Here’s Part 2 of my first series: How to get noticed online.
Today’s tip isn’t necessarily going to bring you a lot of traffic, but instead will keep whatever traffic you already have coming back. This is essential to your blogging career because without readers always checking back, it is very difficult to maintain enough traffic and enough income.

So, part 2 of getting noticed: Be Yourself.
It is human instinct to want to interact with people. That’s a fact. If your writing makes you sound ‘robotic’ or ‘unreal’ people won’t want to keep reading. When you’re writing, it has to sound like you’re having a conversation with each and every reader. If you can’t maintain this conversation-like mood, people will get bored and leave.

So naturally, the first step we must take to be ourselves is to write about topics we truly enjoy. If you are writing about something that has little or no interest to you, it will most likely not have any interest for the reader. Here’s some pointers:
-Be passionate about what you write.
-Show off what you know about your topics
-Always ask for reader feedback so you can get the other point of view.

I want to discuss one of the points above: Be passionate about what you write. If you can’t do this, you won’t ever reach the main objective; being yourself. When I say passion, I mean that you pour everything out of your heart into what you’re writing. You strive to make it as good as it can possibly be. You revise, you retype, you do everything in your power to make your writing reflect what you truly believe in. If you are passionate about your writing, you readers will become interested but more importantly keep checking back to your site to read anything new you write. These “repeat-readers” are what keep your blog growing.

Another of the points I want to briefly discuss is about asking for reader feedback. Mainly this keeps readers engaged in your writing and makes them think about the different points you are making. If they are thinking, they are interested. If they are interested, they will keep coming back. Also, on the more obvious side, reader feedback allows you to see what other people’s opinions are. Sometimes as writers we have a natural tendency to want to try and please everyone. It’s essential that you don’t do this. The whole point of blogging is to state opinions with a few facts to back yourself up. Every opinion has an opposite view, so if people aren’t disagreeing with what you write, you are probably doing something wrong.

So you have just read a couple tips on how to be yourself in your writing. Well, I’ll be the first to admit that it is much easier said than done. Most writers fall into one of two scenarios:
1. They aren’t themselves, thus boring the reader which makes readers want to leave. This is probably one of the most common mistakes I’ve seen. Statistically, most bloggers quit after the first few months.
2. The writer focuses too much on sounding “good” and comes off as being a ‘yes-man’; someone who agrees with everyone just to be liked.
If you ever find yourself falling into one of those scenarios, you may want to think about what you’re doing wrong and think about what I’ve told you to do. Hopefully, with some careful planning and good luck, you can dig yourself out of a hole and get back on your feet.

The last thing I’ll talk about today is style.
No, I’m not talking about your fashion sense; I’m talking about developing your own unique writing style. Most writers don’t even realize that they have a style. This is because when they write, everything flows and feels natural. It is these writers and bloggers who are successful. When they develop a style, people become engaged in what they have to say. Readers can feel like they’re having a conversation with the writer.

Having a good writing style is absolutely critical to develop when blogging. Without it, you will either lose interest in your own work, or readers will lose interest in you. We don’t want that to happen. The key to getting your own style is to just make things sound natural to you. Write the way you would talk. Of course in today’s society, our language is being lost to grammar slurs like saying ‘cuz’ instead of ‘because’. So, of course, don’t write exactly like you would talk. Otherwise you could come off as being uneducated and not being very intelligent (sort of ironic I think). So write in such a way that it feels natural, but remember grammar and proper capitalization, punctuation, etc. If you can successfully do this, you will develop a style whether you realize it or not.

This concludes part 2 of my series: 5 Tips On How To Get Noticed Online.
I hope you enjoyed this article, and as I have recommended to you, I ask for you all to give me your feedback and opinions. Let me know what you think.

Stay tuned to read the next 3 parts coming over the next few days.
Thanks!

~Brian

Picture from: www.youthcentral.vic.gov.au