This post is Day 16 of the 28 Day Blogging Breakthrough Challenge. You can chat about the challenge on social media using the hashtag #BloggingBreakthrough. Click here to view all of the challenge prompts.

What’s one of the most important pages on your website? What’s one of the places where first-time visitors will go to get to know a bit more about you? Know the answer?

Your “About” page.

This is one of the most useful, and will probably be one of the most popular pages on your site. It’s where your readers, whether they’re new or not, can go to learn more about who you are, what do you and why you’re doing it.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Yep, it is. And there are blog posts upon blog posts out there that will tell you how you can create a killer About page.

But that’s not what today’s about. That’s not the point. Day 16 in the #BloggingBreakthrough challenge isn't here to tell you what you need to put in your About page. It’s here to tell you why you should update it regularly and how to do just that.

Now that leads me onto a very important question to ask you.

When was the last time you updated your About page?

Think about it. I read blogs every single day. More often than not, I’ll head to their About page. But the information will either be really really short or just completely out of date.

When you’re constantly trying to attract new readers to your blog - even though you might not actively be doing this all the time - it’s not the best thing when your About page is “old”.

So writing one up to make it the best About page ever is great and something you should definitely do. But do you just leave it forever once it goes live?

Hell no!

When Should I Update My About Page?

We can split this up into three scenarios:

When You're Rebranding

Obviously when you’re rebranding, a lot of the information on your site will go out of date. This will also really affect your About page. On there, you’ll have what your blog is about, who it’s for and what content you actually create - but a rebrand likely means that all of this will change.

When I went through a mini rebrand, where I migrated my site over from Blogger to Squarespace and found ABOH’s true direction, my About page was one of the last things I wrote. And if you’re going through a similar thing, I strongly advise you to do the same.

Only once you’re almost ready to go live, will you know what you’re going to put in your About page.

When You're Making Some Minor Changes

So let’s say you’re not rebranding. But you have made some small changes to your site over the past few months - maybe your categories have changed, you’ve introduced some services, started a newsletter - anything at all. This is also a really good time to update your About page. This won’t require as much re-writing as when you’re rebranding, but it’ll still be worthwhile making some changes.

When You're Just Staying the Same

Apart from that, I’d say to update your About page every six months. This will allow you to update your personal information as well as anything extra you’ve introduced to your blog.

So right now, whichever one of these situations you’re in, I want you to go get your planner and a pen. Or, if you manage your diary online, get that open in a new tab.

You need to set two dates for this year that are six months apart - these are the times when you’re going to get that About page updated.

The first date I always set is always around my birthday. For me, another year has passed, which is the perfect time to update my About page.

Then, you want to set another date that’s six months apart. I set my first one for July and my next one for December. So I update my About page twice a year in each of those months.

Simple.

So say your birthday is in March. Your first date to update your About page would be March and the next one would be September.

If your birthday is later on in the year like October, you work backwards. So the second date to update your About page would be October and the first would be April.

What About My Pictures?

If you’re as savvy as I think you are, I know you’ll have the same profile picture on your website and all your social media channels.

If you’ve not, go read this post right now.

Back? Good!

Having the same photo on all your online platforms is great for building trust, allowing people to recognise who you are, and growing your online presence.

But, if you started blogging two years ago, you don’t want to have the same picture now as when you first started out.

I’d say a good rule of thumb would be to update your photos once a year. And one of the easiest and best times to do this is around your birthday. This is always when I take a new headshot and update my sidebar photo and all my social channels pictures.

I know lots of bloggers who do this more often and that’s fine - you’ve just got to be careful with the types of photos you’re taking. You don’t want to look drastically different so people don’t recognise you!

Why Is It so Important to Keep My About Page Updated?

It’s so easy to forget about your About page. It’s a page that just exists, when really, you can make changes to it whenever you want and that will seriously benefit you. Because if you think about it, nothing is constant. Things will change. Your job will change. Your blog will change. Your goals and aims will change. That means that your About page should change with you.

The point of an About page isn't to tell readers your life story. It’s about communicating where you are and where you are with your blog right now.

Today’s Task

Go through the steps outlined above to update your About page.

If you want to do it right now, that's great! If not, go ahead and put two dates in your diary for when you're going to update your page.
Then when it's time, go ahead and update anything that needs updating and add in any new information.
Remember to mark a date for that new profile photo, too!

Remember, if you’ve got any questions, reach out to me on Twitter at @abranchofholly or leave a comment. And if you take any pictures of your progress be sure to use the #BloggingBreakthrough hashtag!

TO GETTING A BREAKTHROUGH WITH YOUR BLOG

I also wanted to quickly mention something I'm planning for the #BloggingBreakthrough challenge. It'll be launching on the last day of the challenge & I can't wait to show you. Any ideas what you think it could be?

Let's chat in the comments - when was the last time you updated your About page? Are you planning to update it more often now?