Who is "us"?

What is it that gives a business personality? Would you say it’s people? I would.

Think back to the days before the Internet (those that are old enough to remember) - the days when you interacted with a business by either going into a shop or office, or spoke with someone over the phone. Things were different. You actually got a sense of a business because ultimately you were interacting with its people.

These days with the Internet being such an integral part of our lives a lot of that personal interaction has been removed. We use websites and email or messaging much more and as such a lot of the more personal interactions are gone, but that doesn’t mean the personality of your business needs to disappear.

This brings me to the good old “About Us” page that most websites have, and how more often than not they’re lacking and are missed opportunities to give your business a face, a personality, a connection.

How can you fix this? 

Well a good starting point is talking about your people, name them, give them a voice and have photos of real people - steer clear of those cliche stock photos of random business people that you see everywhere. This will help people create that connection with you, and it might be the difference between them doing business with you or your competitor down the road.

Now I get that there are many different types of businesses - single person sole traders, small businesses with 4 or 5 people, all the way to huge corporations, but on some level every business should talk about their people. Funnily enough large businesses most often do this already, it’s the smaller end of the scale that tend to go down the anonymous “we” or “us” path.

So spend some time reviewing the “About” section on your website and thinkin about it from your potential customers perspective - does it have personality? Do you get a sense of who your people are? Would you do business with you?

So who are you, I hear you say? Look down ↓ (or → depending on your screen size).