How Do You Bring Yourself and Other People to Your Blog?

It’s about People and Experiences

This week in a lovely conversation with the Community Roundtable, I had the opportunity to ask questions about blogging and how blogs still fit into a serious social web presence. The question that came up often and in many ways was …

How do I get ideas to write about on my blog?
It used to be hard for me too. Then I realized that I was taking my own writing more seriously than I need to. A blog is a chance to share our expertise and our thinking, but it’s also an opportunity to show what we’re learning and exploring and that’s often easier that putting out there what we already “know.”

So when I’m looking for new ideas, I …

1. have conversations and really listen for other points of view. New points of view often get me thinking and pose ideas that I want to explore further … on my blog.
2. step outside the group of people I usually talk with to see what folks in other industries and verticals are doing. Looking at their best practices gives me a new way to look at what we’re doing. Often I walk away with a new view of where we’re going and how to solve a problem or how to rearrange an issue that I might want to share.
3. read my archives for things I’ve talked about in the past. Often I’ll find I still care about those subjects, but that my understanding has grown. I’ll bring out those ideas again and talk about what makes the difference now.
4. look for the heroes around me. So many people are doing great things I admire. I’ll write about them and what makes them worth raising up as a model of where I want to go.
5. write about a question that has been bothering me, take a stab at an answer then, reach out for folks who might be reading to help me out toward a stronger view.

These are just five ways that “blog my experience.” Writing gets tedious, if I just put information out there, because I know that information exists elsewhere and is probably packaged better. If I bring myself, other people and our experiences to my blog, I can involve my brain, my heart, and my vision of the world. The result is a unique combination and connection to the information that no one else can offer. And the folks who like it come back to see how I do it next.

How do you bring yourself and other people to your blog?

Liz Strauss
Find out about working with Liz.

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