After talking with one of my clients recently I was stumped. They want to include personal details about their team but it just didn’t seem to fit with the company’s brand or business model. I realized we might be missing a key ingredient: Why do those personal details matter?

Take me in relation to eLocomotive. I could tell you that I was a Honda certified mechanic before I went to college, that I love hiking, or that I have an extremely athletic mutt that still acts like a puppy at 8 years old. None of this seems relevant in the context of eLocomotive.

I do tell people things like:

• I’m an entrepreneur at heart and that spirit makes increases my understanding and interest in your business. Three of my mother’s siblings ran separate, successful businesses. So did my grandfather. When my wife’s parents were telling her to do well in school so she could get a good job and work there to retirement, my mother was telling me I’d never be happy or secure if I didn’t run my own business. I work with a lot of start ups and single owner businesses and this speaks to them.. They know I mean it when I say I love business and that I’m interested in theirs.
• A thirst for innovation drives me. My grandfather taught me a valuable lesson that’s always stuck with me. He told me that he was never the strongest or the fastest but he was always able to devise tools that made his jobs easier. That put him ahead of others on the job site and made him successful. That’s what technology is to me. I love building tools that make it easier to run your business.

It may not be relevant that I’ve played soccer since I was 4. It probably is relevant that when I was young my father’s company installed AS400s and I started working on computers when I was 8.

Telling a story in your website is much more compelling than stopping at buzzwords. If all you say is the facts of what you do you risk becoming a commodity among your customer’s websites. Find a way to bring the relevant personality to your marketing and your website.