Express your personal brand through your blogging voice

Earier this week Anna and I hosted the third an final in our "Summer Teleseminar Series" about business blogging.

This week we talked about personal branding and how to build your personal brand through your business blog.

One of the subjects we covered that we both believe in passionately is that through our blog our own personal style needs to shine forth. Our voice needs to be clear and distinctive - so that as people read your blog it as if they are talking to you.

Yes this does take a little time to find your "blogging voice" - we both know as we used to have responsibility for writing terms of reference, processes and procedures for large organisations in our previous lives in the corporate world.

That was a very different tone of voice than our usual style of conversation as you will probably have heard if you have listened in to our Podcast Sisters shows.

So how can you ensure that your "blogging voice is clear, distinctive and reflects your personal brand and expertise? Here are three tips to help you on your way:

1. write as you speak - when you write your blog post, do so as if you were speaking to a friend or colleague
2. read your post outloud - if you are not sure of the flow of your blog post, read it outloud to check if it makes sense - does it reflect how you speak?
3. write what you know about - in other words, showcase the best of yourself and be remarkable and are "fully self expressed" as my good friend Michael Port describes it. If you are not the expert in the subject you are writing about, then be open and share that you are not the expert but are learning the subject yourself and want to share what you are learning.

You see in business, your clients and potential clients will come to you and refer others to you if you are an expert in your field.

I get rather concerned when I see in some online networks that people are writing articles or have secured clients and speaking gigs when they clearly do not know their subject. Just today I saw a post from a member of an online network stating:

"I am doing research for a talk on Mentorship. Are any of you able to share information in this regard, especially with reference to what ought to be included in a mentorship programme."

Gosh - if I were a paying client for this person to speak I would be really worried if I was paying them for their expertise and they were not able to share real life examples of mentoring programmes.

Remember if you do not have the expertise in a subject it will only be a matter of time before your clients recognise this.

What other suggestions do you have for expressing your unique personal brand through your "blogging voice"?

If you are interested in learning more about writing for the web from website to business blogs so that you discover how to engage with your readers through the power of your online copy, I hope you will register for my next Biz Growth Live teleseminar which you can join at no cost. Just head over to "Biz Growth Live" and register for the call that takes place on the 9 July 2007 at 1pm ET/6pm Ireland and the UK.

Comments

[Dan Schawbel]

Good points here. Blogging is about having a conversation with your readers, which displays your brand.

[Vikram Rajan]

"Write as you speak." I've always done that - and it helped me find my blogger's voice quickly. I grew up chatting on BBS's before the Internet took over; then I dabbled in spoken word poetry; and I'm on the local speaker's "circuit" here in NY... so when I started my "podBlog," it was a no-brainer.

I like podcasting from my cell phone as I'm leaving a client session. I'm inspired with a tip, and hit the phones as I'm doing 80 to my next appointment. In fact, "Podcaster's Who's Who" invited me to speak at July 28's PodCamp On-line in the afternoon, 12:30 to 1 pm NY time: http://podcamp.pbwiki.com/Podcamp-City-Online
My topic: "Podcast by Phone: Access more listeners;
brand your expertise more easily."

Your post is great. Seems like you're all providing personal branding insight through your blogs. Thanks.

Vikram Rajan

[Krishna De]

Vikram, thanks for stopping by. I hope your presentation goes well next week.

Yes my blogs specifically cover corporate branding, employer branding, personal branding, marketing and coaching as these are the areas of my expertise.

Anna covers employee engagement and personal branding on her main blog but then also covers other subjects on her blogs that she authors for other networks.

It's great therefore for us to collaborate as personal branding is a passion of ours. Hence you will see references to personal branding here at The Podcast Sisters from time to time.

[Miracle studios -- web design company]

I am already trying this