The Top 10 Blunders To Avoid When Posting Your Dating Profile

Online Dating Expert’s Top 10 Bungles to Steer Clear of When Submitting Your Internet Dating Biography

Single?  Have you been considering going online and posting an internet dating profile this year?  That’s a great idea.  With more than 5 million singles at the dating sites, you’re bound to meet someone and get dating.  However, before your toss your internet dating profile up before you finish you cup of coffee this Saturday morning, there are 10 blunders and gaffes which many singles commonly make in their dating profiles.  Read this list and my recommendations for how to fix them before you go online.

1.       Loads of Spelling Errors

Both single men and single women complain of the number of spelling errors in a Prospective Date’s internet dating profile.  And the thing is, with all of the spell check features available to us in your word processing software as well as what is online, there really is no need for your online dating site profile to have spelling errors.  Within a 5 paragraph profile, 1 or 2 small ones might have slipped through.  Most singles who are humanely flexible enough, understanding sort of people who can over look that, well, those are the sort of people you would date, aren’t they?  Who wants to date someone who can’t spell at all?  And just as unenjoyable is dating the overly persnickety single with their spelling dictionary with them on the first date, telling you all the ways you were wrong.  Where’s the fun in that?

2.       Bad Grammar

Right after the need to reflect good but not necessarily perfect spelling is the need for good grammar in your profile.  There are a number of grammar guidelines rather than rules.  Trust me, as an internet dating coach where I research profiles online often and vet Prospective Dates for clients, I have seen so much bad grammar, it’s painful.  Double negatives.  Sentences that just don’t make sense.  You do want to take the tone of reflecting in your writing your own speaking voice.  However, unless you’ve studied copy writing like I have, this can actually be challenging to do.  Take your time.  Do a few rewrites.   Your grammar doesn’t have to be perfect.  You might end a sentence with a preposition while grammatically incorrect, is perfectly normal in Spoken English.  If you’re not sure, have a supportive friend with better grammar or English than you have take a look at your profile before you publish it.  Additionally, in your email exchange with your Potential Date, be watchful of both your spelling and your grammar.  A text message we send to someone on the fly, most singles understand that we are using Text Speak and not grammar and that there might be a few spelling errors.  Just aim to make the effort to spell out the whole word as often as you can.  It fosters more connection with the person when you do.  When you try to be too efficient in your communication exclusively using Text Speak, you cut the warmth and connection of real communication.

3.       No Photo

Short of being Cameron Diaz or Paris Hilton, you’re not such an A-list celebrity that you have that much privacy to protect that you can’t post a photograph.  Some of the dating sites even have a free reply message pre-fabricated for you to send someone, “You sound cute, when will you post a photograph?” this is such an issue at Internet Dating sites.  Singles have even responded to those messages asking for help in how to post their photographs.  Search at Google.  Figure it out.  If it is that you are a celebrity of some sort, get over it.  Just manage your presence.  You can include a photo and then use your middle name for correspondence if you want to keep a veil of privacy until you become better acquainted with your Prospective Date after a few dates.  If it is that you are technically challenged, get some assistance online or ask a supportive friend to help you.  There really is no excuse not to have photos included in your dating profile.

4.       Old Photos

I’ve mentioned this before in the very topic of Top 10 Internet Dating Profile Photo Disasters.  However, it bears repeating.  Because we all get lazy.  That’s just human nature.  As singles, we desire to post our internet dating profile right away when we first log into a dating site.  In which case, we just pull up and upload a photo which we have on our laptop.  And while digital cameras are quite prevalent, not everyone over the age of 40 years old has one and uses it regularly as a matter of course in their daily lives the way that the Millenials, GenX and GenY folks often do.  They are the one’s tagging in from Yelp or FourSquare and using TwitPic to share the photos of exactly where they are every day.  If your photos are more than a few years old, you could be misunderstood by your Prospective Date as someone who is lying to them, which we all hate, right?  Or they will feel seriously misled.  If you have recently changed your hair style or facial hair, aim to include a photo of you like that in your profile even if it is a casual photo in one of your secondary supporting photographs.  If you have made that kind of a change, highlight it specifically in one of your opening emails with your Prospective Date.  “The goatee is a fuller beard now…..” Old photos mislead and they just can’t capture your current essence and attract an appropriate Prospective Date for you now.  Match the investment of time and money you are making in being online with investing in some current photographs of yourself, too.  It’s well worth it.  So are you.

5.       Boring Beige

Regardless of race or ethnicity, I use that label, “Boring Beige” to describe those internet dating profiles which are just like cold cream of wheat.  No flavor, no spice, no texture, no nothing.  Boring.  It’s not even generic.  It’s flavorless.  A number of single men have been telling me recently that they are moving away from the larger mainstream internet dating sites, aiming at smaller niche sites and geographically local sites where they find the women write profiles and descriptions which are a little more raw and real.  They tell me they get a better sense of the person there.  Sometimes we are so focused on aiming to attract many singles to us, that the dating profile becomes almost like a personality-free corporate marketing brochure.  When that is the case, singles actually just pass you on by because in the era of the internet, we are real relationship craving and starved.  Who can connect, giggle, and bond with a corporate brochure?  What does work?  Instead, aim to allow a bit more of your unique personality shine through.  Toss in a true confessions guilty pleasure detail about some kind of food you enjoy eating.  Share your favorite PG-13 rated stress release.

6.       Too Long

While many of the internet dating sites encourage and allow you to write quite lengthy profiles, combining multiple essays, those who do so either scream “desperate!’ or “narcissist!”  Neither of which is attractive for a romantic relationship partner.  We do not need to read all about your idea of an ideal first date fantasy because it’s just not likely to pan out that way in real life, anyway, is it?  Better to save that for your email exchange and conversation on the actual first meeting date.  Too long can come across like a monologue or Hamlet’s “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy.  Shakespeare did it really well.  The rest of us just come up short when we are too long in our profiles.  What is a good profile text length guideline?  I recommend to clients and in workshops to singles, both men and women, that they keep it to about 3-5 paragraphs.  1 or 2 more paragraphs than that it is fine.  If it’s gotten to 10 paragraphs or more than 1 page, it’s too long and it’s time to edit!

7.       Too Short

In contrast to the verbal barrage of the Too Long dating profile is the profile which is too short.  You’ve seen them.  It’s the person who could barely manage to get 3 sentences out about themselves.  Clearly they have not contemplated or pondered the idea from Plato, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  People!  3 sentences is not enough.  3 paragraphs – full, interesting, engaging, spice filled, life reflecting paragraphs is really your minimum.  Let me help you out here.  Take the 3 sentences you wrote.  Take each sentence and use it as the guide for writing a full paragraph.  Now you have 3 paragraphs.  Put them aside.  Come back, make sure you imbue them with your unique voice and personality.  Now you can post them!

8.       Self Absorbed

Mimi may have been the Heroine’s name in Puccini’s “La Boheme,” but after her, none of us is so interested in you that we want to only here about, “Me, me, me.” The profiles as well as the long 5 paragraph emails which are 100% about you come across as fake, a fraud, or a scam of some sort.  To demonstrate both what an interesting Prospective Date you can be, in both your Internet Dating profile and your emails to your PDs, be sure to weave in a few questions.  You display your gracious interest in the other person.  You are also helping them out to create conversation with a complete stranger by lobbing them a few tennis balls of conversation topics which they can choose from to lob back to you.  They will be grateful to you for your social graces as a conversationalist.

9.       My Friends Say

You’ve seen them.  The internet dating profiles which use the phrase, “My friends describe me as…” Oh for goodness sake!  If you are having difficulty writing your online dating profile, get some professional help from a dating coach to guide you in writing it.  Don’t just quote your friends and confess that you are quoting your friends.  That might have been a cute shy guy tactic hoping to trigger the “Awwww” response in single women 10-15 years ago, but it has been overdone and loss all of its charm by now.

10.   Negative Statements

I shake my head and put it into my hands when I read some profiles that some singles have written and invested their money in posting and joining that dating site.  “I don’t want to date fat women or girls who expect me to be the wallet all the time…..” “I can’t stand dating bald men.  I don’t find them attractive….”  “Don’t have anything weird going on like piercings or a tattoo….” Most of the DON’T WANTS which I do suggest you ruminate on, think about, and write about when preparing to go online, those can be lightly reflected in your profile.  You can typically filter out a number of those criteria already through the category description about height, body type, hair, piercings, tattoos and you can then omit them in your written profile.  It is better to keep the phrases in your profile upbeat and positive.  “I’m active and fit and love enjoying the outdoors on 3 hour hikes Saturday mornings.  Looking for a partner to share that and the active lifestyle with.  Could that be you?” Positive statement.  Imperfect yet conversational grammar.  Includes a conversation starting question aid.

See what I mean?  When you avoid these top 10 blunders and gaffe when posting your online dating profile, you increase your attractiveness on the internet.  As you do that, you will attract more and better suited Prospective Dates, causing you have better and more enjoyable First Dates, leading to great Second Dates and beyond!

Happy Dating and Relationships,

April Braswell
Marriage Minded Singles Online Dating and Relationship Expert