I touched briefly in my last post about the potential importance of inserting personality into ones writing. While not always appropriate, this type of stylistic choice can greatly change the way that your writing is perceived. At the end of the day, the most important thing in your writing is the examination of whether or not it accomplishes your goals. So, if you are looking to engage your readers by creating a connection to you, here are a few tips for inserting your personality into your writing.
- Tell stories. There are few things which can draw in an audience and help them relate to you. Therefore, when looking to communicate a point, use a personal story. However, the effectiveness of a story is largely reliant on your story telling ability. A good story can both entertain, and be a perfect example of showing rather than telling. Help to draw your readers into your experiences. The goal is less to make them feel like they were there, and more to make them feel like they really understand you as a storyteller.
- Use appropriate humor. Humor can be tricky to interject in an effective and relatable way. This is a talent which will require some time to develop. It can be quite difficult to use humor which is both inoffensive and broadly appealing. Therefore, use of humor should reflect your own personal sense of humor. Trying to sit down and craft a joke will likely result in it falling flat, but if you are able to communicate an honestly funny event or experience, situational humor can translate quite well in writing.
- Focus on your audience. Though this can be counter intuitive, often the best way to make someone like to is to let them talk about themselves. Now, you cannot let them talk when you are writing, but you can discuss topics which are interesting and relevant to them. If they discover that they share a common interest or passion, it can strongly connect them to you. Therefore, understanding the demographics of your typical readers will help you to create content which they will enjoy. This seems like an obvious tip for creating a blog post, but do not neglect the personal effect of this type of writing. And take advantage of the fact that you can choose whichever topics that you wish, and write about things that will endear you to your readers.
