Imagine this: it’s Saturday evening, and you’re in the ice cream aisle. You want to get a treat for your movie night tonight, but there are SO many choices of brands, flavors, and mix-ins to choose from. How are you supposed to decide which one you want?
Well, luckily, most of the ice cream cartons have pictures on them. You know you love rocky road, so you find a few rocky road flavors that look tasty.
You could pick which one looks the yummiest or has the best-branded packaging, check out, go home, and take a gamble about whether that flavor is actually going to taste as good as it looks. But there’s really no way of knowing just by looking if you’ll actually like these flavors or not.
On the contrary, you could check out the back of the carton and look at the ingredient list. If you do this, you’d see that two of the rocky roads are made with dairy milk, and one is made with almond milk. You HATE the taste of almond milk. Good thing you checked the carton, or you would have completely wasted that whole carton of ice cream!
Then you check out the nutritional facts. You see that both rocky road ice creams you hold have similar amounts of fat, protein, and carbs, so you might be good with either. But then you look back at the ingredients and notice that one has peanut butter ribbons, and the other has peanut halves. You’re definitely more of a creamy peanut butter person, so you put the nutty one back.
Did it take you a little bit of extra time to read about each of the ice cream flavors? Yeah, but in the long run, those few extra minutes saved you from potentially wasting money and having an entire ice cream carton full of a flavor you don’t even like.
Is there a chance that you could spend the extra time, pick the best one, and still get home and decide you don’t like it? Absolutely. But at least you can take that first bite with confidence, knowing there’s a good chance you’ll like it.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: this blog post isn’t about ice cream.
Dating metaphors always seem to include ice cream, so I figured it was a fitting analogy to use for your Mutual dating profile. Two key parts to finding success on a dating app are finding quality people and getting quality matches. We’re going to talk about how a completed profile can help with both.
Finding Quality People: Reading Profiles
Just like we discussed with the ice cream, if you want to feel confident about your decision to swipe up on someone, you should learn as much information about them as possible. Taking a gamble on someone really hot, but you have no idea what they’re interested in, what their values are, or if you have anything in common has significant potential to backfire.
Now, I’m not telling you to abandon the idea of dating people outside of your bubble of ideals or only to date people who check certain boxes. There’s a lot of beauty and a lot you can learn by dating someone different from you! But if there are attributes, beliefs, and interests that are incredibly important to you, finding people who identify with those same things in their profile can make the dating process much easier and faster.
Basically, I’m telling you that it’s okay to be a little bit picky. Not TOO picky. (Yes, I’m looking at you, person who won’t go on a date with someone unless they are an exact height with a specific hair color and go to the temple three times a week. 👀) But we’re talking about a relationship that will last for the rest of eternity. Eternity is a very long time, so you deserve to be a little picky about some things when finding someone to spend it with.
It’s easy to slip into a swiping frenzy and quickly decide yes or no based on someone’s pictures. But if you take a few extra seconds to scan through someone’s profile and read what they’ve said about themselves, you’ll find people who fit what you’re looking for, and your matches will increase in quality.
Getting Quality Matches: Completing Your Profile
I’m sure you know where we’re going next with this. If you want people to see your profile and be able to decide if you would be a good match for them, they’re going to need as much information about you as possible so they can make an informed decision.
This doesn’t mean you need to mention every bad habit, name every childhood pet you’ve ever had, or share all your hopes and dreams on your profile. (You want to leave SOME mystery so they have more to learn about you as they get to know you. 😏) But the critical things that could make or break a relationship are good to get out in the air before things get messy and complicated.
Not only does having a completed profile mean that they can to learn more about you, but if they have specific filters set in their settings and you don’t have anything in that section of your profile, you won’t show up in their feed. Having a completed profile ensures that you will show up as an option for people who are looking for someone like you.
The Cheat Code:
Alright, so there is no “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A” cheat code that will suddenly match you with your soulmate. But there are a few things you can include in your completed profile to help attract the right people.
- Completely fill out your profile. – This includes your Personal Info, Profile Photos, About You prompts (all three of them!), and your interests. Of course, only share whatever you are comfortable with being public. There are some kinds of personal information that should always be kept private. But as long as you are smart about what you share, the more your profile is filled out, the more likely you are to get matches with people you are compatible with.
- Verify your profile. – This is required, but it’s still important. Learn more about verification here.
- Keep it positive in tone. – Even if you feel totally jaded and sick of dating, don’t let it show in your profile. We don’t want you to pretend to be anything you’re not, but first impressions matter. Make yours a positive one.
- Follow the 70/30 rule. Make your profile 70% about you and 30% about what you are looking for. When people are viewing your profile, they’re trying to figure out if YOU are what they are looking for, not the other way around. You can decide for yourself if they’re what you’re looking for when you see their profile.
- With interest tags, more is more. – You can add as few or as many interest tags as you want to your profile but know that the more you add, the more likely you are to show as having common interests with people who view your profile. Be truthful about the interests you add, but don’t be afraid to show what makes you, you!
We can’t guarantee that this cheat code formula will bring you a certain number of matches or that you’ll find your eternal companion within X amount of days, but we can guarantee you that the more thorough you are in filling out your profile and reading other people’s profiles, and practice intentional, educated swiping, the more likely you are to have higher quality matches
Have you found anything else that helps you find higher-quality matches? Let us know what it is in the comments!
Kaleigh Adamson
Kaleigh is a Marketing Coordinator for Mutual. She has worked with couples, relationships, dating, and love in a creative role for over a decade. She's a hopeless romantic who loves that her career allows her to help people find their soulmates. She downloaded Mutual when it first launched in 2016, coincidentally the same year she met her husband! They now live happily ever after in South Carolina with their two kids and dog.
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