This is a guest post from Andi Leeman of TimsMinions
We hear a lot about becoming a brand, it is big for business, and it makes you look professional to the outside world. It is in fact a very powerful thing to do when setting up an online business and having a blog can benefit from it to. But becoming a brand does run the risk of becoming like a faceless corporation, so to avoid that your business or blog needs to have a personal side.
There needs to be a balance, on one hand you are a professional business or blog and on the other hand you are a person who has family and friends and who does average Joe public things like go to the football, watch movies and take vacations.
Okto recently published an excellent post where not only did he teach us some valuable points about being a writer, like why we need to take a break from writing at times, and why we must plan but he also showed us that he is the face behind the blog. He shared with us the trip he took with his family to the Kawah Putih (White Crater).
He told us about the drive through the countryside, sharing the sights and sounds they had on the journey, he gave us some facts about the Crater itself as well as including many great pictures of him and his beautiful family enjoying their time there.
Keeping readers captivated with real life
For me this whole post kept me captivated, I love to travel, I love to learn new things and I was enjoying both through the eyes of someone else. This was real; I was seeing the life of Okto, the man behind the blog. This is no longer a blog it is Okto’s blog, a family man who appreciates nature, who loves to do things with his family. A guy, who like you and me, enjoys taking time out.
Every blog needs this, it is great for business. Why? Well if your car is broken and you take it to a good mechanic who always does good work at a reasonable cost and has a great attitude, what do you do? You recommend them; you certainly do not recommend a stranger over them.
If you have a great friend who is a wood worker, would you not recommend them? Of course you would, no one likes to think they have a bad taste in friends, we believe we know good people, we believe our friends are good people, if they are good at what they do then we will always recommend them over anyone else.
Offline or Online the same rules apply
The same applies to online businesses, bloggers and resources. Compare your favourite blog to one that is a Google revenue scrapper. Google revenue scrapper is a site set up around several keywords and a niche. They are usually full of un interesting and useless content, it was created to rank high in Google and to earn affiliate commissions from organic traffic. Everyone has visited one of these sites at some time in their lives.
They are awful, they have just enough content to get them high in Google (before the recent slaps anyway) and you can instantly tell that they are there trying to get you to click on adverts or affiliated products. Normally we click off them quickly and run for the hills. They usual are faceless, or have a false personality behind them. Using a picture of a smiling person bought from iStock photos.
However, a real blog, one that has an owner, someone who cares and someone who shares what they do, goes from being a blog to someone you know. A friend who is miles away but a good friend nonetheless.Okto is my friend in Indonesia, we have never met but I know more about him than I do of most of the owners of blogs I have read recently.
Big and small blogs alike can benefit from having a human side
There are different types of blogs, some are owned by companies and have many writers involved but they will also have sections or posts where you will see the staff or offices behind the scenes. I recently noticed that the tech blog Mashable had an Instagram account where they shared photos of the team at work or having fun in the offices, giving a human face to the company and blog.
Having a human face or personal touch to your business or blog builds a relationship and trust. It is the best social proof you can have. If you don’t have that then you are faceless corporation and we know what people think about that, they don’t trust faceless companies, they believe they have things to hide, taking everything they can and then hiding behind the company walls.
Do you want that for your business or blog? No of course not.
So what can add that personal touch?
I think we all need to follow Okto’s lead and write at least one personal post. Everyone is different, some might not want to show family in their pictures or give away too much personal details, but that is ok, no one is expecting you to give out your home address and when you are going away on holiday so that the local burglars can have a field day.
It could be a short post about the day you took off to watch the Super Bowl with your mates, what the score was, what you ate and the fun you had. It could be about the worst day of your life, how things went wrong, the car broke down, you missed an interview and it rained as you lock yourself out of the car waiting for the tow truck. It could simply be several lines in a post.
Whatever it is, just add a bit of a personal dimension to your blog. You will not regret it; I can assure you of that.
Guest Blogger :
AndiLeeman is the writer for TimsMinions.com. Bringing you the best small home business ideas and blogging tips
*Image Source: http://personality.prosperyourmind.com/
Now, what do you think about “why we need personality into blogs” ? Why don’t you share your opinion with us and the readers? Leave it in comment box below 😀
