Finding Your Blogging Voice
One of the hardest things new bloggers have trouble with is finding their blogging voice – that is, how a post “sounds” to the readers and ensuring it accurately portrays who you are. After all, you are an interesting person with motivating experiences which will help enrich your readers’ lives. So not only is finding your voice tricky, it is the chief ingredient for a successful blog.
Until you find your voice you are going to find yourself playing around with the wording and phrasing of your posts, perhaps spending considerable more time tweaking the way your posts sound rather than focusing on the truly important aspect of blogging – just writing. In fact, your early blogging efforts may find your voice sounding bland, too robotic, too much like Tom Brokaw on the evening news or even worse; you may have no voice whatsoever.
Beginning blogging is akin to attending school all over again. Like your English teachers probably told you – you will find your voice in due time after reading enough example writing by those writers who you enjoy or are influenced by and practicing writing in a similar style. After enough reading you may find your voice to unconsciously take the shape of the writers whom you find appealing and influential.
But this still does not answer the really important question: how do you find your blogging voice?
Unfortunately there is no drugstore solution. You will not simply wake up one day and magically have your voice appear. While I wish I could tell you blogging is that effortless, regrettably it’s not that simple, especially if you have never previously tackled writing as a solvable problem.
Like the old cliché’, practice makes perfect. It really does. You need to write, write and write some more. The more to write, the more your voice will begin to naturally appear. After enough practice, you will one day realize you are no longer paying attention to your voice as you write – you’re just opening up Word and writing, as if your voice was smoothly being painted on your electronic canvas without any effort whatsoever.
Blogs are not only driven by appealing content, but the charismatic personalities behind the writing. This is one of the reasons why blogging is so attractive; it is not so robotic like a newspaper, but far more personal and spontaneous. If you want your blog to be successful, you have to do more than post relevant content – you, yourself, have to be interesting too, hence why it is so vital to find your voice.
If you have been writing on a regular basis then you will probably find it easier to locate your voice. For those who are new to writing, in that you’ve not written regularly, it will take time and practice for your personality to begin to shine through in your writing. You have to not only practice but get feedback and constructive criticism as well. Listen to the criticism, both good and bad, from friends and family because it will be an invaluable resource to your ultimate goal. Building your self-confidence will aid your ability to find your voice and spread your personality across your writing.
Should you desire to find your voice, know that it will take time. Like I said, there is no drugstore cure. You have to give it time before you find your groove and get in to the zone. Using some of the tips I discussed in both Do You Have A Blogging Workflow and Blogging Tips for Bloggers with Full-Time Jobs will help you achieve your goal of finding your voice.
Blogging is a lot of fun because even though you may be entering a very crowded space, if you are charismatic enough and your writing is substantially different from the other bloggers, your personality may allow your blog to be far more successful than you ever dreamt! Once you do find your voice you’ll find blogging to be a whole lot more enjoyable, again leading to levels you never thought possible.
Do you find yourself having trouble finding your voice? If not, what tips can you offer to help bloggers find their voice?
