How to place your personality into your blog’s sidebar

I’m sure you’ve been told before that it’s a good idea to put a link to your About page on your sidebar, along with an avatar (online portrait) to accompany it.

This is because readers and visitors like to know who the person is behind all that blogging. It’s nice to see an author’s face, find out more about their personality, what they’re up to, what they’ve done, what their family is like, etc.

Now this could be done very simply through a text widget, sporting a photograph and a bit of blurb to keep the punters happy, not forgetting that all important link to the About Page (I hope you have all updated your About Pages on your blogs, haven’t you?).

“But I’ve already got a link to my About Page on my navigation bar. Why would I want another one on my sidebar?” I hear some mutterings in the background. And you’re right. There’s no need for overload – or is there?

Let me introduce you to a wonderful little widget called About.me that lurks at the beginning of the widget gallery in WordPress.com blogs that is often overlooked:

What’s it for? Well, it connects to an application called About.me that is another platform on the net you can promote yourself, as well as your business, on blogs and other places that connect to this.

What’s it look like? Well, here’s my presentation taken from my Nature blog:

There’s all these nifty buttons linking to your other social media profiles added in for good measure.

But unlike the equivalent done in a text widget (even with the social media buttons) this is extremely interactive throughout the web. I regularly get people finding this profile and both commenting and connecting to it. If you say the right things, include the appropriate keywords in your bio, and trigger the correct response from those who come across it, who knows what impact it could have on your publicity status?

OK, it doesn’t link to your About Page (that’s what the navigation bar is for), but it can give a lot of information about you. This is what my profile looks like:

Now how it looks, and what information it contains, is up to you.

If you have a professional portrait that makes you look 10 years younger, here’s the ideal place to put it! There are tags for location and keywords, and you can add in your blog’s RSS feed to list your latest posts, all interactive for easy access. And you can link to as many blogs and websites as you like underneath your social media buttons.

All of this information is interactive with the search engines, as well as other About.me users. Wanna give it a try?

Well, the first thing is to sign up to an account:

and fill in as much as you can with your details. Once complete you will be given an About.me URL which you will need for the About.me widget.

Go to your widget gallery, select the About.me widget and drag it into the appropriate place in your sidebar (why not near the top, as you’ll want people to see it, surely?):

Fill in your About.me URL, play with the other options, save, and then step back to view your new profile widget on your sidebar.

Tell all your friends, contacts, colleagues and associates to take a look at your About.me profile via your sidebar widget. Get them to join up too! Now don’t worry, I’m not gaining anything from promoting this platform, all I wanted to do is to show you what this widget is for and how great it can be if used properly. Good luck!

About Alice Elliott

Alice Elliott, aka Fairy Blog Mother, is an award winning blogging consultant who has been looking after bloggers since 2006! Woah, that's a long time! She specialises in "explaining things really simply" about WordPress, and has twice been noted as a top WordPress influencer for 2019.

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