The Future Buzz is one of my favorite blogs.
Adam Singer shares his thoughts on marketing, creating buzz, blogging, social media, branding, and other like areas. I found the blog a couple years ago through a search result. I can’t remember what the specific search was about, but once I stumbled on Adam’s blog I was hooked from the first article. Once I had read the first article I bookmarked the blog and came back frequently trying to catch up on all the archived posts I hadn’t read yet. And I did this all while keeping up with new articles Adam published.
Now, I love writing, I love blogging, I love marketing. However, I don’t read The Future Buzz simply because it’s a Marketing Blog. There are thousands of marketing blogs on the Web and possibly even a few with better content than The Future Buzz.
So why do I prefer reading Adam’s blog?
The answer: Adam has a unique and approachable blogging voice and personality.
Blog Voice
Adam recently covered the topic of blogging voice and personality with his post Niche vs Personality:
In a recent post at SmartBlog on social media, Jesse Stanchak shares a poll of his audience’s qualifying factors for “what makes a blog great.”
The results were as follows:
- A distinctive voice – 43.41%
- Compelling exclusive content — 35.66%
- A unique niche – 11.63%
While the poll surprised Jesse, the results actually shouldn’t surprise readers here at all. After all, personality is what keeps your blog in demand (note, ‘niche’ was not a single reason listed in that post). As someone who has helped build web communities for more than a decade (long before the popularization of blogs, I moderated several web forums) I’ve experienced time and time again it is not simply category that defines a popular social destination. Not really — it’s the community. And in a blog’s case, the writer’s voice defines that, being within a category is pretty meaningless on its own.
A blog’s voice and personality are what matters most to readers. It’s the people, the writers that make a blog successful. Niche really doesn’t matter that much when it comes to a successful blogging formula. In the post Adam highlights another successful marketer and how he told his clients not to worry about what niche they blog in – focus on how to develop a voice people will want to interact with and read. That is the key to success with a blog.
Developing Voice and Personality
Thinking of starting a business blog?
What readers want is someone to interpret things for them. People are looking for an approachable person they can connect with and interact with. This means someone who speaks their language and who answers their questions in comments. Developing a voice is needed for your business blog to be successful.
Developing a voice will take time. Your voice likely won’t be recognizable immediately from the first post…unless you’ve developed a personality through other channels previously. If a blog is your first introduction to potential clients you’ll need to earn their respect and friendship in the form of the community on your blog and site.
Conclusion
It doesn’t really matter much what industry or niche you’re in. You can be successful with just about any focus or topic. I will concede that there needs to be enough interest in a niche to make it worth your while. At least somebody has to be interested if you want to blog about the mating habits of rain forest beetles in South America.
What matters once you know there is interest in your niche is your voice. Develop a personality your potential customers will want to interact with. Be approachable. Be knowledgeable. Be interesting. This is what matters for a successful business blog.
As you can see from the polling results above – readers want a distinctive voice.
Lion Roar image courtesy of SMercury98