Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

71Writing the About Us PageWhen It's Not Really About You

The key to a successful About Us page sounds paradoxical: the best About Us pages aren't really about the company; instead, they focus on relaying who they are in relation to the visitor.

All good content puts the reader first, and that's no different on your About Us page. In other words, About Us gives you a chance to talk about yourself, but always in the context of what you do for your customers. What burdens you help them shoulder, what problems you solve for them.

This page can be a handy place to show some personality, to differentiate yourself, to tell a story. Yet many About Us pages seem ignored. Here's an example of a buttoned-up, anonymous About Us page from Toys “R” Us. I'd file this under SO, for squandered opportunity:

Contrast that with how Coca-Cola tells its company story:

Yes, Coca-Cola's page is bold and graphical and nicely designed. But it's also an inspired look at the company's rich history, presented in a way that's interesting to the reader, and the page is fundamentally useful. This is pretty much the poster child for an About Us page that follows my content formula in the Introduction: Useful × Inspired × Empathic.

One of my favorite About Us approaches is the video narrative tack taken by ...