Hello, I'm Mervi!
An artist, nerd and business sorcerer, dedicated to make world more beautiful and strange with art, illustrations and logos + to help you figure your sustainable business out.
Get on blogging, chapter 3 – The content
Get on blogging is a weekly series about blogging and becoming a blogger. This chapter dwells in the content of your blog. Do you need to have a speciality and make niche markets happy? Is personal good or bad?
The main thing about your blog is of course the content. It's what drives people on your blog and keeps them coming again. It's what your blog is about. If you are only thinking about starting a blog I hope you have some sort of an idea of what you want or even need to write about. I already asked on the first chapter of this series a couple of important questions: Why do you want to blog and for who would you be blogging? These questions are the basis of your blog content. Do you have something important to share with the world? Are you blogging for yourself or do you have a specific audience? When you have an answer to these questions you will already have an idea of what you will be blogging.
Perks of specialities
Most blogging advice tells you to go with a "niche", a word used to describe one or a couple of narrow specialities. But is there a little flaw in this thinking? Are all the "niche" blogs becoming too similar and are they losing their personal touch? Many blogs now concentrate on business, marketing and other stuff I also write about. They keep on their path without taking many sidesteps and often these blogs start to sound the same. There are times when I read a post on one of the blogs like this and start ask myself: Didn't I just read pretty much this same thing on another blog?
Having a speciality and talking to a niche markets isn't a bad idea. Especially when you do it in your own way and can stand from the crowd. It's important to write about what you believe and not about what you believe people want you to write about. Speciality blogs have certain good sides. They can drive in a steady current of readers who have interest in this very selected subject. This is because the readers will know what sort of blog posts they can assume to find from the blog. Additionally the search engines like the consistency. Interestingly lots of people don't quite read what they share or only skim through those posts, thus they rely on the first impression. When a blog is about one clear subject it makes the first impression more easy to make.
Specialities are also a safe harbour for the blogger. For instance you can create an ongoing series of posts, such as these get on blogging articles I'm releasing each week. The series will make you keep up with your writing and will provide perhaps an easy way to come up with new material. Specialities make the blog easier to digest or at least easier to choose if the blog is worth of revisit or not. They also give the blogger herself guidelines of what to write.
Giving too much information
Personal blogging isn't the trendy choice and there are those who value specialities and clearly stated niches. However personal isn't something to write off right away. Do you know about The Bloggess? She's a writer called Jenny Lawson and her blog is wildly popular. Her posts gain lots and lots of comments within a couple of days and the blog in general creates tons of traffic each month. And what's her niche? This is not one of those places for handmade business advice or your typical lifestyle blog. Lawson's blogging is very personal to the point of oversharing and she's not afraid of using strong or at least vivid wording. It's notable that Lawson is funny and her writing style is comedy. Instead of a speciality or "niche" she has a very recognisable style. As a contrast to a speciality blog The Bloggess doesn't clearly state it's main subject anywhere. There doesn't appear to be any sort of narrow main subject, unless Lawson's life is counted as such.
Personal and personality showing blog posts are actually very good way to get people interested. They aren't easy to categorise and they can drive away those who are strictly business. Personal blogs give a sneak peak on lives of other people. Us humans are inherently curious about how other people live their lives. In that way any personal blog has a niche: They are aimed at those who are interested in life and how other people cope with different situations of life. Personal blogging can however be quite scary to the blogger. Unless you are used in sharing and oversharing, giving the sometimes embarrassing details about your life and daily happenings will shake you to your core. If you don't have very supportive family and friends they will also be upset about something you wrote and voice their problems to you. Trust me, I've been there.
Choosing between personal and special
As I stated in the beginning of this post the choice of what you will blog is mostly about you. You will need to find out if you have a speciality or if personal blogging is more of your thing. You could also be brave and mix the two. Lifestyle blogs for instance are usually a mix of specialities and personal stuff. My opinion is that bloggers who can work in both, the personal and their own specialities, are the best you can find. They give their speciality posts more unique touch and let the curious ones to have a glimpse to their lives.
Having an easily recognisable tone and your own voice is more important than having some strict speciality. It will be trial and error all the way through and you need not to be discouraged by mistakes or things that don't work. When you know what your tone and voice will be there are many ways to find blog post ideas.
Next week Get on blogging series takes a look on the appearance of your blog. How to make your blog look better? Where can you find the perfect theme? What's the importance of the colours and images?
