American entrepreneur and economist Seth Godin believes that every modern person should blog every day, even if no one reads. A personal blog helps to structure thoughts, to live experience more effectively. The blog preserves in itself the personal history of each of us and the history of our time as a whole.
How to define your personal blog comfort zone
To start a personal blog, you need to find your comfort zone, which is determined by
- The degree and quality of your openness,
- Interests of the audience,
- The boundaries of someone else's privacy.
A common question that aspiring bloggers ask is how frank do you need to be on your blog? What can you write about, what can you not? The question is especially acute if the blog is open to the public.
There can be no unequivocal answer to this question. Each blogger defines the boundaries of his frankness himself. It is unacceptable for someone to discuss personal relationships, while someone calmly talks about them with their audience. Many blogging mothers do not like to show their children, this is also a personal right of everyone. Others, on the contrary, both show and talk about children. Define yourself the zone of your intimate, which you do not want to share with the general public, and bypass these topics in your blog.
On the material that you are ready to tell about yourself, you need to look for points of contact with your audience. Before starting your personal blog, imagine your ideal reader: Who are you writing for? With whom do you want to share your thoughts, observations, events? Who is this person, what is he interested in, what is his character and level of income, what are his hobbies and interests? Imagine it in detail, as if you see a friend or friend in front of you. Write in such a way that this person is interested in what and how you write.
When you write a personal blog, you need to keep someone else's privacy in mind. Sometimes we all want to share some events that other people are woven into. This happens not only in blogging, but also in everyday life. However, be aware of ethical considerations. Either exclude details about other people from your stories, or - even better - align your text with them. The world is small, we must remember that our freedom ends where the freedom of another person begins.
How to choose what to write about on your personal blog
To choose what to blog about, ask yourself a few questions.
What happened today? Scroll through the events of the day in your memory, evaluate how important they were to you, hooked you emotionally. Write about them.
Why would people know this? Think about your audience: what exactly about what you want to tell will hook them? What experience, information will people be able to draw from your post? Choose a perspective to describe the event that will be of interest to both you and your audience.
Am I willing to stand up for my words? When you run a personal blog, you will not only encounter positive reviews, but also criticism. Are you ready for people to criticize your post? Are you ready to defend your position, your words and your life? If yes - write. If not, stop on another topic for the post.
Do I want to remember this? Write about what is important for you to remember. For yourself or for posterity. If this is a negative event, what would you like to think about when you remember it in the future?
What is the best way to convey my thoughts and stories to people? When running a personal blog, you shouldn't be limited to text. Engage photo and video content, record audio messages for your audience. Use all kinds of means to make it easier for people to understand you and feel your story.
How to choose a site for your personal blog
If you want to get started quickly without bothering too much, look for ready-made sites for blogs. For example, LiveJournal or Tumblr.
If you want to get serious about the issue, you already have a blog concept, ideas for categories and posts, then create your own website, register a domain name and use platforms such as WordPress or Vigbo.
If you want to be trendy, create a Telegram channel. The possibilities for designing and managing a blog there are limited, but the entire advanced public is now flocking to this site.
If you're not sure if you need a blog, start writing on social media. This is the easiest thing to do. You already have an audience, you know many of them personally, your posts will not be something out of the ordinary. Social networks are less demanding in terms of quality and length of posts. Suitable for testing the pen.
Happy blogging!
