What is our goal when creating a blog? Communication. To create a worthwhile blog and communicate successfully one of your aims will have to be to create rapport with your readers. This isn’t about creating a usable website. People prefer dealing with people. This isn’t always easy when you don’t have non-verbal cues to rely on. Anything that makes our blogs appear more approachable will help build that important connection. Todays tip shows how we can make our blogs more human.
How do you tell if your blog is approachable? It’s easy. Do you get a bunch of comments and emails? If so you don’t have any big problems in this department (we can always make space for more comments though right?). On the other hand if you rarely get any comments other than spams and link drops you do have a problem!
It’s easy to fall into a pattern that makes our blogs more mechanical and less human. Some bloggers focus so much on being “correct”, editing and fussing over grammar and formatting, that they forget their audience is not a team of school teachers armed with red ink test marking pens. Others find it hard to break out of “corporate speak”. We tend to make a bigger deal about XHTML/CSS than we do making sure we get across our personalities.
The first piece of advice is to, as far as possible, use your own authentic voice. If the person was seated across from you how would you address them? It’s unlikely you would be talking about “leveraging paradigms”. I’m not saying you should completely dispose of anything approaching good grammar but the more naturally your writing flows, the friendlier it will be. Read it back to yourself out loud, how does it sound? In most cases simpler is better.
It’s not just your writing. In fact before your reader has begun to digest your content they are making judgements about you. The web after all is a visual medium.
Smile! Include a small picture of yourself on the homepage. Use photography in your posts. Warm up your colour scheme. If your blog is informal, feel free to use smileys. You might think this is twee and unprofessional but its worth testing.
How do you like to make your blog more welcoming. Are smileys in blog posts unprofessional? Let me know in the comments …
Chris Garrett uses smileys in his posts with wild abandon. Check out his blog for more blogging tips and internet marketing advice and a FREE ebook called Creating Killer Flagship content that will help you boost your traffic and subscribers
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