A good blogging buddy, Sonia Winland wrote a great post last week on Blog Envy and I’d like to expand on it a little. Blogging can be a little bit of a challenge when we try to be something we’re not. It was also a topic of Sunday’s Hot Blog Tips weekly Hangout so I have embedded the video as well.

Being Something You’re Not

The danger of “Faking it until you make it” is that it’s an act that most bloggers will not be able to sustain. Your blog readers will become familiar with the person you are acting like and won’t get to know the real you. The real you will come into play and that will be confusing to your readership. Even the best actors can’t pretend forever.

You Are An Expert At Being You

No one on the planet can be you as well as you can and there’s nothing easier for you to be. You are a likeable person so take advantage of that. How do I know you are likable? Because everyone has a group of people that will like what they have to say, it’s just a matter of finding those people.

Blogging About Your Passion

We’ve heard it over and over from successful people in business, “Do what you enjoy most in life and you will never work a day in your life – the success will follow” [See my note below]. As bloggers, we tend to forget that valuable advice and start with things like keyword research and levels of competition. If that means we end up blogging about duck-billed hummingbirds and our passion is photography, quality will suffer.

In Sonia’s post, she says she started out blogging about coupons but that wasn’t her real passion. I think many of us have experienced the same thing, I know I have (Keep reading). That’s a real problem in the long run because you will find it very hard to find the motivation to keep pushing forward as the new blog smell wears off. TWEET THIS

Mitch Mitchell recently blogged about a lady that was bullied because of her blog. Reneé Benda is being herself and blogging about her weight loss journey – her passion. I imagine she finds it pretty easy to write about her passion and it looks like , from the comments, her readership finds it easy to read and appreciate. And trust me, weight lose is a VERY competitive niche for blogging. I once started a weight loss blog simple because I registered a great domain name (HateMyShape.com). It was miserable; I ended up passing the writing onto two other people until I finally gave up on it.

You Don’t Have To Be An Expert

I wrote a post on Blogging About What You Know but that doesn’t mean you have to be an expert to be a great blogger. Like I said, you are already an expert at being you and if you’re blogging about your passion, you know the topic. If you love the topic, you are going to find it very easy to express yourself and that attracts readers – the right readers. The kind of readers that will come back for more and eventually trust you enough to take your advice and try your recommendations. It’s tough to sell a product when you aren’t even being honest about whom you really are. With that said, I have to go back the part about being yourself – don’t pretend to be something you are not.

Are You Blogging Your Passion?

Do you love your blog topic? Do you find yourself talking to everyone you know about the things you blog about? Do you get excited when it comes time to put your thoughts and knowledge into words? Do you have more topics in your niche than time? If you do, you know how exciting it is and the real pleasure you can get from blogging. Are you being yourself and allowing your personality to shine?

Better Blogging – Just Be Yourself