"How was your day?"
"Fine."
"What did you learn?"
"Nothing."
While there is a time and place for each of these writing styles on blogs, the point of a blog is to be a conversation between you and the reader.
To achieve this, pretend you are meeting a friend for a cup of coffee or a cocktail for happy hour. How would you speak to them? How would you tell them about your day? How would you describe the wedding you just worked on this past weekend?
Chances are, you wouldn't tell your friend that the wind blew through the bride's veil and caused it to flutter like a golden butterfly. You would relate the events of the weekend in a much more natural, conversational style. As you write your blog, pretend that you are chatting with a friend and type that conversation as your post.
It may feel odd and the practice may seem a bit cheesy, but it will help your blog posts to come across in your voice and to sound like you.
What is your blog writing style like? Do you feel that your blog sounds like you?
This post was originally published in November 2009.
Welcome to 
9 comments:
Such a post I need right now, Liene. Thanks. I'm finding that when I write the posts I'm thrown back into AP English and it just sounds horrible. I'm struggling to break that and am really working to write like I speak. Hard stuff!
Great post! I think another key is to write the post just after the event you are talking about.... that way you remember little details and what you thought of them. Makes it much more authentic:)
PS. Can't wait to find out when your San Diego Blogging Bootcamp is!
Great post! I love all of your awesome tips! Thanks for sharing!
Well, what if all of my bride's veils DO flutter like golden butterflies? What then?!
Great post. I've found that not reading other blogs that day helps me write my posts: If I have other people's voices bouncing around in my head I can't hear mine very well.
That's such great advice! We get asked that question all the time and I think I'm just going to bookmark this and send it along as an answer!
Great Post Liene! I completely agree. As a service provider, you want your reader to learn your "personality" to see if they best match you. One year can be a long time to work with someone just because they like your work and not your personality. Let your personality SHINE!
Thank you so much for your post! I wish I could forward it to a few of my *blogger friends*! Nothing gets on my nerve more than a blogger voice that is full of pointless rhetoric and an overuse of uncommon language. Sometimes I wonder if they sit there with a thesaurus in hand flipping the pages to find alternative and more posh sounding vernacular. I know you don't talk like that in real life, so why blog that way? It just seems slightly pretentious to me. Thanks for saying what I've always been thinking...just in a much nicer way!
Writing has always come pretty naturally to me so I was kinda surprised when I struggled to write blog posts. Finally I just decided to write the way I speak, as you suggest here, and it's made a huge difference. Though many of my posts are still filled with pretty pictures, I don't have to rely on them as I used to.
We're just starting our blog and have been struggling with finding our voice. Thanks for this awesome article!!
Post a Comment