Just How Personal Should a Blog Be?
by Kimberly Kennedy Bohannon
Blogs usually have something of a personal aspect to them. While blogs cover as broad an array of topics as do magazines and newspapers, they’re generally not as formal as those types of publications. For that reason, you can usually get away with journalistic no-no’s such as talking about yourself now and then, being blatantly in favor or opposed to a position, or openly being a fan or detractor of any given product.
There is, however, a line that you need to avoid crossing. On some blogs, the writing becomes far too much about the writer.
Blogs are resources that people turn to for specific information and, to some extent, sites that they visit for simple entertainment. This means, of course, that a blog has to define itself, as there’s really not a defined purpose for a blog like there is for a newspaper, whose purpose is to inform. What your blog is about is entirely up to you. If you have expertise in a certain area, writing about that field is always a fine choice. If you have an interest in news or politics, you may enjoy some success as a blogger, provided that you’re talking about something outside of yourself most of the time.
Blogging is a great opportunity to build your personal brand, and WordPress is the most potent platform to use given that the search engines love fresh content. But remember, this is not a place to talk about “you” per se; it IS about sharing your point of view on a specific topic. Using WordPress to build your personal brand is about branding… not you. Make sense?
A good way to avoid becoming too personal is simply to count up the amount of times you use the pronoun “I” in your writing. If most of your material is about you, how you feel about subject X and how it impacts your life, your blog may not be all that interesting to read. It’s not that you’re not an interesting person; it’s that nobody really wants to hear someone talk about themselves. Good writers endeavor to write about their subjects, not about themselves.
You can be personal on a blog, however, and still keep your articles focused on their topics. The comments section of a blog is a good place to be less formal. Your readers may also email you personally, which is a great opportunity to interact with them. Remember that your blog should always deliver. If you have a blog about car repair, it should be about car repair as opposed to being about your feelings regarding car repair. Adding a bit of the personal to your blog posts can make the articles interesting, but adding too much can make them very tedious to read.
Focus on what the topic of your blog is and how to build your personal brand by making the posts, pages and articles you write about relate to the topic and the brand. What do you want to be known for with you personal blog? What is your area of expertise? You can easily dominate your target niche if you know who your target market is and how to build your personal brand.
Kimberly Bohannon, Co-Founder of GFYDMember.com, provides top-notch social media and WordPress training to help educate you on how to create, update, manage and market a WordPress Website by holding your hand and helping you build your website together so you can start making money from your blog… http://gfydmember.com/wordpress-training-products
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– Guest Blogging: One of the Greatest Ways to Network and Build Your Brand
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