How To Start A Blog That Feels Like You
This is my 133rd blog post. Just writing that sentence makes me laugh a little. I can still vividly remember the fear I felt when I published my first blog post, how nervous I was of people reading what I had written. I felt exposed, which was scary but also pretty exhilarating. I was showing the real me, after all.
I have loved to write for as long as I’ve been able to. I always wanted to spend my life writing, somehow, and starting this blog was probably one of my best decisions. It has given me a way connect with other creatives, to explore ideas, to practice my writing, to reflect on my creative journey - and now to grow my creative business.
Blogging can be a wonderful medium for marketing, creative expression, connection and reflection. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve talked with a lot of creatives who are thinking of starting a blog. So I thought it would be a good time to dig into this topic and share some of the things I’ve learned from 5+ years of blogging.
Isn’t the blog dead?
Once upon a time, blogging was what you did if you were an online creative. Here in Sweden, the blogging scene was dominated by beauty-fashion rich lifestyle bloggers, which meant I didn’t read blogs for many, many years.
A lot has changed since then. The blog has been declared dead multiple times, and yet people keep reading them. Just like people keep reading books.
There’s more variety online now, with video and social media and podcasts. You certainly don’t have to have a blog if you’re sharing your work online. Which means starting a blog is a choice, and you get to decide exactly what role you want your blog to play in your creative work and life.
So that’s the first thing I would advice you to think about, if you’re contemplating starting a blog. Why do you want to blog? What is the blog for? Is it a marketing tool, a creative outlet, a way to reflect on your journey? A bit of all of those things? It can be helpful to dig into your why here, especially your personal why for the blog.
Since the blog isn’t a necessity as it might once have been for online creatives, don’t start one just because you think you should. Start one if you think you will enjoy blogging.
Blog about your passions
A blog can be a supporting actor to a creative business, or it can be the craft you build your whole online presence around. Regardless of the role your blog has, I believe blogging is best when you write about things you’re passionate about. However, you might not yet be 100% sure about what those passions are.
Deciding what you want to create is what I call finding your direction. It’s a process that usually isn’t very straightforward and easy, but takes some exploring before you can define. That’s completely okay!
If you’re feeling a little fuzzy about what you actually want to blog about, take out a big piece of paper and make a mindmap. Write down everything you feel a spark of passion for that you might want to write about. Then look for the connections and the things that stand out to you as the most joyful. If you have a couple of subjects you’re thinking about, you can test writing some potential blog post headlines and see what those spark in you, or write a few actual test blog posts. Just to see how it feels.
I would encourage you to give yourself a focus for you blog, but not a too narrow focus. My blog is about living a slow and creative life, and I have three subcategories - work, life and mind. Work, which is usually the biggest category, includes everything about doing creative work. Life is more about a slow and creative lifestyle. Mind is about creative mindsets and how we can deal with our fears and doubts. The slow and creative lifestyle is a pretty clear niche, but there’s also a lot of wiggle room if I would feel inspired to write about something different. This is also the perk with having a broader message, a why, behind your work - it creates flexibility.
Tell your stories
Good writing tell stories. You’ll rarely hear me state black and white facts, but that is one of them. We humans have been telling stories for as we have been humans, and it helps people connect and understand. In a blog, we like to hear your stories and your perspective on the world - that’s what makes you you and your blog yours.
You might have picked up a style of writing from jobs or school years that hides your perspective. That writing style has its place, but it might not be as useful in blogging. If you’re used to writing as if it wasn’t you writing, practice making your worldview shine through and share your perspective on things.
I’m not saying you have to bare your soul and use the blog as your diary. But when you’re writing, consider what story you could tell to illustrate the point you want to make. Telling stories give your writing life like nothing else will.
Find your writing style
For blogging to feel good, it’s important that you find a writing style that suits you. With style, I mean how you write, your voice, your choice of angle, the stories you tell, your tone. I’m not talking about being super unique and different, it’s not a comparison thing. It’s about you feeling like you writing this blog. Developing this, however, takes time! For years I experimented with my style, I wrote and analysed why I didn’t like certain blog posts.
At 133 blog posts, I have found a good rhythm. I often start my blog posts with a story, I try to weave in my own experiences throughout the post while also being helpful. Some posts are more guiding, like this one, while others are more about sharing my own journey as it unfolds and the lessons I learn along the way. I always want to make space for the ambiguity of life, and not say that you have to do things a certain way.
My favourite posts to write are about something I’m processing in my creative work, where writing becomes a way to make sense of it. I often write those unplanned and because I can’t resist writing them, and they come out quickly and with little need for editing. It’s an almost cathartic experience and they often resonate a lot with my readers too. But this doesn’t happen very often, so they remain a smaller part of my posts.
One aspect affecting your writing style is whether you choose to write as an artist or an expert (or a mix of both). It can be worth exploring that dimension when developing your writing style and see where you feel most at home.
Just don’t wait to start writing until you have found a style - that won’t work. Start somewhere that instinctively feels good, and then follow the Introspection-Experimentation Cycle. Meaning, you write and evaluate as you go. If things doesn’t feel quite right, dig deeper and try to find the reason, and keep experimenting.
Forget the shoulds
Blogging being such a common medium means there is a lot of advice out there on how to blog. Some of it is very confident about having all the answers and will tell you exactly what you should do. This can make you feel like you can’t do what you want to, and that you have to follow a certain formula. You don’t.
One idea that has circled around is the infamous “provide value”. While this comes from a good place - be valuable to your readers - it can sound like you have to be an expert writing how-to blog posts. You don’t.
If you have been picking up a lot of “shoulds” along the way about blogging, try to shake them off. Blogging is just a format that can be reinvented endlessly, and you get to make your own rules. And that, my friend, is part of the fun.
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