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Get Blogging Voice: Part I

06/10/2013 By Jayme Soulati

tongue.jpgJust how does one find blogging voice?

The answer is…elusive! Not sure there is a solid answer, but at the bottom of this article we ought to have a much better understanding of what the hoopla is about a vlogger’s voice.

Omgosh.

When I typed “blogger” in the last sentence, it came up “vlogger,” and I am so grateful that happened whilst sitting in the middle seat in a full airplane cabin pecking letters one by one because the batteries died in my iPad keyboard.

So, instead of using merely a blogger to understand voice, let’s first explore the world of vlogging as it relates to that. Video blogging is so much more visual which makes it easier to illustrate the concept of voice.

What is Voice? Examining Voice and Vlogging

What is your impression watching peeps on camera?

It’s pretty painful sometimes, right? When a vlogger has to look at the camera without furtive eyes or naturally down-turned mouth (without a smile), it is difficult to make great video.

Now think of the words delivered during a video blog.

  • Are you following along and listening?
  • Is that blogger making a connection with you?
  • Are they droning on and on without coming quickly to a point?
  • Did they tick off an agenda or a bulleted list of items they’d cover in their piece?
    How about tone? When someone speaks, it’s normal to listen for inflection and excitement and authority. Is the tone of that vlogger credible? Do they take command of their subject matter and do you believe what you hear?

Exercise 1: How to Identify Others’ Voice on Video

Run and get a video blog you recently watched; I’ll wait. Spend two minutes only re-watching the vlog and pay careful attention; no multi-tasking!

In your head, jot down your impression of clarity, confidence, body language, tone, personality, credibility. Don’t worry, you’ll notice these automagically now that you’re looking and listening more closely.

In a recent vlog I saw, unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the end and here’s why:

• The person was forced and lacked personality.
• S/he was cracking jokes that were not funny, and the content was subpar.
• It was a sorry attempt at connecting with community using a medium that appeared uncomfortable for him/her.

Let’s revisit some of the factors that make a video blog successful:

• Tone
• Facial expression
• Personality
• Connection with audience
• Command of authority
• Believability

When you add all of the above together with high marks, what you get is a masterful vlogger. Yet, it takes time and practice!

No one can master being on camera unless they are trained broadcasters (who daily practice news delivery prior to going on camera).

Think of Anderson Cooper next to David Letterman. That provides an awesome dichotomy, doesn’t it? The two can’t be farther apart in personality and tone yet they command respect, authority and attention.

Understanding Your Blogging Voice

Are you starting to get the picture of how we’re going to segue into blogging voice?

Many bloggers experience months and months of blogging only to feel a lack of connection with HOW they write. When you read a blogger using English as a second language, the content is often stilted and word choice is sometimes stark. There isn’t naturalness to the flow of the article, and it takes the reader more time to connect with the writer.

This is not a criticism in the least, it’s merely an observation about how those words jump from the screen and in what tone and fashion. It’s how the reader connects with the writer that makes voice come alive.

Blogging voice is extremely different than journalistic voice or that of an author of romance novels. When bloggers write, there is more usage of the first person. Some new bloggers feel compelled to thread the word “I” throughout writings thinking perhaps that writing in the first person is more personable. In one opinion, it’s more egocentric and boorish.

Bloggers who have “found their voice” seem to fit right into an easy presence and comfort in their blogging skin without too much toil.

Here’s how you get to find your voice:

Establish Goals

When you start blogging, you need to set goals for yourself and the blog.

  • Do you want to build community and subscribers?
  • Do you wish to be an influencer or thought leader?
  • How about being the leading blogger in a genre or category like a parent blogger?

The goals you set drive how you write and thus your voice. If your goal is to sell diapers to moms, then you will need to command authority and then add a sales bent to that voice. Right?

Example of a Mommy Blogger Selling Diapers
Yesterday, I tried the new brand of diaper, called Baby Undies, on my infant daughter and learned the hard way that pretty packaging doesn’t mean better-quality diapers! (I think I’m going to stick to my favorite brand, Diaper G, instead!)

Tone: Personable and friendly

Credible: She experienced a negative event and is warning other moms not to buy that brand

Soft sell: She’s sharing a factual event and encouraging her community to follow her advice

Be Consistent. It takes 12 months of posting about three times a week to find comfort with your online presence. If blogging is your profession, in that 12- month timeframe you most likely have accomplished a few goals and have already switched it up a few times. If blogging is your hobby, then 12 months may be when you see a few milestones happen, and you grow from there.

Know Your Audience

Who is reading your blog? Better yet, who do you want to read your blog? If you are an online educator for home-school kids in fifth grade, your voice will be friendly, informal, conversational, yet authoritative and credible. Your audience is also the home-school parents who duel as teachers.

If you’re the pastor of a community church, blogging voice is going to be oriented to inspiring families to volunteer, tithe and attend church. That pastor blogger will walk a fine line between creating community, encouragement and being a leader.

Understanding your audience who is or may be reading your blog is critical to finding your voice. You will write more powerfully instead of in a meandering way. You will connect with them to attain your goals each time you write. You’ll think of what they want to hear and write with that purpose.

Think About Buyer Persona.

Have you ever heard of a buyer persona? At first, I thought it silly, but after really thinking hard about who buys my services, I could picture that person reading my blog. ‘

My blog articles began to take on a more professional tone to address some common marketing issues in companies.

My voice amplified confidence in my subject matter, and I felt a connection to the person I’d like to have visiting my blog.

This has contributed to a good feeling about my writing, defined my blogging purpose, which ultimately contributes to my voice.

Exercise 2: Start to Identify Your Own Voice

How and where you find blogging inspiration for writing fodder is a topic for another day. For the purpose of this exercise, select a topic you’d like to write about. Perhaps you’re a master gardener with a blogging goal to enroll people in your master gardening classes so they can earn their certificate and join your ranks. (Can you recognize the blogging goals in that last sentence?)

How will you write? With purpose!

Your words need to be visual and help the reader connect with your passion about gardening. Do you sense the personalization that has to come across in blogging? Your passion must be apparent; if you write with dryness you will not connect with your audience. Passion for our topic begets connection with your audience.
Ever read the children’s books Fancy Nancy? Certainly, the illustrator made those books but she had to have the words as inspiration. It was a team effort, for sure. Your words need to inspire anyone with the hint of a green thumb that they can become a master gardener just like you.

Your plot of land becomes your canvas to create a breezy, flowy, rainbow garden that brings a gasp of visual pleasure with butterfly wings a flutter.

How did that sentence grab you? I hope it created a bit of a visual…don’t butterflies always do that? Notice the word choices that are lighter and more creative with visual appeal. Try to put more of these types of words in your writings and loosen up. Quit being so stilted. A blogger with voice is comfortable with self first and that confidence helps portray authority.

This post originally appeared on the Shareaholic blog Feb. 28, 2013.

 

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Filed Under: Blogging 101 Tagged With: Blog, blogger, finding voice, Social Media, Video blog, Video blogging

Streamlining Blogger Outreach With Inkybee

02/12/2013 By Jayme Soulati

inkybeeIt’s getting harder and harder for media relations practitioners to earn stories. There is a depletion of journos at print and broadcast outlets, and social media has altered forever the course of media relations.

Where are publicity hungry professionals turning to secure “ink” for their clients?

To Bloggers.

Blogger Outreach

There’s something agencies do called blogger outreach. It’s quite similar to media relations only it’s done with bloggers who may also have a background in public relations. When I get a pitch from a peer blogger, I typically find a way to work the content in to my blog IF it’s relevant.

Gini Dietrich went on a rant yesterday right here on Spin Sucks about how she hates PR people and provided seven tips on how to pitch bloggers better. She’s a PR pro (and I am, too), so that means she gets to say she hates her peers.

What Hugh Anderson of Forth Metrics in the U.K. has been doing is writing a few e-books and great blog posts about blogger relations/outreach. He and his team have made it a topic of choice; so much so that they made a huge announcement late last week about a new platform for blogger outreach two years in the making.

Inkybee

I jumped on the beta of Inkybee to see what his fuss was about, and I stuck around. You know a beta is great when you keep jumping from one section of the platform to the next to poke holes and try to break it. There wasn’t much broken, but I still had questions, so Hugh and I Skyped on Friday so I could get in his head a bit more.

Here’s the gist:

Inkybee is for PR pros doing blogger outreach. You enter in key words and wait for InkyBee to churn the blogs that include your key words in the category you’re seeking. I put in social media just to see if my peer group popped up; more than 1900 blogs were returned via a ranking algorithm to my email box. It wasn’t right away, but I was very impressed with the list.

When you open the home page, you’ll find great tutorials on how to navigate and use the site. The best personal touch is that InkyBee uses personalized sticky notes throughout navigation to share instruction. There are also links to both of the Inkybee blogger outreach ebooks; one of them I already downloaded, and it’s full of testimonials from the field’s leaders – one of them Ms. Dietrich herself.

The lists are awesome and really push you quickly into the task of identifying bloggers with keywords you want in your outreach and even those you’d like to look at for guest posting and business development.

When setting up a campaign, you can track and measure; this step I’ll reserve until I have an active campaign to test.

As with anything just entering beta, there are kinks to work out; I’d say, though, that Inkybee already looks polished, clean and impressive. I encourage each of you to take up the call and sign on to the free beta right now.

Anyone who has tested a product, service or online tool knows it can only get better with real-time feedback. Won’t you please lend yours?

 

 

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Filed Under: Media Relations, Public Relations Tagged With: Blog, blogger, Forth Metrics, Gini Dietrich, Inkybee, Media Relations, Outreach, Public Relations, Social Media

Little Bloggers Rule

09/19/2012 By Jayme Soulati

I’m pointing a finger at , the CEO of Feedblitz, with whom I’ve become so very acquainted over these last 10 days since I decided to .

I wrote a blog post on my experience (link above), and Phil alongside my good friends and . No one would argue these two are short of A-listers (because all the A-listers fully deny they’re anything at all related to such a moniker).

What Phil said in his case study about my blog is that I am a “little known blogger.” (He said after that he should have said, “little known to him.”) No worries, Phil!  I happen to know that my blog post  about Feedblitz has influenced no less than six migrations to your Feedblitz service and about four (that I’m aware of).

Now, mind you, I was not influenced by Danny Brown’s post to migrate to Feedblitz. I had seen it, but the email marketing campaign Feedblitz sent to me worked.

And, I do agree with you, Phil…in some regard…I’m a little blogger, but not little-known, at least in social media circles.

Not So Good Little Blogger Facts

  • This blog has few to no subscribers. Subscribers are NOT one of my metrics for blogging success. (Well, OK, that’s really lame; I ‘m gonna work on that!)
  • There is no newsletter. Not for lack of interest; it’s for lack of time.
  • The RSS feed I had was really just for my daily blog post, and I never knew how to use it. (Now, Feedblitz can share all my content from two blogs, comments elsewhere, tweets, Facebook posts, and more.)

 Awesome Little Blogger Facts

  • #RockHot community with comments that are so in-depth and insightful they can become blog posts on their own.
  • Readers who lurk, like and tweet about what they see.
  • Positive commentary everywhere that shows my content sings (based on what people tell me).
  • Passion about topics, profession, teachings, sharing, engaging, and so much more.
  • More than 2.5 years blogging and a year blogging on another blog.
  • Contribution to the future of blogging that no one can deny.
  • Consistent growth with tweaks and tech that help nurture newbie bloggers (because there is always someone newer).
  • Mentorship of little bloggers and encouragement to stay the course.

So, Phil, and everyone else who regards subscribers as the best metric (especially when you make money off subscribers, I get that), it’s not always about the analytics. Although, would call me stupid for not putting that on top of the heap.

  • Bloggers have goals.
  • Stick to yours.
  • Publish genuine, authoritative and authentic content consistently.

One day we all will be that not-A-Lister blogger who got a start somewhere.

Filed Under: Blogging 101 Tagged With: blogger, Blogging, Feedblitz, Feedburner, RSS

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