Truth 38. To blog for yourself, be yourself, but carefully
Blogging and social media venues are highly enticing to casual communicators, but whether your goal is to build a personal community or promote your own business or organization, don’t be fooled. An instant delivery system doesn’t mean that dishing up your spontaneous thoughts will accomplish anything for you.
In addition to taking the trouble to write well and self-edit well, here are some ideas for making these media work for you.
Be yourself—Use your own voice, your own personal viewpoint, and definitely, your own name. Choose subjects you’re comfortable with and value the fact that these new media allow for enormous flexibility. If you’re someone who has carefully thought about a subject and taken the time to read other people’s opinions, and you enjoy commenting from a personal perspective, do so. If you think you’re interesting or entertaining, blog and microblog away. On the other hand, if you shy away from talking about yourself, that works too, probably even better: Offer practical advice about what you know, share industry trends, solve a problem. That’s what most people are looking for.
Writing tone and style—Conversational-informal is excellent for blogging, but don’t get sloppy. Despite the fact the blogging looks like a fre-and-easy medium, readers hate bad spelling, lack of punctuation, and run-on sentences that interfere with instant understanding. Write tightly using short words in short declarative sentences that have rhythm. Keep paragraphs short. Cut all the extra words and thoughts that detract from your core message. The say-ability test—reading the piece aloud to find out where the stumbles are—is really helpful in blogging.
Make your tone match your blog site’s goal and audience. An accountant might choose to sound analytic and authoritative rather than using a stream-of-consciousness style, but an artist might not. Ideally, your tone and style should reflect your personality.
How long?—Online formats demand brevity. A print article typically needs to be crystallized to probably half its length to be read. If you’re posting a viewpoint on someone else’s site, just long enough to be interesting works—in the range of 250 words. If it’s a business site and the subject calls for it, 1,500 to 2,500 words can be fine—as long as your information and research justify the length. In either case, make material easy to follow: Numbered lists and bullets work well. Use subheads even on short posts and boldface words to draw attention. Build in white space to avoid a forbidding look of density.
Write good headlines—This is crucial. For blogs, construct headlines based on a complete thought or sentence so what you’re writing about is absolutely clear. Readers tend to scan only the first few words, and so do search engines and news feeders. Therefore, put the bottom line on top—meaning at the left, in this case. Start with the most important three or four words, even though this can lead you away from the “action” feel you’re usually trying for and may sound passive. For example:
Missile defense systems cost us billions in secret budgets
Blogging for profit is hard to do: some ideas
Small business accounting systems can save you millions
Promote discussion—If you want to build a lively blog with different viewpoints, you need to promote some give and take. You might build a question into the content or ask it directly at the end of your own comment: “That’s how I feel. Do you have a different opinion?” Whether you allow open access for posting comments or monitor them before publication is up to you or your company. Either way, develop a clear policy and present it on the site.
How often?—Most successful bloggers say they try to stick to a regular schedule and blog at least weekly to keep the site fresh. Operating your own blog is definitely a big commitment, but if you don’t keep new material flowing, the time you do put in will be wasted. If your aim is to become part of a community or to build up your own readership by posting on other people’s blogs, it’s also best to do it regularly. To get noticed, make sure what you post is relevant and well written.
Which social media should I use?—This landscape changes even as we think about it, so take the time to stay up to date and to evaluate what could be productive for you. There’s no question that building up an effective presence on social media can be time-consuming. To best leverage the opportunities LinkedIn offers, for example, you need to invest time in adding contacts, participate in discussion forums, answer questions related to your interests, and recommend contacts.
Facebook and MySpace have become much-used business and professional tools, as have microblog sites like Twitter. Other sites that aim to connect businesspeople with each other are Ryze, Spoke, XING, and Ecademy. To make good choices, be aware of what your competitors and colleagues are using, and how. Then use the techniques in this book to write strong profiles, comments, and contributions. You’ll stand out.
Blogging for yourself—Never forget that blogging is the most public of forums, just like social media. Therefore, don’t say anything that would harm your current or previous employer, or your chances with a future employer.
Don’t criticize people by name, because that person may well get wind of it and there may be consequences.
If you criticize a company or product, give legitimate, well-thought-out reasons. Saying that a product is “useless” isn’t helpful, but explaining that its battery fails after one hour instead of the advertised five hours is a legitimate criticism.
Be totally honest about your identity. Use your real name, and in everything you write maintain the integrity demanded of journalists. If you have a connection to your subject, say so. Remember the company president who blogged about his own organization and competitors under a false identity? It landed him on the front page of newspapers and an untold number of blogs.