Dating Management: Online Strategic Planning

Welcome to column number two of Dating Management.

Let’s pick up where we left off last week and assume you’ve convinced Stressful Sue and Irksome Isaac, your high-performering employees whose lack of a love life has left them irritating you and your office, to join an online dating site. Now what? What do you tell them that can help them succeed and come back to the office bouyantly happy?

Tell them: they need some strategic planning.

They’ll snicker when you say this, because they’re know-it-alls (and because that phrase is ridiculously out of place), so if you can’t handle that stop now. But if you want to press forward and help them out, you have two choices: if they came to you first, just keep going. And if they didn’t, you should only continue if you have the kind of relationship with them that can accept some heckling.

Then you heckle them. Gently. And proceed.

Back to the topic, the strategic plan is this: when on the online dating site, go 75%/25%.

Tell them to spend 75% of their time, whenever they are on the site, viewing and editing their profile, and 25% viewing and messaging other people. It’s like going to the gym and getting dressed up before hitting the club. No person in their right mind is going to dance with someone if they look like garbage — so why would someone respond to their messages if their profile does? With a great profile, the boys and ladies will come to them.

Great profiles have two things: great pictures, and great stories.

Oh man, pictures are important. If they don’t have good ones, tell them to get some! And have them read this article by OKTrends on what goes into a great picture. Pictures don’t have to be perfect, but whatever effective thought and effort is put into it will show.

For content, I’ve given the best advice I can give already — review and revise. Every professional writer will tell you that this is their key to success, so why not follow their lead?

Another content tip: your employee should want their personality to show. Not to lie or mislead — that is just wasting everyone’s time — and not in a “I like this and that and don’t like this and that” sense either. Advise them to tell a story that shows who they are. I’ve seen profiles that were a few sentences long that told me more about a person, and more entertainingly and convincingly, than profiles that were two-pages long (plus, snore?). Instead of having them say they are funny, tell them to say something (or link to something) that they find funny. Instead of having them say that they are fun or serious, have them describe fun or serious things they have done — even better if they have pictures to go with it.

Just like a good personality, wardrobe, or story doesn’t happen overnight, neither does a great profile. They’ll need to be patient, as they should always be with dating.

But if they follow your advice, it shouldn’t be long before they have a very good profile that is leading them to promising dates, and — hopefully — a happier place in their life, and in your office.

Original post