Business blogs – how personal to get?

I was prompted to write this article up after reading the comment/question left by Jennifer Gniadecki in this week’s Comment Friday. Jennifer was asking about her business blog and whether or not she could or rather should start adding things of a more personal nature in there.

This is a topic I’ve discussed, argued and lamented over with a huge number of people over the past year or so as I’ve endeavored to develop myself as blogging media consultant. You see often people will jump very quickly into one camp or the other. Blogging is personal and spontaneous so yes you should write personal stuff in! Or, business sites should be all business otherwise you’ll look unprofessional.

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle and Jennifer has almost answered her own question with the statement:

“I’m very friendly and personable and my life is mostly an open book…”

What makes a truly brilliant business blog is one that gives an insight to that person that you may be dealing with professionally in the future. It’s why we have face to face interviews, even though it may have nothing to do with the job itself people want to get a feel for who you are. You may be a good solid web designer (for instance) but if the job comes down to two people who are both equally solid web designers, they are going to go with the one they liked or associated with.

How do you judge what personal stuff to put into your business blog though?

Think about what you would say in a conversation with a new prospective client. How much personal information would you give if asked? I’m reminded of a conversation I had with my rep when I was deciding on doing a contract. She asked about my kids, to which I replied I don’t have any but I do have two dogs that are like my kids. We spoke for a couple of minutes on the types of dogs and swapped one or two anecdotes regarding our canine friends. We also spoke about the flu that was going around and the measures we’d been taking to avoid getting sick.

Both of these topics were not work related but gave us insights into the other person. I became a lot more comfortable with the idea that the person out there looking for work for me has identified me as a real person and not just a statistic in her books.

So how does this apply to blogging? Simply put if I visit two business blogs in the same field, one of them writes simply about the business and the other writes equally about the business but also lets me know a little about what that person stands for and how I can identify with them. Then I’m going to feel more comfortable approaching the second person (that’s if I like them of course which is part of the gamble). Of course I’ll probably approach both which is smart business but I’ve got a natural attraction to the person I already feel I know.

That is me though. It needs to be said that there are people who don’t want to know about you, all they want to know is about your services so don’t make your blog your only selling tool. Have a top-notch corporate website that your blog is attached to. Generally those people will be happy just going through the website rather than reading the blog.

But there will also be people who don’t like you or don’t have dogs or pets or birthdays (well maybe not birthdays but they certainly don’t care about yours and your employee’s birthdays). This is when you need to weigh it up in your head, do you want to work with these people anyway. Chances are if they don’t like you online then they may not be easy to work with anyway. The main point I want to get across here is that people will judge you on what you write about and you should keep that in mind.

So what can you write about?

We come back to what would you normally share with a client? If you are like me (and from the sounds of it Jennifer) then you are happy to openly speak about yourself to a degree. I’ll talk openly about my pets for instance but I won’t share my thoughts on the occupation of Tibet. The old rules about polite conversation should be followed, politics and religion are probably best left alone. Even strong opinions should not be made unless you are willing to lose someone who thinks differently. That doesn’t mean you can’t voice your opinions but try and avoid statements such as ‘anyone who does not like Star Trek are idiots’. Those Star Wars freaks will all get up in arms and…. hey I’m joking!!!!

When is it too much?

Obviously you don’t want to share too much as we’ve already discussed, I’m really talking here about your ratio of personal to business posts. There are a number of schools of thought here. Business posts should always outweigh your personal ones, you need to work out your level but a two to one ratio at the very least. Never combine them either, don’t talk on a business topic and then add at the end that you’re getting married.ÂLeave that for a separate post. That’s not to say you can’t write a business related personal story you just can’t mash two different posts into one!

I can talk to you from experience here. Quit Your Day Job was to be my business blog, I was going to talk about blogging, discuss the internet and talk about web design.ÂI now discuss movies, comics, pop culture, environmental issues, personal stuff and Aquaman. My blog suffered untreatable personal post creep and today has evolved into a purely personal blog. Which for me is fine, but for other businesses could be a disaster! You need to be aware of your post ratios, never let personal outweigh business related.

Blogging is a very personal thing which I believe has led to its success. If you want to make your business blog more personal then by all means do so, carefully. Don’t feel you have to or even should

I’ll leave you with one other absolute rule, and this one I can’t bend on. Truth. Always tell the truth, spin it, leave it out, whatever but don’t lie or mislead a customer. Ever. If you say you have a dog and you don’t and the customer asks you about it and you slip up even slightly you can forget your credibility.

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