Adding a Personal Touch to Your Blog

Last week’s post ‘7 reasons why personal blogs rock‘ got a great reaction from readers. One of the recurring pieces of feedback I had from other bloggers was that my style of blogging was quite ‘personal’ even on my ‘non personal’ blogs.

One ProBlogger reader commented via email:

‘Sometimes I feel like you’re talking directly to me one on one. It is very personal – how do you do that?’

Answering the question of ‘how to make a blog more personal‘ is one that I’ve not previously given a lot of thought to so this week I thought I should set myself the task of thinking it through and will write up my answers as a series.

A few random thoughts and disclaimers to start with:

by ‘personal’ I don’t necessarily mean that I’m going to be reflecting upon having a personal blog (as in the type where you talk about your cat, boyfriend, hobbies and last night’s dinner). What I’ll be focussing upon is how to make your entrepreneurial blog more personal
by no means do I see myself as a guru on the topic of ‘personal blogging’. I’ve got a lot to learn and there are many other bloggers who are a lot more accomplished at this than me.
different bloggers (and blogs) have different styles and voices of blogging. Some will naturally be more personal in their style than others and I’m totally in favor of each blogger finding their own way in this. There are times where it’s appropriate for a less personal style – however this series is an attempt to unpack my own approach and hopefully help others who wish to add a more personal element into their blogging.

So lets get the tips underway and start with a look at how using language can add a personal touch to you blog with the first of quite a few parts to this series:

1. Me, Myself and I….

From time to time I find myself using ‘we’ in my posts when I’m actually writing about my own opinions and experiences. To be honest I’m not sure why I do this. Perhaps I’m trying to create the impression that I or my business is bigger than it is, perhaps it’s an attempt to deflect attention away from myself or perhaps it’s for some other reason. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this – ‘we’ type language seems to surface pretty regularly on blogs. Have you ever done it?

While there are definitely times to use ‘we’ (ie when you’re writing on behalf of more than just yourself) I find that using more personal language (like ‘I’ or ‘me’) adds a level of intimacy to a post.

Instead of your reader imagining a group of people behind your post they begin to see you and hear your voice.

Keep up with the rest of this series on ‘adding a personal touch to your blog’ in the following posts: