Blogging Best Practices: The Power of Personality

We hope you're enjoying our series of posts on Blogging Best Practices! Each Thursday, we've been debuting a new post designed to help you create great content, share it with the world, and become a better blogger. Check out other posts in the series here!

Recently, we discussed how letting your personality shine through your blog posts can help grow your audience. Today, we're back with three easy steps to make your blog even more dynamic:

Embrace storytelling. Even the most professional blogs benefit from sharing anecdotes from time to time, so don't be afraid to make it personal. Stories create connection, and go a long way in keeping your posts fresh, interesting, and easy to relate to. Invite people into your daily life, and watch your readership grow.

Include a photo of yourself on your sidebar. Creating an area on your blog's sidebar with a recent photo and a few short sentences about yourself and your blog is a fantastic way to welcome people to your blog, and it makes a great attention grabber. Check out our step by step instructions for adding a photo to your sidebar, here. Not keen on having a photo in the sidebar? Add it to the body of your About page instead! Showing your face helps your readers to know who you are.

Promote with charm. If your blog is connected to Twitter and Facebook, then you already know how to share your posts (if not, check here and here for an easy how-to). Take your sharing to the next level by turning on the charm. Injecting personality into your tweets and Facebook posts increases your chances of capturing your followers' attention, and getting them to click your links.

Whether your niche is parenting, fashion, finance or entertainment, your personality is what makes your blog unique, setting you apart from the sea of other bloggers on the Internet. Don't be afraid to let it show!

Comments

[Alexandria, Professional Bagpiper AFM Local 349]

I would say that for the most part I try to add personality, but a lot of my website is professional, so I have to keep that in mind as well.

[Kofla Olivieri]

I don't know why I bother to comment when no one seems to reply when questions are being asked. I am STILL waiting for someone from your staff to reply to a question asked on your previous post about landing pages. Sometimes I wonder why I continue paying for this service. Hello is anybody home?

[Melanie]

Sorry about that, Kolfa! We work really hard to reply to everyone on Everything Typepad posts! I'll make sure we get on it ASAP.

[Melanie]

Hi Alexandria,

It sounds like you've struck the perfect balance between professionalism and personality. :D

[Lynn Ferguson-Pinet]

I'm currently in a position of repositioning my blog as I started writing it and lost interest and I think it was primarily to your point. I was writing too formal, I'm just working thru how I can create an interesting blog with personality but still service a profesional business client. Your posts are helping me redefine. Thanks!
Lynn

[Melanie]

Hi Lynn! I think you've experienced a problem that many professional bloggers have run into over time. Sticking with it and making your work consistent is definitely easier when you can write from your own personality. Achieving that balance is part of what makes a successful professional blog - now that you're redefining, you'll be amazed at how much more enjoyable it is, which is a big part of growing your readership. Right on!

[Henry Johnson]

This is great wonderful advice. I'm in the process of finding my blogging identity in terms of the look and feel of my blog and the "me" within my posts. This is advice that I will use as I coninue to build my body of work and grow by blogging Id.

[Account Deleted]

Thank you for all the start-up information. I think I would have already quit if I didn't have this to help!