Use First-Person Power in Business Blogs

Popular magazines, I find, are a great source of ideas for blog marketing. The publication needn’t be recent, I found, browsing through the Cook’s Illustrated 2016 Annual that I happened upon at a local café, thinking to get some new meal ideas.

One thing that really stood out about the intro to each recipe was the “we”:

• “We thought the classic American dinner roll couldn’t get any better. Then we tried a cutting-edge Asian baking technique….”
• “Sticky buns look inviting, but most are dry and over-sweet. We wanted a version that fulfilled its promise….”
• “Unless you’re a skilled pastry chef, wrapping delicate dough around a wet filling is a recipe for disaster. We wanted a strudel recipe for the rest of us…”

“The voice of a writer is usually easier to hear in first person,” says William Cane in Writer’s Digest, expressing the thought that third person narratives mimic the “beige voice” of a reporter. First person blog content writing (using the pronouns “I” and “we”) allows the writer to be intimate, unique, and conversational..

Different blog posts, of course, serve different purposes. Second person (“you”, “your”) is a good fit for how-to blog posts, while third person (“he”, “she”, “they”) may be a choice for news items.

Admittedly, nobody likes people who speak of nothing but themselves. Still, in corporate blogging, I stress first person business blog writing because of its one enormous advantage – it shows the people behind the posts, revealing the personality of the business owner, practitioner, or the team standing ready to serve customers.

Still, it’s important to remember that all content writing in blogs is actually “second person” in that every piece of information offered has to be about the readers. Generally speaking, I prefer first and second person writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting”. I think people tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when can they relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

Use first-person power in business blogs!