I love food. You may have learned that from the last Write Club. I wrote about fish and chips, egg sandwiches… looking back I wish I had slipped in a sentence or two about pickled onion Monster Munch.
This is a quick lesson in how you give your writing personality. In two sentences I’ve managed to put a large part of my personality and thoughts across to my audience. Whoever reads it now knows about my passion for food. I’ve also given them a fair idea of the foods I like to eat – utter junk.
I often see the same old barriers stopping people from putting themselves and their thoughts on the page. Most of them surround negativity and perception – most writers starting out lack confidence and expect themselves to crumble on the first negative comment they receive. It’s understandable in a sense, it takes a lot of time to discover and refine your writing voice. But if you cast off the shackles of convention from the start and concentrate on the basics, then personality will follow suit.
And that’s the point of writing. Personality, from my point of view, is one of the most important ingredients possible when constructing copy for an internet audience. Think about it. There’s millions of blogs out there, the majority of them saying exactly the same thing. How do you set yourself apart? By saying exactly the same things and following the crowd? It doesn’t work that way, plain and simple.
Commercial writing is different though, surely? Well, of course you have to come across as more professional if you want to sell your products, but there’s no reason at all why you can’t put a company voice into blog posts and other content. I’m not advising you to talk about the food you like, obviously, but a blog on your site is a great way to focus on specific products and add a bit of excitement to them. To make your staff seem more like people and less like… er… staff.
“We had a large delivery come into the stock room today. We couldn’t wait to open it – it was our new range of lightweight laptops that you can buy from our computer section. We’re putting the pictures live as soon as we stop slavering over how gorgeous they look.”
You probably couldn’t get away with putting that in the product description on the laptop page itself, but it’s the perfect kind of post to put on your blog to give the product a bit of mystery and to get your customers asking some serious questions.
Why couldn’t they wait to open it, does it look better than the other laptops they sell? Lightweight eh, how lightweight is it? Gorgeous? They mentioned pictures, I’ll come back later when they’re up. Would it look good in my room?
Personality in your writing doesn’t mean swearing, firing off extreme opinion or filling sentences with as many big words as possible. It just means being interesting, intriguing and showing a part of yourself off to the world. Remember, you don’t attract people by pushing them away. Be positive and inclusive in your blogs – success is sure to follow.
About the author:
Posted by John.
Link to us
If you want to link to this blog, copy and paste the following HTML code to your website.
