How To Develop Your Own Unique Blogging Voice
Written by Casey Botticello
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Bloggers depend on standing out from everybody else. Some bloggers use impressive site design. Others count on videos, audio and stunning graphics to bring them exposure. But no matter their secret weapon, all bloggers have to find and then use the one thing that truly makes them different – their voice.
Figuring out how to develop your own unique blogging voice allows you to forge an identity online – and to be noticeably identifiable – not just to your readers but to Google too. Crafting and growing your brand depends on getting people to hear your blogging voice. So how do we do it?
The more unique, authentic, and original you are, the more likely people will be to discover you and your blog. And the more people sit up and take note, the better you’re likely to do. But while influencers, social media gurus, and small-scale celebrities have their own tools (and, in some cases, entire PR teams) to showcase their individualism, bloggers can only do so through their content.
We check out the challenges, steps, and tips behind how to develop your own unique blogging voice. Join us as we dive into the ins and outs of getting your blogging voice right and giving your blog the powerful advantages that come with infusing passion, personality, and original essence into your content.
What is Your Blog’s Voice?
Your blogging voice reflects your character. It represents your personality and gives your content a more ‘human’ touch. A clear blogger voice allows you to connect with your audience. It helps you convey your message in the way you want to. Finding your blogging voice helps to establish pace and intensity and to develop the temperament and nature of your written content.
Why finding your blogging voice is so important
A good blogging voice allows you to convey your passion for the topic. It communicates your enthusiasm for what you’re talking about and the authority and confidence you have in your knowledge. Your blog’s voice lets people in on your values and beliefs. It represents you, your brand, and your blog. It is an essential part of how you want people to perceive how you view the world.
Voice and your blog
Learning how to develop your own unique blogging voice and then defining it. It evolves by itself and relies on myriad other factors, influences, and elements to emerge before becoming established. But blogging voice is almost always distinctive and exclusive to the blogger. And that’s what makes it so important – a blogger’s voice is unique.
Blogging Tone vs. Blogging Style
Blogging voice is different from the other elements that make your blog unique. Aspects like language, style, and tone are fixed – boxed into categories that you can pick and choose from. Bringing these blogging elements together in different combinations helps you to develop and define your blog’s unique brand appeal. And your blogging voice ties everything together.
But many people confuse blogger voice with the other elements of their content. This can have detrimental consequences to formulating a voice that works for you. Let’s look at how they’re different.
Blogging Tone – Reflects emotion & attitude
The tone we use for our writing helps convey the attitude we want to take into the content. Tone is a subset of voice and adds ‘flavor’ and emotion to your content.
Content tone usually reflects the audience’s desires as well as the purpose for which it was created. The tone of your writing should be able to change from post to post, representing each piece of content and adding depth to the voice. Tone can even vary within each piece of content, shifting and switching where needed to help develop the emotional intention.
Some examples of tone (and their counterparts) include:
- Objective vs. subjective
- Funny vs. serious
- Conversational vs. official
Blogging Style – Reflects blog formality & structure
If tone adds to your blog’s voice by providing the flavor, feel, and mood of your content, then style helps us to define how content is structured and laid out. Style represents the way we write, influencing the reader’s impression, impacting blog format, and controlling how they consume the content.
Style requires consideration before and during the writing process. Consistency in content style is important, and readers rely on a clearly defined style to navigate your content, perceiving tone and, ultimately, voice, once they’re through reading.
Style is what we use to achieve a desired tone and involves:
- Word choice, blog length, and language
- Sentence structure, complexity, and length
- Grammar and vocabulary usage
As you can see, both style and tone determine how your blog’s voice evolves. Where style represents “what” you say, tone determines “how” you’re saying it. Tone is perceived by readers, while style is pre-defined by the writer. Together, these help you to construct content in a way that reflects your voice clearly and effectively.
Steps for How to Develop Your Unique Blogging Voice
Understanding how to develop a blogging voice that genuinely reflects who you are and conveys your character as a blogger is essential to succeeding online. Aside from connecting with and appealing to the people who visit your blog, you’ll soon enjoy improved traffic. As a result, better rankings and a more loyal following will follow.
First, find your voice
Think about how people perceive how you communicate verbally or over the phone. Are you lively, excitable and enthusiastic, or more subdued, reactive, and rational? The first step in finding your blogging voice is to define your own – as a person.
1. Recognize Your Personal Voice
Now, your blogger voice doesn’t need to align fully with your personal voice. Depending on your blog niche, audience preferences, and content distribution channels, your blogging voice may need to be a toned-down version of your own or charged up and energized.
2. Look at Your Beliefs and Values
Consider your beliefs and values, your morals, personal truths, and important virtues. Look at what appeals to you and what you’re not interested in. Think about what you’re most passionate about and what your goals are as a blogger. Draw up a list of the virtues and features that make you, well, you. Then look at what you think your blogging voice should have to reflect that best.
3. Align Your “Voices”
Try to align and match the elements of your own voice that you want your blog’s voice to reflect. Identify the voice characteristics that may need more focus and effort to better develop or flag the aspects you feel should be left out.
Then, connect with the audience
Next, you’ll want to think about what your audience wants to hear. This is where your tone choices come in. Know your niche, look at their preferences, tastes, and needs, and work on gaining a deeper understanding of what they’ll connect with the most.
4. Define Your Blog Niche & What They Want
Choosing a niche is important. But every niche has different needs, desires, and characteristics. Some niches are home to many different sub-niches and demographics, while others cater only to specific groups with strict defining features. Look at your niche’s demographics and metrics. Try to drill down into the details and work to figure out what they want to hear from you – and how they want to hear it.
5. Find Out What Language the Audience Speaks
Validating your niche is essential to nailing down what it is that makes them tick. By learning about their dreams, problems, and needs, you’ll soon develop a clearer picture of who they are – on a ‘people’ level. Explore your audience’s language preferences here. Consider what is acceptable and what isn’t on the vernacular front and try to incorporate the general ‘speak’ of the niche itself.
6. Develop a Blog Tone “Menu”
As you develop a better understanding of your niche, so too will you begin to develop a list of the tone options that you have available. By mixing and matching your tone choices across different posts and content formats, your blog’s voice will slowly but surely begin to align with your audience’s tastes.
Develop an editorial guide around your voice
With varying tone options, deviating from the right style can be tempting, weakening your voice. An editorial content guide is a useful tool for helping you maintain your content style consistency and is ideal for bringing anyone joining your brand up to speed regarding how to develop your own unique blogging voice.
7. Align the Editorial Guide to Reflect Your Blogging Voice
Keep your blogger voice goals central to your guide. Clearly state what your voice should look like and provide context and examples where necessary. Your editorial content guide is an important resource that should be well-maintained and reflect your blog’s character.
8. Describe Your Blog Tones, Language, and Structure Clearly
Developing an editorial guide involves many different components and sections. So ensure that the ones that influence your blog’s voice – like tones, language, style, and structure – are prioritized and clearly defined. Don’t be vague. Explicitly indicate how these elements should look and interact.
9. Provide Insight and Context
Use your guide to record your feelings and ideas around your voice. Keep notes and jot down thoughts related to your voice vision to ensure you have a repository of blogging voice directives and records. As you refer back to the editorial guide during writing for direction, you’ll find these contextual notes and ideas pretty insightful.
Choose your voice
Now that you have a good understanding of how your own voice sounds and what your audience is most keen to hear, you can begin finding your blogging voice and one that works best for you and your blog. Using your editorial guide as a reference, start drafting in the voice you believe best represents the one you’re after.
10. Experiment and Test Your Blogging Voice
The best way to find the best option is to experiment. Roll on with the most successful results and eliminate the ones that don’t work too well. Draft a couple of test posts in varying voices and review them compared to each other. Repeat and repeat again until you start to recognize the blogging voice variations that sound right.
11. Get Multiple Perspectives on Your Blogging Voice
Ask others what they think about your voice choices. Reach out to followers and readers, even friends and family, and ask their honest opinions on the voice they feel best suits you and your blog. Don’t take negative criticisms too personally; they’re doing you a big favor.
12. Select Your Blogging Voice
After testing, getting feedback, and slimming down your list of voice variations, you should have a solid shortlist. You don’t need to pick one single voice just yet. Instead, take the top contenders and start trialing them. Work with the ones that gain the most traction, and don’t be afraid to tweak things as you go.
Avoid losing your voice
Bloggers can sometimes find themselves struggling to stay true to their blog’s voice, drifting away from their founding principles and values and tempted to change things up. Remember that finding and developing your blog’s voice is a process that takes time and patience.
13. Amplify Your Voice
Make your voice loud enough so that people remember who you are and what your content represents. Stay loyal to your blogger voice and find ways to proudly express your passion and ideas in the ways you know will have the greatest impact.
14. Stay True to Your Values and Beliefs
Don’t deviate from the things you know to be your core virtues. Drifting away from your voice will only confuse and alienate your followers, and there is a high risk of this having a detrimental impact on your blog SEO. Refer to your voice’s core principles, and you’ll be OK.
15. Don’t Be Afraid of Evolving Your Voice, but Don’t Stray Too Far
Every now and again, review your voice to ensure it’s still performing the same role which you intended – especially if you’re thinking of repurposing old blog content. Your voice will grow and evolve naturally, but if you feel the urge to help it in a slightly different direction, go for it, but don’t depart too far from your original style, rhythm, flow, and feel.
Conclusion
Every person has their own voice – their unique, authentic way of saying things. And while some people try to replicate or copy how others speak, there is no better way to say who you are than by ensuring you’re using your own voice to say it.
How to develop your own unique blogging voice that perfectly reflects who you are as a blogger isn’t easy. With hordes of other content creators, all looking to do the same thing, getting your blog’s voice heard can be difficult unless you know exactly how to develop it into something truly unique.
Remember, you want your blogging voice to have character and personality and to help readers understand who you are as a creator, a blogger, and a person.
Be consistent, write with truth, believe in your blogger voice, and express your confidence. Bloggers who can clearly convey themselves and their ideas in their voice are the ones whose posts everybody enjoys reading. Because without a compelling, powerful voice, you’re just another post on the internet, another face in the crowd.
Find your blogging voice and use it.
