Business
Should I put a personality behind my blog?
I see quite often amongst new Bloggers, posts varying from pure informative to being rather personal and back and forth. Now myself, others will decide this with their first few posts without really realising what they’ve done. Myself? I prefer a site to have a personality behind it; I want to see somebodies name, I love to hear a witty anecdote. If I’m reading something dry, I just cant absorb it. Its just my personality type. Some people think that it may put people off by this, they feel shy, or feel their own demographic may detract from your authoritative standing on the subject.
I was having a chat with a guy the other day about a niche that he was working on. And I must say, it was a fantastic idea that I had stolen from him, maybe another day. But the thing was that the typical reader would have been a 55+ Woman, so this guy (25yr old male) didn’t want to put his personality behind the site because he felt, well, almost intimidated.
The question actually came to me in the form of, “Should I ask my Grandma to pose as the figurehead? They’ll relate better to that. Or should I just leave it out, and be pure informative with the site name as the author?”
”Whoa Nelly!!” I assume I replied. It was great that ‘Steve’ was trying to think about what the women would relate to, but what about what they wanted? Car shows don’t crowd an array of men in anything from a muscle tee to a flannelette shirt in front of the new Ferrari! Why not? The viewers will relate to.. Oh, no wait. They want smoking hot women in bikinis that in all likelihood are young enough to be their daughters… Gotcha. I think I know how this works now.
I said the ‘Steve’, what you have found is a blogging USP (Unique Selling Proposition). I can guarantee you that the sites that he was up against were few and far between, and looked like what a cutting edge GeoCites site would have been around about the time I was saving up for a big boy’s bicycle. You’ll have a leading site design and IA layout, it will have the features the others are missing and it’ll be run by like the ONLY young guy in the world interested in this stuff! It will be great amongst the community.
Sure enough, ‘Steve’ enabled Gravatar on the site, changed the name ‘Admin’, and put up a picture of him in his Sunday best.
Now if only there was a way I could put a ‘Pinch Cheek’ button next to his ‘Like’ and ‘+1’ buttons…
Tagged blogging, problogger
micheknowsDecember 30, 2011 at 6:27 am
LOL. Now that is an interesting concept. I have a website that has nothing to do with me. And, I was afraid of branding myself to that website. But, now that I think about it like this, it can actually be a good selling point that you are interested in learning about something that has nothing to do with you.
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akanbiAugust 22, 2012 at 6:42 am
This article definitely has a lot of personality. Lol. Personality in my opinion is all you have that is unique to you. This is the element that makes you stand out from the rest on other blogs. Your personality makes your audience feel close to you, which is the first step to establishing a rapport.
TashWordAugust 29, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Personality is what makes two blogs on the same topic different. The reality is that we can find information pretty easily on most topics so we come back to those places where the personality of the blogger attracts us in some way – they add case studies or humour or are openly a beginner sharing their learning, or whatever.
For someone like Steve, writing with a different personality would be hard work and hard to maintain – consistency over time would be a real struggle – so being honest about who he is was probably a much better option.
KennyKAugust 29, 2012 at 8:26 pm
Interesting question. I think it really depends on your blog and what you’re trying to achieve with it. It can help to make it more personal, to show yourself and make clear why you of all people are dedicating your time to maintain a quality blog, serving certain people (a wide audience or a smaller target group).
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