One of the blogs that I think every blogger professional or otherwise should be reading is Brian Clark’s Copyblogger. He continually provides great advice for people writing and supplying content on the web. Today’s post is no different. James Chartrand writes the post discussing the fact that your website needs to tell a story. I completely agree with his statements about the old versus the new way we provide content on our websites:

Facts don’t stir emotions and encourage people to take action. Facts don’t sell until people look to rationalize the buying decision they’ve made at an emotional level.

“The role of web writers has changed. Just a few short years ago, the content on most websites was boring and factual, just a profile of monotonous company information.

Today, the content on websites that work looks very different indeed.

Effective web writers are moving away from bland, factual information. Readers won’t settle for that anymore.

It isn’t interesting. It isn’t compelling.

Facts don’t stir emotions and encourage people to take action. Facts don’t sell until people look to rationalize the buying decision they’ve made at an emotional level.

That’s why you need to transform your website into a story.”

This is a good look at what professional bloggers and even those just doing it for pleasure have found to be their best asset and biggest success in providing content on their own blogs. I was able to grow my own following on my blog as a daddy blogger because i let people into my world. i told them a story of what was going on in that world and they came every day to see the next chapter. I then found that when i skipped a day or two, they would quickly begin to email me an ask me “What’s wrong?”, “Are you okay? It was like they had to have the next bit of the story. They came back to hear it like I had a miniseries unfolding before me. They were staying tuned into the story. the same thing can be done for your company. Everyday is a new part of the story.

[photo via bcmom]

As a professional blogger sometimes it requires that you have a very thick skin.  A large portion of blogging is of course the written word.  This written word is your voice it is the style of your writing and it defines you as a blogger.  I have been putting bloggers together with companies for a while now and one of the toughest parts of that is matching a company and their mission and message with a blogger that fits with the personality of the blog.  Some bloggers are great technical writers and do a great job with describing technical terms and processes.  Other bloggers are pithy and have great sense of style and humor.  Companies sometimes are demanding both.  As you can see it’s tough to put the proper voice of the blogger with the company blog.  It’s not to dissimilar from matchmaking.  Not every match is one made in heaven.

As a person that manages many bloggers it is very rewarding to tell a blogger that a company has chosen their voice and blogging style to head up their blog campaign.  It is equally devastating for me to tell a blogger that the company has decided to go in a different direction with the voice of the blog.  Bloggers tend to take ownership of a blog and adopt it making it their very own, and to tell them they have to turn that over to another is a difficult process.  This is why it is necessary to be a thick skinned individual.  Business is business to the company and they see it from a different perspective from their end, no matter how attached a blogger has become to the blog.  This is not something that happens often but it does occasionally happen so bloggers need to be prepared.  For now, I need to go to a blogger and make the “It’s not you it’s me” speech.

[photo via  DeclanTM]