About this column
Our readers and clients ask the BEST questions — and we want to answer them! Dear Abby (& The Voice Bureau) is a regular feature in which we take on a commonly asked question from one of our readers or clients (sans identifying information, of course) and give our whole community a chance to hear our response, then add their perspective in the comments.
Help! How much of my personal life should I share on my business blog?
Dear Abby (& The Voice Bureau) —
I want to blog consistently for my business website, but one of the things I find most confusing is knowing how personal I should be in my posts. I see that other bloggers run the gamut in how much and what they share: from details of a divorce to outings with their kids to stories of failed businesses, difficult pregnancies, and intimate details of lifelong struggles.
I’m not naturally wired to be transparent, yet I don’t want to seem closed-off and plastic-y. How do I find my balance between the personal and the professional, and how can I know what my Right People would actually care about, versus me just doing a vulnerability dump?
Signed,
Afraid of Oversharing & Undersharing
Abby (& The Voice Bureau) Says
Dear Afraid of Oversharing & Undersharing —
I get this struggle! It’s one I myself have negotiated as my business brand gained traction, and it’s one I hear about often from our copywriting and brand voice development clients.
Here’s the thing: if you ask 10 business-and-branding advisors this question, you’ll get 10 different answers.
Here’s some of what you’re likely to hear:
- The personal is professional. It’s all in there, and it all matters.
- The more vulnerability, the better. Your human nature is attractive.
- It’s none of your clients’ business what’s going on with you personally. You’re running a business, not a confessional magazine.
- You ARE your business, and your business is you. If they hire your business, they get YOU. So give ’em YOU.
- The only thing that matters is the face of your brand. You can be whomever you want behind that facade.
- Who cares, dude? If you’re actually running a business, you’ve got bigger fish to fry than what people think of you. Just do you.
What’s the commonality between these diverse approaches? They’re self-referential. Most business advisors tell you to do what comes naturally to THEM, and what has worked for them in growing their brand.
Would you be surprised to know that we at The Voice Bureau don’t subscribe to ANY of these approaches as “the way?”
We advocate not for what’s worked for us, but what will work for YOU — based on your unique wiring, your natural aptitudes, tendencies, and strengths, and the core needs of the Right People who will be most inclined to engage with your brand, and ultimately, buy from you.
Fortunately, we DO have a methodology in place that can help you see and know what your most-likely-to-buy clients would want from you in terms of Transparency (as a Voice Value), personal stories, and self-referential perspective. When a Right Person reader craves this kind of connection with you, and you’re naturally wired to give it, it’s a beautiful thing. But it’s entirely possible that based on the value your business delivers, and how you want to deliver it, your Right Person may be a whole lot less interested in your personal stories than you think (and if this is you, you’ll be okay with that — I promise). If your brand is this type of a brand, there are dozens of ways to translate the experience of working with you, and the personality you’ll bring to it, without InstaGramming the insides of your sock drawer.
As with all marketing that begins and ends with empathy, it matters a lot less what other bloggers and brand creators are doing with their platforms, and a lot more what the people you’re wired to serve need and want. It’s not as much of a mystery as you might think — and the approach that’s right for YOU is a lot more sustainable than you might have feared.
Talk with you soon.
— Abby (& The Voice Bureau)
In the comments, we’d love to know:
How personal do YOU get on your business blog? How does this work for you and your Right People? Does your level of personal sharing seem to have an impact on your clients/customers’ inclination to buy?
(Image credit.)
Hello, you.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for this post. It is something I struggle with my blog/business. It boils down to being genuine.
Thank you for sharing that you’ve dealt with this, too, Stephanie! I think it’s an issue common to so many of us who meld business-and-personal life in creating our work in the world. I love the word genuine. And I agree with you. For me and many clients I’ve served, it comes down to a question of how MUCH to share from that genuine place.
I think my readers may think I am more personal than I actually am…I share from my personal life, but what they may not know is that I tend to keep things to myself until a bad experience doesn’t feel so raw, or until I’ve been able to draw a lesson from it. This definitely seems to work for me and my peeps, and I’ve had many testimonials appreciating my down-to-earthedness on a dry and potentially boring subject. I never thought about Transparency as a methodology driven by the branding discussion, but that makes so much sense!
I tend to keep things to myself until a bad experience doesn’t feel so raw, or until I’ve been able to draw a lesson from it.
I admire the wisdom here, Mindy.
What I love about using the Voice Values methodology with clients is that it ALL stems from a genuine place — every choice a client makes in her communication with her readership is authentic to her, even though it may be a choice her colleague, competitor, or best business friend would make differently.
Mindy – I do the exact same thing (regarding waiting until things aren’t so raw). I purposely haven’t delved into a specific topic on my blog yet for that reason. I agree with Abby – so much wisdom.
Thanks Tamisha :o)
Abby – so interesting you just published this. I just finished writing tomorrow’s post, and I stopped to take a breath and thought to myself, “wow – not only does your content feel more connecting & free, but so does your voice.” That was a moment for sure.
What it really meant to me though was that I feel like I’ve sort of found that groove – between what I share and what my right people want and yearn to know about me. After Empathy Marketing, I now know a high intimacy value is needed from me and for me – I have a need to know my people and they want to know me also. Like you said, “beautiful thing.”
Just as a treat for you (I think you’ll love it), and all the readers here who write, I am writing on self-expression & freedom tomorrow and this is a quote that’ll be in my post from Annie Dillard. Granted, she was speaking more about writing a book, but I feel strongly it still applies here:
“Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let it rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself. . . .
The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever. You are free to make several thousand close judgment calls a day. Your freedom is a by-product of your days’ triviality.”
Hooray for finding your groove, Tamisha! And thank you for sharing that Annie Dillard quote. She’s great.
IJWTS wow! Why can’t I think of thngis like that?