Image via CrunchBase
Chuck Westbrook has a great post today on his blog called More than a Niche: Thoughts on Blogging Beyond Boundaries. He talks about the writers personality shining through in the evolution of the blog.
Many blogs begin as niche blogs covering a topic of interest or expertise, especially blogs started to help develop the author’s personal brand. Over time, however, the audience takes greater and greater interest in the author’s thoughts beyond the primary topic and, eventually, in the author’s personal life.
We all start blogs with a subject matter in mind. Some of us write about social media, traditional marketing, manufacturing, digital technology, or physical therapy. There are millions of subject matters out there!
Chuck talks about the problems some of us can have with “balancing writing about the main topic” with thoughts from your personal life.
I find it extremely important (in the business environment) to mold your personality to your business. People want to know there is a person behind the words! So how do you do this in a way where your readers are not put off and you still add some personality in your posts?
Chuck has some great points on his post and I wanted to add a couple of my own.
1. Switch It Up. For every 5 “industry posts” write a post about something that happened to you that day. Be conscious and try not to offend anyone. Don’t be an idiot.
2. Photos. Connect a personal photo gallery to your blog. Add pictures of your family, friends, co-workers.. Connect your Flickr account to your blog. I still have yet to do this but I think it is a great idea to add some personality to your blog.
3. Goodwill. No, I’m not talking about the store. Write a weekend post about some charity groups you have been helping. If you tend not to help charities you probably should hide in a corner. Champion the NFP’s you are representing! This will add some indepth personality to your profile without getting completely cheesy.
AND NEVER. EVER. EVER. EVER: ‘
Talk about relationships. Break-ups or Dates. (this is strictly for the business owners/employees in all of us). If you still have a personal blog on Xanga… go right ahead.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Publish the Same Blog Post to Multiple Blogging Sites at Once
- 21 Irresistibly Irresponsible Ways to Tweet with Greater Confidence
- Internet Marketing Masterminds – A Course for Small Businesses Wanting to Grow Their Online Presence
- Who am I?
- 10 Blogs I Read Quietly
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d01f3fe2-ca9f-42ea-86df-cf8068a85c07)
Great post. I started out with two blogs, http://www.roundpeg.biz and http://www.lorraineball.com. The more I let my personality come through on Roundpeg, the less I feel like I need to have a separate blog for me.
I also think Roundpeg.biz is more interesting to read with a bit of personality coming through!
Embedding something as simple as your flickr account onto to your blog has the potential to make a BIG difference! I know because I’ve been there. Initially, I didn’t have very much by way of photos (just my bio photo and that was it). Since adding the flickr widget, my communications with my readers has slightly changed and for the better! It puts a face to the author and brings on a whole new element ya know? People like to connect like that. When I email and connect with my readers, it’s more than just a blanket email. It’s a conversation where we discuss things that we otherwise wouldn’t have discussed if not for the photos. Does that make sense?
@Lorraine It is funny how your time is separated based on the blog you have the most fun of. My video blog has gone to waste the past month because of the time I have spent on this one.
@Ricardo Absolutely it makes sense! Photography is another way you can create a conversation between two, three, or 100 individuals!
This was a nice post, I appreciate how you leveraged some quality material from someone else, and built upon it with some additional thoughts. I believe it takes a strong sense of self to be able to do that, because in essence you’re giving a nod to someone else (we tend to like to GET nods) and you comfortably tack on some personal thoughts–no feeling threatened (some would even worry about stealing thunder). Sincerely complimenting you, BTW.
But I digress–on the topic–yes, I totally concur that readers scan the “content waters” so to speak and latch onto vessels that they like, both for content/topic purposes as well as for tone/voice/personality. After all, those qualities are at the heart of a brand and communicated via positioning. What are we if not branded entities ourselves? (re: online marketers, strategists, bloggers, consultants, etc.) I choose an author based on his tone of voice just like certain music for its tone. The material just speaks to you and resonates.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Well, not really, but to a point.
I am what people like you call, “socially creative”. As someone recently said at a meeting – “Ezra embodies social networking”. I recently started writing a “blog” online about personal branding and social networking, from a human standpoint.
Like you suggest, I incorporate the lessons that I learned that day into lessons about social networking et al.
One recent post was entitled ‘How to get the girl and other things you really really want’. In it, I gave a personal account of how I hit on/started networking with certain people, and how my method of “asking questions” and “giving a damn about the other person” paid off.
In the bloggery, I only used one name (@gwenbell) who responded, loved it, and promoted the post herself. But the other people I mentioned read the post as well, and were not offended, indeed quite the contrary.
There is a fine line between not talking talking about your personal life and learning things from your personal life.
You have to just be able to extract that information, (like you say) without offending, and perhaps even complimenting the other.
For instance: if I ever refer to a woman in a post or a tweet, I will refer to her as beautiful or nothing.
If you start from there, and always post positive things, then you can’t run into problems. When one of the actors in my post contacted me that she read it, her ego drew her to the words ‘Besides being beautiful’. She was, for the record, but that is besides the point.
Online, as in life, if you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all. But relationships teach us how to be social creatures, and we must be able to leverage that information to help in all other relationships.
And that is the line of work that we are in.
(sorry if this is a bit stream of conscious writing, but the wine bottle is empty. enough said.)