We all are aware of that shortcoming in our business blogs. The very idea that a business blog should be interesting and (gasp!) even personal has come under some discussion lately.
Aleah, best known among business bloggers, for her Incite By Design marketing blog, has expressed a few concerns over at her well written Jane Crow Journal personal blog, about the possibility that business blogs are boring.
Aleah says:
But there just isn't the sense of camaraderie and exchange that blogging is really supposed to entail. I'm writing like mad, but it feels like I am screaming in an empty room. I'm feeling really pathetic. I don't want a soliloquy - I want a community.
Hey Aleah, I hear you loudly and clearly, or should that be the more colloguial loud and clear?
Anyway.
We business bloggers are often more accustomed to writing marketing and sales literature, advertising pieces, and search engine copy. Many of us are less likely to be writing in the more personal and intimate style found on the more intensely personal journals.
Some business blogs, like David St. Lawrence's Ripples, Vikk Simmons' Down The Writers Path, Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion, Yvonne DiVita's Lip-Sticking, and Rosa Say's Talking Story for example, along with many others too numerous to mention, are all very well written.
Not all business bloggers can make that same claim, however.
At the same time, not all business blogs attract heavy levels of commentary. Writers like Aleah do feel they are talking to a blank computer screen. Their sense their words are being heard, maybe, but without feedback, they never know for sure.
The personal bloggers rarely have the problem of a lack of feedback. In fact, personal bloggers commenters often run into the dozens of comments.
There is a lesson there not only for business bloggers, but for many technical, political, legal and sports bloggers too. While many blog writers in those fields recieve heavy levels of feedback from their readers, others find their comments often devoid of any responses.
We business and related bloggers could take a page from the personal journal writer's handbook.
Write from the heart. Write with feeling and passion. Your words will connect with your readers in new and exciting ways.
Community is then created between the blogger and the readership.
That is part of the reason for a business blog in the first place. You want to create a relationship with your clients and customers. You want to put a human face on the company.
The way to do that is to read some personal blogs, journals, and diaries.
Learn the important lessons from those writers about connecting with your readers.
It will pay off in countless ways, both tangible financially, and as the forming of friendships.
Get personal today.
Oh, and leave some comments at Incite By Design, and at your other favourite business blogs.
Your words will be greatly appreciated by the blogger.
