New bloggers face a difficult question: should you include details from your personal life in your blog or avoid adding these elements all together?
I find it easy to inject my travel stories, my blogging wins and losses and most of what I experience online and offline into my blog and brand.
Other bloggers may prefer to go in a different direction.
Before you decide whether to make your life either private or public keep these ideas in mind.
Build a Brand and Take it from There
Make a general decision; either your personal life will be largely off limits or you will freely share some elements of your personal life.
Proceed from there.
Build a brand message. Base that message on either a 3rd person writing voice (no personal details) or a more first person recount (where you will add personal details) to tell your audience what to expect.
If Public Decide How Far You Will Go
Exhibit A: Blogging From Paradise
I hardly divulge everything on my blog but share in-depth details about my life. Especially my travel life.
I have recounted stories of myself vomiting and….um……suffering from some back end issues while traveling by bus through Myanmar, the victim of vicious food poisoning.
I also shared how I almost died in India after suffering through giardia.
Switch over to my blogging life; wins, losses, successes, failures and all in between.
I freely share how some of my stuff received 8,000 page views before anybody bought it.
In the next breath I share that I am an Amazon best-selling author who has been featured on Richard Branson’s Virgin blog, Forbes, Entrepreneur and Fox News.
This makes me more human – in my eyes at least – and my readers agree with this.
However, I won’t share certain intimate details of my life while other bloggers will write about anything or everything in their lives.
This is neither good or bad; just a personal decision you want to make before you build your blog and brand.
If Private Decide What You Will Divulge
If you go the private route think if you will share any details at all about your private life.
You may publish the odd post about a big celebration in your life – a marriage or special trip – but for virtually all posts you want to stick to your brand message, meaning, you’ll either totally remove your personality from your blog or just share scant details.
Some bloggers never write in first person at all.
No worries here.
Make sure you stick to this approach because your readers may head for the hills if you change your brand message too quickly or dramatically, turning your 3rd person blogging voice to a first person recount of your life story, related to your blogging niche.
No Right or Wrong Answer Exists
There is no right or wrong way to answer this question.
Some bloggers are fully transparent. Good deal.
Some bloggers totally divest themselves from their blog and share nothing about their personal life.
Some bloggers generally keep themselves out of their blog but publish powerful posts that share some important personal struggle or victory, like Zac Johnson with his inspirational post about his battle with a difficult illness:
I Have Ulcerative Colitis. This Is My Story
Even if you take a public or private stance you can pull back on sharing or share more about your life than you normally would at times.
Trust your gut.
Your intuition will always lead you in the right direction.
Your Turn
How about you? How are you handling your personal life as far as your blogging career?
Do you tend to share more details about your private life on your blog? Or do you hold off on adding elements of your personal life on your blog?