Connecting with your readers is an excellent way to build your prominence and build a loyal following. A personality not only gives you a way to separate you out from the crowd, but it brings uniqueness, individuality, and personality into your writing and content. Many of the most successful bloggers have built a very loyal following around the image they have worked hard to build.
Why should you create a persona?
As mentioned above, a personality can bring a human touch into your writing and give your readers someone to connect with. Instead of a cold, lifeless blog that simply new information – you inject yourself (and your personality) into your writing and allow your readers to see that you’re real, just like them.
Corporate and business blogs are notorious for not connecting very well with their readers, due largely to their cold and personality-less demeanor and way of writing. If you can show people that you are real (just like them) you can have a much easier time building connections and fostering a community.
With this blog I am using BigManta as my moniker and trying to get people to associate that name with succeeding online. Also, you will notice that I just added a little cartoon avatar in my sidebar – which I did to intentionally show that there is a real person behind this blog.
Successful examples of blogs with personality
I thought I’d share a couple examples of some successful blogs who have built a name for themselves (and their blogs) by using a personal approach. You will notice that many of their blogs immediately correlate to a particular individual or a persona that they have created online:
- Problogger - Darren Rowse
- DoshDosh - Maki
- Copyblogger - Brian Clark
- Shoemoney - Jeremy Schoemaker
- John Chow – John Chow
- Mashable - Peter Cashmore
- Entrepreneurs-Journey – Yaro Starak
- Zen Habits – Leo Babauta
While you may or may not know all of these blogs, they all share a common characteristic of having a personality built around their blog – and themselves. You can even be a character you have created, just like Maki has successfully done with DoshDosh.
A persona isn’t necessary, but it can really help
I’m not going to say that you MUST have a persona or character that your readers can connect with. However, with blogs I think you will find that it does make growing your blog a whole lot easier.
Creating a persona is also a good idea because it helps your blog to become branded. Thanks for the links of the great blogs above, I was aware of most them, but I hadn’t heard of DoshDosh until now. Its great to see another blog able to brand itself using cartoon avatars instead of a real life picture.
Which brings up a question, which do you think is best to use? A real life picture or a cartoon avatar?
Glad you found some of the links helpful! DoshDosh is an excellent blog to read and really gets into the topics and covers them very thoroughly – although he has stopped posting for the most part. He has been successful creating a brand around his anime avatars and I’ve seen a few others do it as well.
I think that either way can be successful – but an actual photo of yourself can connect your readers to a real person with much more trust. People choose a cartoon avatar for several reasons (one of them being privacy) but it still allows them breathe some life into a blog and gives readers someone they can connect with, similar to how a mascot connects people to a brand.
I think to have a persona and personality and to show your human is such a huge benefit and what every blogger should be trying to build. People connect with these bloggers and don’t connect with humanless blogs. Your blog needs to have a face and feel about it. You need to be able to brand yourself and use that to your advantage online.
Blaine, I agree and think that’s why some blogs are more successful than others. It’s the same reason why many suggest using a picture of yourself in your Gravatar and Twitter account as well.
This is a great post as I just recently threw three different sites I worked on over a two year period into the recycle bin. Those sites were exactly as you described. Boring! Technical junk information that I learned over the years, but information you can find anywhere on the net.
I didn’t insert my personality into any of it. No connection to me. Many vVisitors would come to my sites, grab the info and run away. I scored a lot of design projects from those visitors, but still, I was to matter of fact. No personality.
Because I like customizing themes, I had my head buried in the sand, in regards to marketing, blogging and interacting. Now my plan is to focus on one site so I can design, blog and market using my personality.
Why did you go with the character drawing, instead of the head shot photo?
Bill, thanks for dropping by.
I really think that the key to connecting with people is by adopting some type of personality. Whether it’s yourself or something that people can relate with. It’s like the Geico commercials that use the talking Gecko, the Sonic commercial guys, or the Apple commercials (”I’m a Mac and I’m a PC), they all bring some life and personality into the message.
There are a few reasons why I chose the character drawing – wanting to establish a little different identity than my other projects while still being able to connect with people through a persona is my main reason. I’m still refining and shaping my identity with this site (e.g. creating a new logo, etc.), but felt it was important to have something that people can connect with.