When you read anything, you go on a journey with the words that the author presents for you; you hear that author’s “voice”. It’s the same when a person reads one of your blog posts: that reader should hear your voice.

There is nothing more confusing than when a blogger writes a post pushing a product in a selling voice one day, and a post about his experiences with Google in a storytelling voice the next. Every post you write should reflect your voice. If you let the type of post you are writing dictate your voice, how will your readers know who you are?

Defining your writing voice takes time and effort; you can’t simply fall into it. You need to be able to write clearly because the real selling point of your blog is you. Whatever you are preaching or selling is secondary to the voice your readers hear. Here are a few examples of different types of voices out there:

The happy voice

Many writers use excessive friendliness as a tool to win readers over. One of my pet hates is impulsively cheery bloggers. They’re the people who thank every person who makes a comment, and use excessive exclamation marks in their copy. They say things like, “I love my readers, you guys are great,” at every opportunity.

This technique works though. You see it a lot on MyLot and certain blogs. Being agreeable is a technique used by many bloggers. Amazingly, their readers react and respond in the same cheery manner. It can be like watching an episode of The Brady Bunch, but it has been proven to work. The best nice-guy blogger I’m reading at the moment is Ben Cook. He does an excellent job with his writing voice and he has achieved great success already.

Although I usually don’t enjoy “happy bloggers”, I make Blogging Experiment one of my daily reads because it’s interesting to see how Ben writes and builds up his readership.

The aggressive voice

Some bloggers write aggressively. Everything is a hard sell and everything is written promoting the best software or the best technique to make money blogging. Aggressive bloggers will tell you they are the best and tell you that everybody else is insignificant.

While it isn’t the only way to make money, aggressive blogging can work because it’s a way to sell something. The problem comes when the blogger’s voice becomes little more than ad copy one day, while offering you great tips the next. How can you trust a blogger who writes so inconsistently? Aggressive bloggers write on the basis that people forget anything not on the front page. I disagree: several blogs have already killed their blogging voice by writing in and out of character from one day to the next.

The people’s voice

This where I put people like Darren Rowse. You always feel like Darren is on your side and that it’s genuine. He writes for his readers, never aggressively, but always with the authority that comes with being an expert in his field. This is a position that few bloggers will ever find themselves in.

Darren has almost 35,000 RSS subscribers because he is good at what he does and people like him. The difference between Darren’s style and that of a “happy blogger” is that Darren’s voice is effortless to read. You read it as if you are talking to your neighbor over the fence. That’s a difficult style to achieve.

The knowledgeable voice

I read Dosh Dosh several times a week because Maki never alters his style. He writes with authority in every post. When you visit Dosh Dosh, you know exactly what you are getting: straight up facts. To emulate this style to any degree of success requires knowledge.

Maki goes to great lengths to make his posts definitive resources for certain topics. There are no shortcuts with that type of blogging, and while it isn’t the most personal approach, if you know what you are talking about then your blog will become a reference for other people.

Let your voice flow

Your own blogging voice will come once you get comfortable with writing. It takes time to learn how to write well. Bad grammar and syntax is one way to distort your voice. Pay attention to what you’re writing, read it through at least once and use your spellchecker.

Tags: Around the web by Angel
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For the bloggers out there like me who have quite busy lives, blogging every day can be almost impossible. As an example, at the moment, the island I live on in Thailand (Phuket) is celebrating a 10-day vegetarian festival. I’ve been attending the festival early in the morning and late at night, before and after work, almost every day recently because it’s like nothing I have ever seen before. To give you an example, here’s one of my photos from the festival.

What you can see there is a group of men hitting themselves with axes and swords. This past week, I’ve seen men and women slice their own tongues with axes, pierce their cheeks with swords, blades and all manner of objects, bathe in hot oil, run across fire, and climb ladders with bladed rungs. These brutal, self-torturous acts are said to bring luck on the community. I have some horrifically-graphic images I could post, but then I run the risk of losing all my squeamish readers.

This festival has been taking up all of my time, and therefore my blogging schedule has been sporadic. I made the decision then to remove the date from all of my blog posts. I did this because when I visit a blog, if I see there is a gap in between posting, it makes me wonder why. Also, if I see a gap on one of my regular reads, it makes me question the blogger, even though I know that such gaps are inevitable.

Removing the date from all posts means that when a new reader arrives at my blog, the latest post is always “new”. It also makes gaps between posting more difficult to spot. Ideally, I try and blog every day, but this isn’t always possible. Removing the date was as simple as going into the “index” and “single” files of my theme and editing the code.

Now every post reads, “Posted by Angel” with no reference to when my post was written. A lot of bloggers use this technique if they can’t post every day. Let’s face it, what does it matter when a post was written if it contains good content? Not all readers will see that logic though. Readers can be demanding. They want daily posts and they want regularly updated blogs.

Have you ever considered making your blog timeless?

Tags: Tips and tricks by Angel
6 Comments »

Your headline is your hook. It’s the first thing you’re readers will see and it’s the first point at which they will decide to carry on reading or not. Interest them and they will hang off your every word, but confuse them, bore them, make them indifferent – then you might lose them for good.

When you write a headline, you want to lure a reader into the story. If your headline is too bland, the reader will likely assume the story is just as boring and move onto another post or, worse still, another blog.

Deliver the goods

Short, snappy headlines always work over something long and drawn out. One common annoyance that even the pro bloggers are guilty of from time to time is writing misleading headlines. If you promise one thing and deliver another, no matter how good your post is, the reader already has one hurdle to overcome. You want to reading process to be as fluid as possible.

Keep to the point

You shouldn’t need to explain your headline. I detest headlines that use quirky facts, such as, “Cows have five brains,” and then lead into the post saying something like, “We aren’t luck enough to have five brains, but here’s a way to make money blogging.” It’s an ugly trick that copywriters use sometimes.

List ‘em up

The easiest posts to write headlines for are lists. You can write “My top 10 Wordpress plugins” or “My top five reasons for leaving a blog” and the reader then knows exactly what to expect in the post. If you know your audience and have written something they will be interested in, then you don’t need a fancy headline. Writing a headline telling people, “How to…” is also a good way to draw attention to a strong blog post. “How to make money blogging” is one example.

News headlines for news stories

As a journalist, I like to read news headlines, but obviously these should be reserved for news pieces. “Yahoo unveils Google-destroying service”, for example. When writing a news headline, you need a verb in there to give the story a sense of action and, well, news.

This ain’t War and Peace

Some bloggers try and get a bit abstract with their headlines. For a novel, a thesis or a poem, that’s great, but there’s no need to get too deep with your blog posts.

Pose a question

One of my favorite techniques for writing headlines on blog posts is to ask a question, such as, “Is Google under attack?” Asking a question makes the reader become involved in the story even before he or she has started reading it. If you ask a question that your readers can answer or can relate to, then you’ve got them.

Claim your position

As a reader, one of the most eye-catching type of headlines reads something like, “How I made $100,000 blogging about cherry blossom.” If you tailor such a claim to your audience and to the topic you write about, you will get people interested. Make sure you can back your claim up though, because there is nothing worse than an unfulfilled promise.

Call to action

If you have a product you want people to sign up for or a website you want people to visit, calling your readers to action in the headline is an effective technique. You could say something like, “Sign up for Pay Per Post and make $20 with your first post.” I tend to avoid blog posts that have overly aggressive calls to action because they come across as being pushy. Your readers will ask, “What’s in it for me?”, when you call them to action.

The knack of writing headlines is something that comes with practice. Read other blogs and decide which headlines make you interested and what make you think “meh”.

Tags: Tips and tricks by Angel
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