This content is provided by Brighter Vision, an affinity partner of AAMFT.
Why Does My ‘About’ Page Even Matter?
When writing the content for your website, you may be wondering if you even need an ‘About Me’ page. However, your ‘About Me’ page is likely going to become one of the most useful and popular pages on your private practice website. It’s where potential clients will come to learn more about your practice; who you serve, what value you add to your clients’ lives, and why they should stick around and ultimately sign up for your services.
Of course, creating a stellar ‘About Me’ page requires a bit more than just posting a list of your achievements and throwing up a headshot. In fact, writing your ‘About Me’ page is actually more about your potential client than it is about you… but we’ll circle back to this later.
Writing is hard. Even more so, writing content about yourself while also making it about your potential client is REALLY hard. And we get that. But the thought of writing your ‘About Me’ page shouldn’t make you run for the hills.
In this article, we’ll break down the process into easily manageable steps.
To start off, let’s take a look at some of our favorite ‘About Me’ pages:
- https://shanebirkel.com/about-me/
- https://affinitycounselinggroup.com/ciara-braun-lpc-ncc/
- https://denvermhc.com/staff/ian-palombo-ma-lpc/
- https://mindovermoodwellnesscenter.com/about/
Take a look at each one of these pages and try to come up with ideas as to why you think they’re great.
Defining Your Practice - Key Questions
At this point you may be wondering exactly why we think these ‘About’ pages are so great. The biggest reason is because they all answer key questions that help define the practice and they all give potential clients specific reasons to come see them.
Before you just start writing, it’s best to begin by answering these key questions:
1. What value do you add to your clients’ lives?
In a time where therapists seem to be everywhere, making a good first impression is vital to building a thriving practice. But how do you ensure a good first impression?
By first and foremost writing your ‘About Me’ page with your ideal client in mind. What are they looking for? What do they want you to help them with? What can your services do for them?
If you really think about it, your ‘About Me’ page should be just as much about your potential clients as it is about you. Yes, your visitors do want to know about you as a person, but more importantly, they want to know how you are going to help them. Let them know how your approach is unique and why they should come to your practice.
If you want to really grab your visitors’ attention and get them to read your entire page then you need to keep your focus on explaining how you can help them. The way you share this information is key to keeping their attention and luring them in to finally contact you through your website.
2. Who is your ideal client?
Focus on your ideal clients and what their needs are. Specifying your niche and who your ideal clients are helps your potential clients connect with you immediately. It lets them know that your practice is the right choice for them because you uniquely understand their issues and truly want to help them them get better.
Need help determining your Ideal Client? Figure it out now with this Ideal Client Quiz
Now some of you might be thinking that if you choose a niche for your practice, you will be selling yourself short; you may be excluding potential clients or you might lose a client or two if they don’t match the description you’ve given of your ideal client.
While yes, that may be true to an extent, the bigger truth is that by clearly defining your ideal client and establishing your niche you will be attracting more of the people you do your best work with. This will make marketing easier, networking easier, and drive in many more referrals for your practice.
3. What about you makes you the best fit for your ideal client?
Is there something in your life that makes you able to connect with your ideal client better than another therapist might be able to? This could be something like a personal experience, education, travel, or family upbringing. While it may seem like an unconventional approach, incorporating this idea into your About Me page can be very powerful and attractive to potential clients looking for someone to connect with.
With these questions answered, it’s time to get writing! Next, we’ll break things down and provide you with a guided prompt that will make things nice and easy.
Time to Write
This is the part where we really get down to business! With your practice defined and ideal client characterized, it’s time to begin writing your ‘About Me’ page’s content.
Don’t worry - we’ll break things down into 2 parts to make it easy.
Part 1 - Practice Information
While it’s extremely important for your personality to shine through on your ‘About Me’ page, it’s also important to help potential clients understand your practice as a whole and the full vision behind it.
Before you get into your personal bio, try to answer these questions in your content:
- Why should someone come to your practice? Try a sentence like, “If you’re feeling x, y and z, you’ve come to the right place.”
- What will they get out of a session with you? Are they going to overcome their anxieties? Resolve relationship issues? Meet other people in the same boat as them? Let your potential clients know what to expect.
- How did your practice get started? Don’t be afraid to get a bit more personal here. Did you quit your full-time job at an established practice to pursue helping the people within your niche? Did it come to you in a dream? Have you wanted to open a private practice since fourth grade? Tell the story of how your practice came to be.
Part 2 - Personal Bio
After you’ve answered the above questions about your practice, it’s time to dive into your personal bio. In this section, you should write about yourself as it relates to your practice. In other words – don’t list your top 10 favorite movies or why you think mashed potatoes are the best potato form.
Just as you wouldn’t go to a networking event and start spewing out random facts and tidbits about yourself, you shouldn’t do it on your ‘About Me’ page either. This page is meant to serve as reasoning for why a potential client would benefit from working with you. Their problems aren’t comical, so the tone of this page shouldn’t be either.
Instead, talk about how your practice fits into your life:
- Why did you start your practice?
- When did your love for therapy begin?
- What made you chose to follow this path and specialize in your particular niche?
After you have that in place, feel free to throw in a few personal details as well:
- Where can we find you when you’re not in the office?
- What are your hobbies when you’re not working?
- Do you have a super cute puppy? Post a picture!
This will make you seem more personal and approachable, and well, like a real person they can imagine opening up to. Provided, of course, that they’re keeping in tone with the rest of your content. For example, if you specialize in working with troubled teens struggling with behavioral issues, you probably don’t want to mention your love of taking your motorcycle through the winding mountain roads in your spare time.
While these steps may be the hardest, they are also undoubtedly the most important. After the content for your ‘About Me’ page is written, read it back to yourself aloud to make sure it sounds like you. It’s also a good idea to share it with a colleague, friend, or family member – choose someone who will give you honest feedback.
Finishing Touches
Now that the text for your ‘About Me’ page is completed, the final steps are pretty straightforward but extremely important in making sure your ‘About Me’ page attracts as many new clients as possible.
Here are the finishing touches you’ll want to make sure are included on your ‘About Me’ page:
1. A High-Quality Photo
You know the saying, “never judge a book by its cover”? Well, unfortunately, no one really follows that rule. I mean, come on, how can you not choose the book with the beautiful cover that speaks to you? At the very least, you’ll pick up the better-looking one first to read its description on the back. That’s just how it goes.
With that being said, it’s best to be mindful of the fact that your ideal client is also going to make assumptions about you and your practice based on the photo(s) you include on your ‘About Me’ page – and all the other photos on your site, but we’ll save that for another post.
A professional headshot is always recommended, but photos of your office or therapy room are also good options. It’s shocking how many therapist websites don’t include a headshot of the therapist anywhere at all or, if they do, it’s a “selfie” that was taken in the car – yes, we can see your seatbelt – or a fuzzy photo that someone else has been poorly cropped out of.
Remember, you work in a field that involves face-to-face interaction with people who are in their most vulnerable state. They’re likely going to be nervous about contacting you in the first place so a friendly, professional headshot of yourself is a must.
Keep in mind that small details matter so you may want to study up on what certain colors symbolize, what your posture says about your personality, or what your background setting may portray.
Still not sure where to start? Check out this study that breaks down all the elements that reliably produce a better professional headshot photo.
2. A Prominent Call To Action
This is one of the biggest things we see therapists forget to include on this page and, sadly, it’s another one that’s just too important to omit. After all, why go to the work of writing this killer ‘About Me’ page if your readers aren’t instructed to do anything at the end?
Now that you’ve finished writing, wrap it all up with a clear call to action at the end of your page!
A call to action, or CTA, is a “statement designed to elicit an immediate response from the person reading or hearing it.”
It gives you one more way to engage with your potentials clients. Plus as an added bonus, it can even help break up any big chunks of content on your page and improve the overall aesthetic.
Some common CTAs we see on therapist websites are:
- “Contact me today for a free consultation”
- “Contact me to get the help you need”
- Even something as simple as “Get started”
Calls to action are extremely important because you want the reader to stick around for the long haul. What you don’t want is somebody to read your ‘About Me’ page and love it, but then move on to another web page.
However, this can easily be avoided by adding a CTA into your ‘About Me’ page. Whether it’s asking them to subscribe to your newsletters or contacting you for a free consultation, a prominent CTA is essential for converting visitors into new clients.
If you’ve built a website on your own through a service like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, adding a CTA can sometimes be tricky on your own. With Brighter Vision’s web design service, we pair you up with a team of professional website developers who can do this for you. Click here to learn more.
Final Thoughts
Writing your ‘About Me’ page is a very important step to marketing your private practice and improving your website’s effectiveness at attracting new clients. While it might seem like an overwhelming task, it shouldn’t be overlooked. With the proper planning, it can turn into a stress free and rewarding experience sure to benefit your business for years to come.
About Brighter Vision
Brighter Vision makes marketing simple for therapists. They are the world’s leading provider of websites for therapists, while also providing a whole suite of marketing solutions designed to help therapists attract more clients and thrive on the Web.
As an affinity partner of AAMFT, all members receive 2 months free of a new website with Brighter Vision. To learn more or take advantage of this offer, please click here.