How To Find Your Blogging Voice

Your blogging voice is one of the most important aspects of your blog’s brand. It’s how you connect with your readers and directly impacts how they perceive your personality. Your writing style and authentic voice are very personal things! It has to be unique and make you stand out from the sea of other bloggers present within your niche. It’s just as important as your blog’s content! 

You’ll be using your blogging voice to communicate with your readers, make your experiences relatable, and build a relationship with your audience. The goal is to emphasize your true personality through the way you write. When readers feel like they get your personality through the way you write, you’re building a relationship. If your readers feel like they get your personality when reading your blog, they are more likely to feel like your friend and be more invested in your brand as a blogger. It’ll also influence your personal brand and future opportunities. That’s why it can be tough to discover the right voice for your blog. It’s easy to feel pressured to create the perfect blogging voice and get caught up in a million little details. Overthinking is natural, but it’s best to just stick to the basics here. 

So you might be wondering… “How do I find my blogging voice?” Lucky for you, today’s post is here to guide you through that process. Keep reading to learn how to discover your personal writing style! 

How To Find Your Blogging Voice

Write about the things you’re most passionate about. 

When you first start blogging, you might have a dozen different ideas for what your blog should be about. That’s okay! But you need to focus your efforts on the topics that interest you the most. Your blogging voice will sound way more genuine if you’re passionate about what you’re writing! What makes you want to fire up your keyboard? Or draft an email campaign in the middle of the weekend? You want to sound excited and interested at all times, not bored of your own content. That’s where your unique blogging voice comes into play! 

Figure out what you like in a blog post. 

Do a little research beforehand to see what elements make you gravitate towards certain bloggers more than others. What type of subheadings do you like? How are your favorite blog posts structured? Do they use a lot of images? Maybe throw in a pop-culture reference or two? What does your go-to blog sound like? These are the questions you should ask yourself. You need to know what makes your readers feel happy to read a great post and eager to come back to that type of content. Only then you can figure out which writing voice makes you passionate to face that dreaded blank page every day! 

Let your in person personality shine through the words. 

There are more than 600 million blogs out there, so you should strive for a unique blogging voice. If it doesn’t sound like 100% you, then you’re doing something wrong! Ultimately, your readers will keep coming back to your blog for your content and for you as a blogger. That’s why showing your personality is so important! It helps you connect with your audience on a deeper level. When writing a post, share your honest thoughts with your readers.

If you’re sarcastic, throw some sarcasm in there. If you are witty, bring the wit in your writing! Whatever your personality is offline, try to bring that online. Be opinionated if that’s who you are. You can be polite if that’s who you are. But if you’re on the more vulgar side, let the vulgarity flow. Your blog is a very personal space for you to connect with other people.

So imagine you’re talking to close friends and let that side of you shine. Let them know who you are and what you stand for. Nobody likes reading a post that sounds bland or generic.  So be yourself, that’s what your audience wants! 

Use punctuation to push personality over proper academic writing.

We don’t want you writing blog posts with a ton of misspelled words and terrible grammar. However, if it makes sense and you need punctuation to emphasize personality, we say go for it! It’s okay to break a few grammar rules if it means showcasing who you are. Search engines actually prefer conversational writing, so it’s okay to get creative. Let’s say you’re writing about a workout class that seriously kicked your butt and you have a more over-the-top personality. Instead of writing “That workout class literally kicked my butt. I almost died.” It’s okay to throw in some personality like this, “That workout class LITERALLY. KICKED. MY BUTT. Like, I almost DIED.” However you feel punctuation and vocabulary can be used to express your personality and feel more like a conversation, go for it!

Practice, practice, practice. 

You know the saying, practice makes perfect! It’s okay to write a few drafts of your About Page or your first blog post until you’re happy with the writing style. Give your blogging voice some time to marinate and room to breathe! It’s pointless to push yourself and then create content that just doesn’t feel right. We always recommend writing your post, then reading through it and making edits one or two times before publishing. Don’t stop drafting until you can say “I love this post and the way it sounds” with absolute confidence. It can be tiresome, sure. But at one point you’ll see it starts to flow naturally and all that effort will be more than worth it. 

Read your content out loud. 

THIS is the MOST USEFUL TIP IN in this post. Seriously. We are not exaggerating. It truly works and is such a game changer. Practice this enough and you’ll be able to do it in your head, but we highly recommend speaking out loud when you first start out. You need to check your writing style for tone of voice. And the only way to do this is to read the stuff you write out loud!

Reading a post can make you notice all its flaws, strong points, and any areas you need a little more flare. When you speak your written words out loud you can check what emotions you convey through your writing, and how easy it is to keep reading the post. Considering the average time your audience spends reading an article is 37 seconds, it’s key to make sure your unique blogging voice invites readers to stay on the post! Make sure it flows, feels like a conversation, and you have punctuation wherever is needed for style.

Have some very specific guidelines and ideas about your voice.

This becomes useful as your brand and team start to grow. There should be a few basic guidelines related to your voice and how you represent yourself. For example, do you ever use shortened versions of words like “fav” instead of “favorite”? How do you sign your name? Is it always the same? Are you comfortable with swearing in your copy? Having a few basic guidelines for your growing team to follow can be super useful down the road. We love when our clients communicate these guidelines to us since we are so hands on with their content. It’s useful in both our SEO services and Pinterest packages since we edit their content for both SEO packages and we’re writing captions in both Pinterest packages.

Don’t copy anyone’s writing style. 

We mentioned before that doing research to figure out what you like can be helpful, but don’t try to be someone else! This is a terrible decision for many reasons. First, people from your niche will be able to tell you’re copying somebody else. Second, you risk your blog sounding generic, recycled, or just plain unoriginal. And third, you’ll probably be miserable while doing so. Nothing is sadder than using your own platform to try to be someone you are not. Come as you are, that’s the key to success! Also keep an eye out for other people copying your content. Showcasing your own unique voice also means protecting yourself from plagiarism. Read this post to learn how to check if your content is copied.

Adapt your voice to your blog’s niche. 

Your niche will not only determine what topics you’ll talk about and your SEO strategy as a blogger, but it will also influence your blogging voice. Depending on your niche, your writing style might be different! If your blog is about personal development, then you’ll probably use encouraging words and a soothing tone of voice. Though if your blog is all about fashion, you might write in a faster, more casual, and dynamic style. And if your niche is related to technology or software, then your style might be a bit more formal and filled with technical lingo. So be ready to adapt! 

Be honest and unique. 

Your readers will be able to tell when you’re not being genuine. This includes details like your blogging personality, a social media post,  the topics you talk about on your blog, and any brand partnerships from products/services you aren’t really sold into. Be honest and open with your audience! Write as yourself and only do things that align with your values and vision for the blog. That’s the best way to connect with your readers and build a strong bond that allows you to enjoy your blogging career to the maximum. If you want to get seriously inspired to be yourself when blogging, head over to our ultimate roundup of podcast episodes to level up your blog! 

Have you found your blogging voice and writing style yet? 

Those are our favorite strategies for finding your unique blogging voice! Whether you’ve been blogging for a while now or just getting started, these tips will help you find your voice. It’s all about discovering that writing style that flows naturally and feels 100% like yourself, so getting to the drawing board! Once you get in the zone, there will be no stopping you. Feel free to leave us a comment or DM us on Instagram if you have any more questions. You can also drop a note w/ your email address, here. Good luck developing the perfect (and strong!) voice for your blog!