Blog Food Series: Secret Blog Ingredient #2

Yesterday’s post Blog Food: A Recipe for a Better Blog I talked about an essential blog ingredient: passion and discussed ways to measure whether or not you have enough for your chosen blog niche and what to do to reignite fizzling passion. Passion is a necessary component, but it won’t matter how much passion you have if you don’t actually convey that in your writing.

Your blog is constantly hungry, and while it may be tempting to feed it any old thing, you might want to consider the nutritional value of what you’re putting into it. Especially in the beginning phases. A new blog is like a new baby, it requires a lot of high quality nourishment at regular intervals. Every day or so you’ve got to mix up something new for your growing blog. The good news is, though, as your blog grows and gets older it will require less frequent feedings, but even still if you don’t want to go too long between posts and run the risk of raising a malnourished creature.

So in order to create content with substance, you’ll need to stir in a healthy helping of this next ingredient.

Blog ingredient #2: personality

Blogging is not the time to have a personality crisis – you don’t want flip-flop based on whatever trends are floating around – you don’t want to be that kid that can’t decide who he wants to be and change up your personality based on whichever group he’s hanging out with that day. Of course, you are free to change your mind about things, and you may even choose to use your epiphanies for blog posts, but there shouldn’t be an abrupt change in your writing style and opinions without explanation. Develop a consistent voice and style that your readers will come to recognize and like.

There is no need to develop the Madonna complex about this, you don’t need to reinvent yourself for every album (I mean blog post). Just do you – whatever it is that makes you YOU. And I mean YOU, the YOU that you are when no one else is looking; the YOU you are when you’re friends are not around and when you’re not ashamed to walk around scratching your rear in moth-eaten socks. Yeah, that YOU. Be that. Anything less than the real YOU will make you just as boring as everyone else.

So here’s 4 tips for adding your personality to your blog.

1. At least once a week, write about what you want to write about, not what trends or search engines are telling you to write about, but instead write what you feel like writing. Some days you just don’t have an appetite for meatloaf and you wouldn’t force yourself to eat it just because your neighbor is eating it – not when there’s other tasty items available. Take cues from what you feel like writing and relate it to your blog niche in a creative way. Keep in mind though, that this is not permission to run off on a super nutty tangent that will leave your present followers lost in the spaghetti sauce – you still have a niche, that hopefully you picked as a result of having passion – so try to stay within some recognizable boundaries.

That’s what I did this week, I wanted to mix things up and I challenged myself to make the connection between blogging and food. It was easy enough, I love blogging and I love eating food – so I put them together and got this Blog Food Series. You can do the same thing. Truthfully if you think about the unlikely similarities in things, you can make just about anything relate to your niche if you inject enough personality and a little critical thinking. Add a little extra brain steam and you’ll be surprised how quickly you can use an unlikely comparison to convey an idea.

2. While you’re at it, throw in a few cups of humor (but only if it’s a natural part of your personality) and try to stay on the positive and lighter side of things whenever possible.

3. Leave your readers with a sense of hope that whatever problem they have can indeed be solved. Avoid rant posts that will leave people feeling doomed. Instead, mix in several ounces of encouragement and motivation.

4. Liven things up by interacting with your commentators and followers periodically. You don’t have to respond to every comment, but make at least some effort to let your visitors know that you appreciate them – after all they could have hit the back button instead. That’s how you get their attention and keep them coming back to your site. That’s how Rob at www.robswebtips.com does – whenever I visit his site, if I post an authentic, well-thought comment, I know at some point, I will get a response. Just that small gesture let’s me know that there’s a human behind the profile pic and makes me feel welcomed into his blog’s community. So I visit the site often just to see what’s cooking.

Be confident developing content for your blog. Put your stamp on the package and it won’t matter what topic you choose, it won’t even matter how many other people have already written about it, they can’t write it like you can because they can’t see it exactly how you see it. Change up the recipe and add your secret ingredient – your personality.

What secret ingredients do you throw into your blog recipe? How do spice things up and keep your blog content fresh?

Be sure to return tomorrow for the next secret blog ingredient…

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net