Online dating is a wonderful thing, but the sheer number of people who now have online dating profiles means that yours will have to be exceptional if you want to stand out from the crowd. Luckily, most people you’ll be competing against for dates have absolutely no clue how to make their profiles effective and engaging, so you’ll be sure to look sharp with these seven tips for creating the perfect online dating profile.
Tips For Creating The Most Effective Online Dating Profile Ever
1. SHOW, DON’T TELL
Describing yourself with a list of adjectives, likes and dislikes is neither very engaging or very interesting to anyone who wanders across your profile. The biggest offender typically is “I love to travel!” Instead of saying that you love to travel, talk about places you’ve been, what you’ve liked about them, and where you’d love to go next. Another example that’s fairly common is “I’m a geek.” That statement alone says nothing about you, and is just fluff. If, instead, you talk about how you solder homemade circuitboards in your spare time people will be able to pick up on the fact that you’ve got technical interests while at the same time learning something about you!
2. DON’T USE SELF-DEPRECATING HUMOR
Self-deprecating humor is great for showing that you’re humble and don’t take yourself too seriously. Unfortunately, it’s best reserved for when you’re joking around with friends. On online dating sites, like Parship online dating, your profile should be one that puts your best foot forward and makes a good first impression. Worse, some people won’t realize that you’re joking around and will think that you’re very insecure about yourself. It’s best just to avoid self-deprecating humor on online dating profiles.
3. ONLY UPLOAD INTERESTING PICTURES
You need, at minimum, two pictures on your online dating profile. The first picture should be a very flattering one that makes you look attractive, and this is the one that you use as your profile picture. The rest of the pictures you upload should be of you doing fun activities and going out with friends. You definitely want to communicate to the people who visit your profile that you have an active and interesting social life!
4. “FAVORITE MOVIES” IS NOT “LIST EVERY MOVIE YOU HAVE SEEN”
Practically every online dating site has a section in your profile asks you to list your favorite movies, music, books, food and whatever else. If you’ve got ten or more entries in your list, visitors to your profile are going to most likely going to read two of them and then skip the rest. Instead of listing everything you like, cut it down to two or three absolute favorites and then say something interesting about them so people can get an idea of what it is you like about these things.
5. TELL WHERE YOU’RE GOING, NOT WHERE YOU’VE BEEN
Make sure you say something interesting about what your goals and dreams are in your life; even if they’re unrealistic, they give a window into your personality and what you really want out of life.
6. KEEP IT SHORT AND TO THE POINT
Most visitors to your online dating profile aren’t looking for a novel. Instead, they’re making sure that you don’t have anything in your profile that would be a deal-breaker to them in a relationship. Keeping your online dating profile shorter than average makes it more likely that visitors to your profile will actually read it, and also reduces the chance that you’ll have something on your profile that will scare off potential dates.
7. PROVIDE A FEW INTERESTING CONVERSATION HOOKS
Change the way you think about your online dating profile. Don’t treat your profile like you’re writing out your biography. You should instead think about your dating profile as being a little pamphlet of information about yourself that you could have interesting conversations about. When people decide to message you (and actually put some effort into it) they’ll be looking at your profile to determine what their opening message should be. In that case, you should make sure all the information you provide on your profile are things you can (and would want to) have interesting conversations about.
