Blogging for all ages—connecting with people.
Recently my daughter started a blog. Most of you don’t know her but she headed off to culinary school this year, 6000 miles away from home. When she left I encouraged her to start a blog to record her adventures, thoughts and ideas so that those who do know her and care about her would get a peek into what her new life was like. She really doesn’t like to write and so nothing happened for a while. Now that she’s started an externship she’s decided it’s a good time. Peer pressure had something to do with it too. I’m really proud of her for stepping out on a limb and opening up her thoughts to a wider audience.
Taking the first step.
The launching of her blog started me thinking about the challenge our clients and I have with writing articles for blogs. Because I own an inbound marketing company, I continually encourage our clients to write articles to increase traffic to their websites and generate leads. We emphasize that it is about educating people—they have information that people are searching for and blogging is the best way to share it. The logic of this doesn’t make it any easier to write an article though.
It feels so vulnerable. There’s the fear of saying something wrong or looking foolish, none of which we admit to as the real reason for procrastinating. The most common excuses are “We don’t have time” or “We don’t know what to write about.”
However I read a blog today by Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion, about Relationship Marketing, Emotional Connections, and the Power of YOU where he talks about the relationship aspect of blogging, the desire to make connections. It got me thinking about my approach to writing articles.
Just a way to connect with friends.
In my daughter’s case the motive for her blog is totally about making and keeping connections with the people she knows. But it turns out that she’s educating her friends and family about the new things that she’s learning about her new home and her culinary job.
With clients, myself included, we tend to think that it all has to be about business—facts, tips, and steps. Marcus’ article reminded me that it is okay to connect with people in my personal voice with my own stories, ideas, and perspectives even if it does feel vulnerable. And that’s the purpose of blogging—connecting with people and building relationships.
In my business I communicate this way with one-on-one client relationships but hadn’t really thought about taking this approach with my blog articles. If we share more of who we are, people are more likely to care about what we say. And if they care more about what we say, then we may be getting our point across and help them out.
So my goal is to find ways to communicate on a more personal level even when talking about business ideas. I'll let you know how it works for me.
Ways you can connect more effectively with your writing:
• Use the first person (I, me, we)
• Write the way you speak
• Share personal stories and opinions
What ways do you connect with your readers?