How Much Personality Should My Blog Have?
Yesterday, Robby Slaughter and I were discussing blogs and blogging strategy. He mentioned how surprised he was my blog didn’t have more of my personality. I wasn’t offended, (maybe it was because I was half way through my second Margarita) but I did wonder, how much personality should the Roundpeg blog have?
This is a challenge for any small business owner writing a blog as part of their marketing and social media strategy; where is the balance point between company and personal messages. And while there are many people who claim to be experts, there are no firm rules.
Some of the blogs I read most Kyle Lacy, Louis Gray, and Seth Godin, each let pieces of who they are come through, in different ways. Kyle is at is best when he “rants”. His funny, razor sharp wit is exactly the same in person or in print. Through his blog, we know know a lot about what he thinks, but not as much about what he does. In contrast, Louis Gray, shares a little less of his personality in his informative blog, written primarily for early adopters, technology geeks, RSS addicts and Mac freaks. He does warn however, the blog may occasionally contain some TiVo, media, sports and politics…) To get to “know” Louis Gray you have to add him to your follow list on FriendFeed or Twitter. There you will see photos of his twins, and little pieces of his sense of humor bleed through.
Seth Godin writes smart, funny, insightful posts every single day. I read almost all of them. I read his books, and have watched his video interviews, but I don’t know Seth Godin. He rarely uses personal examples. This isn’t a negative, I really like his blog, but I don’t feel I know him.
Kyle and Robby have solved the problem by creating two blogs. Each has the personal blogs and the business ones: Brandswag and Slaughter Development. I tried this appraoch, I do have a blog called More Than a Few Words, but it was exhausting trying to write good content for both. So I just gave up, and moved a little bit of the personal stuff to Roundpeg.
So who is right? I don’t know, but I am pretty sure my readers wil ltell me if I have made right choices, with their comments, repeat visits and links.
I’m currently just writing one blog, a ‘professional’ one. When I spent a month in Japan recently I created a separate personal blog site just for that; it was better for me than entrusting all that personal data to Facebook and I could upload higher resolution images and video. I installed a WordPress plugin to announce new posts on my Facebook account for me too so that worked out great and my family and friends loved using it as a way of keeping up with what I was doing over there. Most of them have no interest whatsoever in my marketing oriented blog so I think a personal ‘extension of Facebook’ blog works pretty well, you can password protect it if you want, and keeps that stuff away from the work stuff – you have two audiences, some might cross over but very few will.
I find that I just can’t seem to balance the commitment between a business blog and a personal one. I update the blog for my business on a daily basis (for the most part) and just find it to be a bit daunting to them manage a blog for my personal thoughts and opinions.
Taking off of what the previous commenter said, I suppose my Facebook account activity could be perceived as a personal blog. And yes the data may be controlled by Facebook, but at least it’s only being seen by the right people.
Thinking about it a little more, I guess I do stay very straight on my business blog and LinkedIn profiles… but I use Twitter and Facebook for the fun stuff. I bet that anyone using Twitter for business will soon have two profiles. One for your friends/family or close personal network and the other for business. That’s exactly why I started snapping up Twitter User names. I wasn’t able to get @sex or @beer but there were a few that will work very well for my business. Now to find the best program to manage all the names at once (any recommendations?)… hopefully it will include a feature to update Facebook, LinkedIn and Digsby all at the same time.
Chris,
http://splitweet.com/ is supposed to allow you to manage multiple Twitter accounts. I haven’t tried it yet, so I don’t know how well it works.
Hi Lorraine, I’m visiting from the Problogger challenge. I almost clicked away because I couldn’t find your blog on your business page. Maybe when you comment you could point directly here?
I’ve been struggling a bit with the same issue. I reader focused my blog (instead of personal focused) in Jan and then felt I’d wiped myself to far from it. So now I’m swinging back around a bit here and there trying to find a good balance.
Beth,
Thanks for the comment, and the push in the right direction. I have changed my title from “Marketing Tips” to Roundpeg Blog. I have to learn, sometimes you need to be more obvious.