress on a variety of projects. Below, we’ve included a information about some of the current endeavors.
Quick View is now live on the site. Now we have a new way to view pages faster when browsing through Search results, the Popular page or the Featured page – it’s kinda slick, just click a thumbnail to open a quick view of the page. We’ve also made it easier to read the beginning of someone’s biography and quickly get a better understanding of that person. It’s the brainchild of Jeff brought to life by Daisy.
When viewing an about.me page, you can use the ‘+’ button to add the page to one of your collections. Collections are one of our most popular features, it was time for it to have it’s own dedicated button and name. Our very own Jake made it happen – be sure to check out his wonderful Artists collection.
This week we cleaned up the notifications in your navigation bar to make it simpler and easier to use. We’ve removed clutter and streamlined non-essential information. You can view all of your notifications from about.me/home, and all of your stats from about.me/stats.
Compliments, adding to a Collection, emailing and following users all have improved screens. When you are interacting with someone’s page, there’s no need for extraneous information. The new function focuses on completing the action efficiently with maximum clarity. We think it’s more efficient, prettier, and an all around improvement to the experience.
We’ve fixed confusing text in a few places. In particular, we made it more clear when an action is completed by a person on our platform vs. about.me algorithms. For example, when someone compliments your page vs being added to one of our automated collections (ie, Twitter Friends, Facebook Friends) or being added to our Popular section.
Scrolling back through your about.me/home page is newly improved as well. Now you can smoothly view less-recent notifications my clicking the ‘more’ button. When you scroll down the page, you can be sure you haven’t missed something important.
Let us know what you think in the comments, or on twitter @aboutdotme
Today we are thrilled to launch a new way to show off some of the content that makes you unique. Choose from your latest Soundcloud, Vimeo, YouTube or blog content to display in your bio box. Keep it fresh by updating when you have new sounds or video to share.
With the help of Soundcloud, you can embed public tracks, sets or even profiles right on your about.me page. 
In addition to Soundcloud, we have also added the ability to embed a video or recent blog links directly into your bio box. 
To include a Youtube or Vimeo video, add the video (not channel) URL. We want to see what you’re up to! Tweet your updated page with the hashtag #aboutme as we’ll be sharing and featuring the ones we see!
Not on Twitter? Just add your page in the comments below. We will choose the best pages with audio or video to highlight next week. Time to update your about.me!
If you are a writer with an about.me page, there are a number of Apps perfect for you. Read on and be sure these are added to your page!
WordPress
WordPress is the most popular blogging platform online today. There’s also an about.me widget for either WordPress.org or WordPress.com, displaying your page as an about section.
Blogger
Blogger has been around for more than 10 years, so has accumulated lots of writers with a fantastic network.
TypePad
TypePad is the last of the big three blog networks, supporting large corporate and news blogs as well as individuals.
Tumblr
Tumblr is the newest of these blogging platforms, supporting bloggers and curators with its unique features.
Finally, be sure to check out our latest Feed feature. We now support any discoverable RSS feed of written content, so if you aren’t on one of the platforms above (or are) give it a try!
We know there are lot of foodies on about.me. If you love exploring new cuisines, here are our recommendations for Apps to show off your favorites!
Forkly
Discover and share dining tastes with the Forkly app. Download Forkly to capture and share favorite dishes wherever you go. Search for and save things you’d like to try.
Key Ingredient
Our latest App, Key Ingredient is perfect for showing off your favorite recipes and bookmarking future ones to try. For foodies who like trying their cooking chops at home, Key Ingredient is for you!
Foursquare
Foursquare helps you discover great restaurants everywhere, and learn the best tips on what to get (or what not to)! You can also learn about deals and discounts. Yum!
With so many ways to discover new tastes and show off your own, we hope you’re taking advantage of these great Apps. Let us know if we’re missing any!
Do you love tracking all you do and sharing it with your friends? Are you part of the quantified self movement? If so, the following Apps are a perfect fit for your about.me page!
Fitbit
Fitbit motivates you to stay active, live better, and reach your goals. Measure your steps taken, sleep patterns and more, and display your results on your about.me page!
Memolane
Memolane pulls your social network history together to relive the most memorable moments online. Highlight your best moments with memolane on your page.
Kred Story
Kred Story keeps it online by showing a visual history of your social media influence. See your updates with the most engagement and impact, and show them off on about.me.
Do you track your online and real world activities? Which Apps would you recommend?
If you are looking to use your about.me page to get a job, a promotion or to just raise your status professionally, we have some recommended Apps to use.
The de facto professional network, LinkedIn is a standard way of showing off your work history. About.me lets people connect directly with you there within the modal as well.
Smarterer
Smarterer lets you show off specific areas of expertise with badges. Head to Smarterer.com to take tests that cover your stated areas of experience.
Speakerfile
Get discovered on the speaking circuit with Speakerfile. Offer your expertise, topics you can speak to and example talks for visitors to see.
Endorse.me
With Endorse.me bring social proof to your professional profile by getting endorsements from people you’ve worked with, and highlighting the best on your about.me page!
Any other Apps you’d add to this list? Let us know in the comments here!
Just in time for Thanksgiving, we are so thrilled to be adding Key Ingredient to our App Center. Key Ingredient makes you want to cook at home. If you already cook it home, it will further develop your interest in the culinary arts – trust me (after all, I do have a TrustCloud score of 761).
Yum!
Collect and share any recipe online, get recipes on your mobile devices, and take them all right into the kitchen. Browse millions of beautiful photos and recipe’s and search for any and all of your favorite dishes. Make a Profile and start “CookMarking” your way to your own personalized cookbook of awesomeness.
With this integration you can display the latest recipes in your collection. Show your friends what you’re cooking and what dishes are important to you right now. Sign up for Key Ingredient and download their free app in the iTunes store. Then, add Key Ingredient to your About.me page to showcase your beautiful recipe collection today!
On the web, on the go, and in the kitchen –– Key Ingredient is your recipe collection, everywhere.
