Nearly everyone has a blog these days. Some have a specific goal, such as taking a picture a day of a local tree or tracking progress toward a goal, while others are more like personal journals that are put online for everyone to read. Some of these blogs are the kind that people go back to day after day, reading regularly, making comments, and even referencing on their own blogs.
So what makes these blogs the kind that people want to read? The answer is simple: personality.
When you write something, you put yourself into it. Your writing style, your word choice, and your subject matter all work together to give readers an idea of who you are through your writing. Your writing gives readers and image of you as a person, whether it’s accurate or not. And that image is what readers look for when they look for blogs to read regularly. It’s one thing to post a picture a day of a local tree, but what you say about those pictures gives your blog the personality that builds readership. What image are you giving your readers?
Chances are, no matter how original you think your blogging idea is, there’s someone else out there who’s had the same idea, and beaten you to it. But that’s okay, because there’s one thing you have that no one can copy: your personality. And you can use the personality in your blog to build the readership you want.
In nearly every case, readers follow the personality of the blogger and not just the information in the blog. They may initially be drawn to a blog because they’re interested in the topic, but the image they develop of the blogger as a person is what keeps them coming back day after day.
So how do you use your personality to create a readership? The key is to find “your voice” in your writing. Your voice is your personality in your writing, and has many aspects.
One of these aspects is your writing style. Do you write formally, using big words, or do you write more casually, in a conversational tone? Do you use a lot of long, complex sentences, or do you use short, straightforward sentences that just get to the point?
Another aspect is your approach to topics. Do you usually handle topics seriously, or do you use humor or sarcasm to make your points? Do you just give information, or do you share ideas, and ask for the opinions of your writers to deepen the topic?
So when you begin blogging, or if you already have a blog and you want to boost your readership, you need to take a long, hard look at the personality of your blog. Once you evaluate it, decide what kind of personality you want your blog to have, and then you can begin to make changes to meet your goals.
Blogging is easy. All you have to do is type “blog” into a search engine to get an idea of how many people in this world use blogs to share their ideas and information. What makes the difference between just writing a blog and creating a blog that people follow is what you put of yourself and your personality into the blog. Share your ideas and information, but remember that readers can get information anywhere. They can only get your personality from one place: your blog.
