You find a blog you really like. You want to learn more. You’re thinking of buying from them. What do you do? Click About Us, right? Most people do. Now, pretend you’ve never visited your own site. Remember, you know nothing about you. Nothing. Look at your About Us page? Be honest, what’s the one thing that’s wrong with it?

Why Your About Us Page is the Second Most Important Page on Your Blog?

Video made at The Temple of Heaven, China during soccer practice …

Your About Page should NOT be:

• An Afterthought – something to fill with text, just to get it done. Written after the site is launched when you’ve nothing else to do on a slow Friday afternoon.
• In the third person — it’s your blog! Talk to me. Introduce who you are. Don’t talk down. Talk about your team, mention their names, show their faces, add pic and videos. Why not?
• Flat — read the first paragraph. Does it excite you? Does it make ‘you’ (i.e. the prospect) want to contact you, download your brochure, make an effort to connect?
• Same As— as every other About Us page. C’mon, you can do better. Pics, videos and mp3s. it’s so easy, try it.
• Stale — update it every 3 months. Every month you do something worth sharing. Put it here.

Your About Page should be:

• Kinda Intimate – share something that cannot be found anywhere else on the site. Photos, videos, examples of your portfolio, places you’ve been, events, conferences — anything that paints a picture.
• But Warm – make me feel ‘warm and fuzzy’ inside. You don’t need to go over-board, but share a little. Show why you’re more interesting that the rest.
• With 7 Compelling Reasons — give them 7 reasons (if you can’t think of seven, at least five) to cross the threshold and connect. For example, what do you stand for? What are your values? Who have you helped? What charity do you support? What makes you different (really different!) than the rest.
• For them to Knock on the Door – remember, it’s this page where people decide ‘will I, won’t I?’ So, it better be good. You want them to come in, right?

How To Sharpen Your About Us page

Your About Us page must have the following:

• Story – not your CV, but the story of YOU.
• Why did you decide to do this?
• How did you get here?
• What mistakes did you make?
• What you hope to achieve?
• Why the reader is important to you?
• Share links to your Social Media sites
• Contact form & email & tel number —make it easy for them. Put your contact details on every page.

Videos and Personal Branding

I use videos to help bridge that gap. You see me at work, at soccer practice, with junior, my pet crickets, and even when I’m struggling. Each of these helps close the gap between you and me. Maybe you don’t care for everything on the site, but your impression of me (and your memories of this site) are that much stronger.

Here’s a question for you?

Think of all the sites you visited this week. How many do you remember? Now, look at the video above. In a year’s time, you will still remember this video (for better or worse!) but all the blogs you read this week will be forgotten.

Why do you think that is?

PS – Rewriting your About Us page could result in a higher Google page rank and higher conversion rates for those who find it.

Wendy Marx of Marx Communications as a quality presentation titled "How to Improve the ROI of your New Product Launch". In this presentation, Wendy outlines the five important product launch steps product teams should execute ensure a successful product launch meets its objectives.

Product Launch Readiness: Get your brand ahead of the competition

She includes the following product launch action plan to increase a successful product launch ROI:

1. Acquiring a correct positioning and message
2. Defining the target audience
3. Developing Collateral in sync with your audience
4. Lining up and preparing spokespeople
5. Developing an announcement strategy

These steps are all good product launch essentials.  I would also recommend that any new product launch team consider these as a foundation to a sensible PR strategy.  However, if all your competitors are able to use the same strategies, where is the PR edge for a new product launch? Is there any way to increase the ROI on a new product launch?

If a brand team can articulate the main issue their new product addresses, then that team should seek an edge by initiating industry conversations, around their new market issues, much earlier than the product launch activities and PR events.

To accomplish this, a product team should collect all the relevant industry conversations around the issue their product addresses. They should curate these conversations around the discussions most important to their customers.  They should then publish these conversations and insights in an easy to access, branded presence that the industry may access.

Sampling, reviewing, and publishing insights from the industry delivers three advantages to the product launch team:

1. It introduces the team to the industry as leaders involved with critical issues in the market before any promotion or product-focused marketing efforts
2. It provides market intelligence on how the product team can improve its positioning and messaging for maximum relevance
3. It seeds the company brand as an industry leader and insider, giving it an edge during the eventual PR efforts for the product launch events.

Product teams that can curate and share the critical issues of the market in which they plan to engage a product launch conversations, will have an edge over other teams that only launch their industry conversations during their market introduction efforts.

Gerry McGovern provides this week’s guest article. “You build a brand on the Web one click at a time. You destroy your brand by wasting your customers’ time. I am a customer of a number of banks. I judge these banks, at least partly, by the experience I have with them online. I used to really like the National Irish Bank experience. Then they ‘improved’ it, making it more secure. And this of course is the problem at the heart of security. You can make a process so secure that even the people for whom it is designed can’t use it without huge effort.”

Now, when I go to the National Irish Bank homepage I often get a ‘page not found’ error. Usually when I refresh the page that little Java icon appears. I enjoy spending time watching it swirl round and round. It reminds me of coffee. Then I get an ‘error on page’ message. I refresh again and I actually get to the homepage.

It used to be that it remembered my User ID. Not anymore. Now I have to go get it and paste it in, because it’s long and I can’t remember it. Then it requires my password, which I can remember.

Next I get to a page where I have to enter a special security number from a card they’ve sent me. It’s annoying and such a waste of time. It now takes me at least three times longer to get into my account. Once in, however, it’s a really excellent experience, well designed and intuitive.

Bank of Ireland, on the other hand, is easy to get into. However, the subsequent steps are really clunky. The National Irish Bank interface has a feeling that it was designed for human beings. The Bank of Ireland interface feels like it was designed for robots.

Whereas the National Irish Bank immediately shows me balance information for my main accounts (a top task), here’s what I have to do on Bank of Ireland to get such information: click on a link called ‘Accounts’; click on a link called ‘Select All Accounts’; select an account from a list; click on a different link called ‘Accounts’ (Yes, there are two links called ‘Accounts’); select ‘Transactions’. It’s a real pain, a big waste of time.

Halifax Ireland is positively primitive. You can’t even transfer money. This is a top task for sure and if in 2010 a bank won’t even allow you to transfer money online, then it loses a huge amount of credibility and trust. This isn’t usability. This isn’t interface design.

• This is branding.
• This is marketing.
• This is advertising.
• This is management.

And you know what?

I’ll bet senior management in all these banks could not care less about my online experience. In fact, I have rarely, if ever, met a senior manager with more than a passing interest in the Web. They think this stuff is technical – something you give to the IT department. Where customers spend their time is where you build your brand.

Organizations need to stop trying to use traditional advertising techniques to create false images. For an increasing number of customers, you are your website. It’s about time senior management woke up to that fact.

Gerry McGovern

Content management solutions: Gerry McGovern
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com

PS – Gerry raises some good points here, in particular how a company can destroy its own brand. Al Ries shows how you can avoid these mistakes by staying focused. It sounds simple, but it’s not easy. I rarely use the phrase ‘must read’ this if you haven’t read this book, get it now. Don’t take my word though, read the endorsement and you’ll see what I mean.

How do you define innovation? Graham Horton has translated BMW’s definition of innovation for those who don’t speak German. I (used to) speak a little German and hope to get the original translation from Graham.

How to Re-Define an Innovation Philosophy

Here is the BMW’s innovation philosophy:

“It is our job to give customers something they want, but they didn’t know they were looking for, and which they say they always wanted when they get it.”

http://grahamhorton.posterous.com/how-bmw-defines-innovation

While this is a bit wordy, you get the drift.

1. Give customers something they want
2. An experience they didn’t know they were looking for
3. Something they value when they get it

These three statements drive BMW’s vision. How would you distill these into something snappier and a little easier to remember?

I’ll kick it off.

“We build the dreams you haven’t dreamt of yet.”

A bit lame, but it’s a start.

Fire away below.

How would you define BMW’s innovation philosophy?