So you’ve decided to write a blog. Great idea – they’re a terrific SEO tool, and they’ll help you broaden your audience and customer base. But very soon into your blogging career, you’re going to encounter a major problem: how to convey personality AND information in your blog posts, and do both well.
Personality Vs. Information
Personality vs info is a thin line to tread. Blogs can often be pretty clinical. If you reduce them to their bare essentials, they’re black words on a white screen. So you have to inject some of your personality into your writing, hooking your audience and signing them up for the ride as you go.
Too much of this, however, and you’ll quickly find yourself in trouble. People haven’t clicked into your blog for a carefree conversation with you, despite how dazzling your banter might be. They want information from you. Learning how to strike the right balance will be key to your blog’s success.
How to Develop a Unique Voice for your Blog
The first step is finding your unique voice. Don’t worry – you’re not totally adrift at sea here. There are a number of tips and tools you can use to get yourself off the starting blocks. If you’re going to walk the tightrope of premium blogging, you’re going to need all the help you can get.
The first tool is metaphor. (I used three in the above paragraph already.) These can help your writing sound dynamic and relatable, while helping your audience understand vital pieces of information.
You’ll also want to focus on the tone of your unique voice (once you have perfected it). Your written voice needs to fit in with your brand and business, while being both interesting and authoritative. People want to know that you know what you’re talking about, but they don’t want a lecture. Find that sweet spot that keeps people engaged but still learning.
Step 1 for how to convey personality and information in blog posts: Don’t go TOO overboard on ‘personality’.
How to Share Information Through Blogs
Using blogs to disseminate information while keeping the writing entertaining is not an easy stunt to pull off. The fatal flaw in most blogs is that they lean too hard one way or the other. Too much personality can frustrate the reader, while too much plain ol’ information will put them to sleep. Either way, your blogs won’t get the engagement or shares you deserve. The biggest crime? Any actionable info is dead and buried behind a hurricane of personality or a dry wall of info.
Food bloggers are a good case in point. It’s lovely to see some personality shine through, and in many ways it’s necessary. But readers don’t need to hear about the number of times you walked your dog this week, or your seismic hair dye dilemmas. Often, they just want the recipe for a quick curry. The result: they skip to the end, potentially missing some vital information you’ve inserted into the preceding copy.
How to Convey Personality In Blogs
Finding that sweet spot between personality and information is a hard nut to crack (another metaphor, albeit one that’s a little confused… Sweet nuts, anybody?). The trick is to not separate them. Don’t think, “Okay, here’s my personality section, then I’ll get stuck in to the information part after.” Great blogs combine the two, conveying the writer’s human side to the reader along with the valuable and knowledgeable information for which your audience tracked you down in the first place.
It’ll take a while to nail, but keep practising and soon it will become second nature. Once you’ve mastered your style, your blog will serve as a formidable component of your overall SEO strategy. So it’s worth doing and worth doing right!
The Importance of a High-Quality Blog For Your Website’s SEO
Centre Image by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
Featured Image by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
