Does your blog have a recognisable style?
Does it fit with the authentic message of your business?
One of the greatest compliments I received recently was meeting someone at a networking event. She came up to me, gave me a big hug, saying, “So lovely to see you, Amy. How are you?”
In my head, I was saying, ‘Who are you? Think, Amy, Think!’ (I’m usually pretty good with faces).
She stepped back, looking rueful, “Oh, I’m so sorry! We’ve never actually met! We’ve talked on Facebook, I’ve seen a couple of your webinars and I always read your blogs. I feel like I know you. I like your style!”
When a perfect stranger feels like they know you enough to give you a hug when they first meet you in real life, you know you’ve cracked it!
I’ve been blogging consistently for more than five years now, and I’m not going to mislead you, it takes time to establish yourself enough through your writing that people recognise you, your style, and to really feel like they know you.
Your Social Media Style
When you share your content on Social Media, you think you’ve written something really profound and fascinating and barely anyone engages, then you make some inane, off the cuff remark on an update and get 200 likes! Go figure?
Variety
Ultimately, all that variety of content, across different networks, in different places and a good quality, consistent stream of blogs all adds up to build that bigger picture of who you are and why you run the business you do.
In my most recent webinar, I talked about 3 things you could start doing today to build that recognisable, likeable and authentic digital presence.
Ultimately, whatever niche you occupy, whatever USP you think you have, the only thing truly unique in your business is YOU.
It’s All About You
Your readers want to hear from YOU.
They want to get to know YOU.
Each time you write a blog, you are adding another chapter to the story of your business, the story of YOU. That’s when people will start to like your style, and eventually to trust you enough to part with their cash, or recommend you.
Watch the summary video here:
Tips From The video
The three tips covered in the video are:
1) Make use of variety
Have a mixture of written, video, audio, visual content. Mix it up a bit. Doing this not only appeals to the different learning styles of your audience but it also helps you realise what your audience want from you, how they want it and also what works for you.
2) Voice record or dictate your content
By dictating your words, or reading them out, you quite literally put your voice into your writing. Your writing will be much more conversational, which is far more appropriate in digital marketing. Readers will recognise you from your writing.
3) Have simple style guidelines for your blog
Create a documented guideline of how your blog will be presented. Go into details with it. What form of words will you write in? What font will you use for the paragraph, the headings, the subheadings? Are there phrases you use a lot? Are there conventions that you will stick to for consistency? (i.e. would you write 1 to 1 – 121 or one to one? Is it OK or okay?) Your brand colours? Size and how many images will there be? Type of images you use?
It’s always better to use your own images where possible as this all adds up to seamlessly presenting a consistent, unified and recognisable brand.
This is useful for your own reference as a checklist, but you can also incorporate it into submission guidelines if you invite guest contributors, or if you have more than one person regularly writing on your blog.
What ONE thing will you do to find your voice and style in your blogs?
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