Five Tips to Help You Decide How Much of YOU Should Show Up in Your Blog

I often recommend Cheryl Pickett's books to friends and clients who write. Today she is helping me fill some blog time I am taking off for writing and inspiration.  That's what friends are for, right?  So...do you know what TMI is?  Keep reading!

How Much is Too Much?
5 Tips to Help You Decide How Much of You Should Show Up in Your Blog



1. The first thing to remember is your blog is yours. There are no editors involved, so it will be whatever you create good, bad or ugly. You will write for yourself to a point, but if you're blogging for business, your biggest influence will be the response of your reader to what you put out there; and part of what you present will be bits of yourself.

2. Plenty of blogs talk about needing to clean up dust bunnies, favorite music, the latest weather or dating exploits. If your reason for writing is for fun or to have an online journal to share with family and friends, posting like that regularly makes sense. However, if you're blogging to build an audience, to display your expertise and generate traffic around what you do, then those types of personal details obviously won't be your focus.
3. It isn't necessary to ignore personal details altogether though. Especially if you are a solo-preneur, it's a good idea to let your audience get to know you as a person. People relate to people, not pages. Mentioning a major event in your life i.e. a wedding, birth, serious illness, allows readers to celebrate or empathize with you and to see you in multi-dimensions. This is particularly true if your business involves relating to people on a day-to-day basis such as coaching or any other service business. As you talk about yourself from time to time, stay away from the mundane and you'll be safe.
4. You can also interject your personality without giving a ton of personal details. Just as each of us speaks differently than another, once you start posting regularly, you'll develop a writing voice as well. If yours doesn't flow out right away, don't worry. Relax into your writing, treat it as you are talking with a friend or client and it will come.

In addition, if you think of yourself as a teacher, or as simply being in a conversation with your readers, you'll write in first person, but not about yourself, if you don't choose to.

4. If you have a blog to enhance your business, it's always good to keep a close watch on what you say and reveal. You never know who could be reading and what they might do with the information for good or bad. Find the happy balance between sharing nothing personal and TMI (too much information) and your readers will come back for more.

Today's guest blogger is Cheryl Pickett, Cheryl has been writing articles, blogs and books for well over a decade. Her current mission is to help message driven entrepreneurs, authors and other thought leaders create their own compelling content. If you would like more tips and hints like these, please visit http://www.cherylpickett.com/  http://www.publishinganswers.com/  or feel free to stop by her Facebook "Like"  page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Cheryl-Pickett/138168989570843











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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog: