Description advice: The Usual Suspects
Your pal is giving you great power to wield when they ask you to describe them on mysinglefriend.com, but with great power comes great responsibility (thanks for the quote, Spiderman). You can make a real difference to your friends success on MSF, but to do so you'll need to write a really good description.
People often think that online dating success comes down to pictures alone, but we know from long experience that this just isn't true, especially on MSF. A well written description can easily tip the balance when potential dates are deciding whether to contact someone or not, turning that two dimensional photo into a three dimensional human being. The problem is that we're not all natural word smiths and it's easy to cave to the pressure, dash off something quickly and leave it at that. To lend a hand we'll be giving you some hints and tips on description writing over the next couple of weeks, beginning with avoiding cliches.
There are a few phrases that crop up time and again in descriptions which we would strenuously advise you to avoid; we call them The Usual Suspects and they are as follows:
'Well, what can I say...'
'Well, where shall I start...'
'I still don't understand why Fenella remains single...'
'I've known Fenella for 8 years now...'
If you begin your description with any of these, you're doing your friend a great disservice. The new site allows potential dates to read the first couple of sentences of your description as they scroll through the search pages, as this handy illustration demonstrates:
Whilst this is a lovely expression of friendship, it doesn't do what you want the description to do and that is advertise your friend as a fantastic date. By all means include this kind of sentiment, but be sure to put it further down your description, as it's likely that anyone who casts their eye over the beginning of this profile would move on quickly, having learned nothing about the person being described.
To give your friend's profile a boost, start the description with something original. Take a look through the search pages and see which profiles catch your eye; don't copy anyone else's but get an idea of what you think readers will respond to. Here's a few which stood out for us recently:
They're a bit cheeky, intriguing and funny. If you can cram all that into the first couple of sentences of your friend's profile, they'll be onto a winner. Even if you don't feel you can be super witty, try and make sure you don't use the Usual Suspects as a fall back. As long as it's original and stands out a bit, you'll find that your friend gets plenty of attention.
Keep an eye on the blog for another installment of description advice next week.
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