Getting Personal in Blogging for Business

As someone who helps clients communicate via the internet, I got a thought-provoking kick out of the anecdote Nancy Clark from West Point, Virginia submitted to Readers’ Digest:

      I’ve given up social media for the new year and am trying to make friends outside Facebook     while applying the same principles.  Every day I walk down the street and tell passersby what I’ve eaten, how I feel, what I did the night before, and what I will do tomorrow. I share pictures of my family, my dog and my gardening….I also listen to their conversations and tell them I love them.  And it works. I already have three people following me – two police officers and a psychiatrist.

One interesting perspective on the work we do as professional bloggers is that we are interpreters, translating clients’ corporate message into human, people-to-people terms. In fact, one reason I prefer first and second person writing in business blog posts over third person “reporting” is that I believe people tend to buy when they see themselves in the picture and when can they relate emotionally to the person bringing them the message.

“Getting down and human” in business blogs is so important that it becomes a good idea for a business owner and professional to actually write about past mistakes and struggles. Blogger Beccy Freebody posits that it’s much easier to connect to someone who has been where you are.

So just how personal should your business blog be?” asks mavenlink.com.  Many businesses and business people struggle to find that fine line between adding a personal touch and shocking or boring their readers to death with overly personal, trite information,” the authors observe.

On a business blog, you will be rewarded for having a unique and authentic voice, but that doesn’t mean you have free reign to swear or otherwise be rude. Your unique voice should fit nicely within the brand’s larger personality, mavenlink wisely adds.

Important to the Readers’ Digest dilemma, the authors state that “while business bloggers may benefit from discussing past and current struggles as a tool for connecting emotionally with readers, such stories are best used as a means to an end, with the end being solving readers’ problems.

“Business is personal, so is a blog,” writes Ty Kiisel in Forbes. “Over the years,” Kiisel says, “my readers have gotten to know me because I share with them some of the details of my life.”