PB102: How to Blog from the Heart

Note: this episode is available to listen to in the player above, on iTunes and Stitcher. Blogging From the Heart and Soul I had a recent meetup with two local bloggers and they both said that they wanted to give up blogging. They each had different reasons for wanting to give up their blogs and different reasons for starting their blogs. Their blogging strategies were also opposites. Blogger #1 was under the impression that all she needed to do is blog from the heart and everything else will take care of itself. I could relate to this, because that is how I started out. I just wanted to express myself. She had been blogging from the heart and telling her story, but she hadn’t built an audience, and didn’t have any sustainable opportunities coming her way. Blogger #2 had been told that to have a successful blog all he needed to do was follow a formula. He had been in a program that said that great content, plus good branding, proper ad placement, SEO, following a social media formula, and creating clickbait titles, all combined with good design would lead to blogging success. He followed the formula, but his blog had no heart and soul. It was built with clinical precision. I would argue that it is possible to blog smart while still blogging from the heart. Today I am going to talk about blogging from the heart, and next episode I will talk about smart blogging strategies. In Today’s Episode 7 Different Ways to Blog from the Heart Be passionate - blog with passion Tell stories - storytelling is the number one thing we can do to build deeper connections with our readers Build community - people want to contribute and belong and connect Create inspirational content - inspire your readers with ideas of what could be Be personal - we have all of these amazing tools that allow us to connect on a personal level through different mediums like podcasting and video Be playful - use humor to surprise and delight your audience, share hobbies and passions Create content that changes lives and makes the world a better place - it should be your desire to change your readers lives for the better Further Resources on Blogging from the Heart Episode 80:  What to Write When You Feel Like You’ve Got Nothing Left to Say Episode 81: 14 Types of Stories You Can Tell On Your Blog Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there. Welcome to Episode 102 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/102 where you’ll find some further reading on today’s topic, the topic being how to blog from the heart. I recently had a conversation with two bloggers. It was a meetup that I’d arranged with these two local bloggers who are both saying that they wanted to give up blogging. It was a fascinating conversation because they both came from completely different perspectives. Both were thinking about giving up blogging because they had very different reasons for doing it. In fact, their reasons to stop blogging were quite different as well. The whole strategy of building their two blogs were almost opposite.  Blogger one—I’m not going to reveal who these bloggers are—but blogger one had had this attitude when she started her blog that all she needed to do was to blog from the heart and the rest would look after itself. She’d heard from other bloggers that that’s what you needed to do. “Just bog from your heart. Just tell your story. Just be yourself and opportunities will come to you to build a profitable blog.” That’s the attitude that she’d had.  I related to this particular blog because that’s the way I started out. I just blogged from the heart, I didn’t even know that you could make money from blogs. I started back in 2002. I think many bloggers probably relate to that.