The Peacock Guide to Landing Pages

It’s springtime and all the animals are twitterpated.  They’re putting on their best displays to attract, communicate, connect.  Out of all the animals, however, the peacock’s display is perhaps one of the most dramatic.  That full sweep of gloriously iridescent feathers fanned out to frame its brilliant azure blue head and neck.  If ever there was a bird that was not shy to showcase, it’s the peacock.

As I bring this magnificent display to mind, I can’t help but see its relevance to the process of writing a landing page.  After all, your landing page needs to be the place where you put on your most impressive show – the stage upon which you need to perform your most attractive self.

Like Twitter itself, there is no right way to compose your landing page – this guide is not going to give you a definitive outline with a list of necessary components.  Rather its aim is to provide you with a few key ideas of how to construct a landing page to show you off to your full potential.

One of the most important of these is the fanning of your feathers.  In your Twitter bio you are given 140 characters in which to sum yourself up.  No easy task!  I’m pretty sure most of us feel as though we’ve had to compromise in our description of ourselves – how do we differentiate ourselves from the rest?  How do we define what we do?  How do we make our values clear & passions vibrant with such a limited quota of words?  The good news is that, no matter how confined your bio is on your Twitter profile, your landing page gives you the space to fan those feathers wide; it gives you the space to expand on your 140 characters and make your case for why others should want to follow & connect with you.

One of the ways you can do this is to share the words of others.  When I was putting together my own landing page I let my followers know what I was doing and I asked for their assistance.  I asked if they could tell me why they follow me and if I could include their responses on my landing page.  As you’ll have seen, I got some great responses to my request and, in some ways, their words of endorsement do more than any of my self-promoting words could do.  Now if someone clicks through from my profile they’re (hopefully!) persuaded by the recommendations from those who already follow me.

Lastly, you need to capitalise upon the attention that your landing page has received.  You need to alert your potential followers to where else you can be found on the net.  You can do this by listing your other social media profiles, sharing the urls of your blog/s, any collaborative projects you are working on or online examples of your work.  The whole point of the landing page is to attract & direct.  Once you’ve attracted the attention, make the most of it and channel that attention towards the places where you most want to connect with like-minded others.

In short, don’t be afraid to put your best self forwards – tell us why we should want to connect with you, why we should follow you and where we can do that. Write it with confidence and don’t be afraid to set aside your self-deprecation.

In other words, create a display to rival that of the twitterpated peacock 😉