This morning I was bored and decided to read some blogs that I forget to read on a daily basis. In my travels, I noticed that Jim Westergren changed the design of his site (not sure when) and noticed for the first time that he includes lots of personal posts amongst the normal SEO stuff. I never realized that Jim was such a prolific writer and was especially interested in writing science fiction short stories and novels. I like the concept of seeing a more rounded view of a person that I virtually know. We all spend a fair amount of time reading blogs, and feel as though we know the people behind the blogs. But the personal aspects of the bloggers' lives are often missing.
I have a personal blog in addition to SEO Scoop, and that was my way of letting people get to know the personal side of me, if that was something that interested them. But I don't often see the two sides combined in one blog. Is it a smart thing to do? Should businesses try this? Would this work for a product-oriented blog? A service-oriented blog? Or would this only be effective for a blogger who is a one-man (or woman) business?
Blogs tend to be categorized into business blogs and personal blogs. But how effective would it be to combine the two? How would consumers react? What do you think? Anyone have any real experience with this?
It requires some guts to do that and I don’t recommend it for everyone.
But in the case you have your own domain as your personal name, you brand your own peronal name (rather than a company name) and you want to build reputation around your name as a future author then I believe it was the best choice.
I’m with Jim on this one. It works out great for some and probably isn’t ideal for others.
I like a little personality mixed in….so thanks to those that do.
I think mixing in personal info is ok for general things, such as changes in family/marital status, maybe comments about a vacation you recently took, etc. Those type of things make a blogger seem more personal to a reader.
But any political thought and other more detailed expressions should probably be kept on the personal blog.
Just my two cents 🙂
Like Jim says, it takes guts to do that. I have been trying to drive myself to do that and I keep being afraid that I’ll ostracize my community. This is especially true because I’m a relatively new blogger.
That said, I particularly enjoy Barry Schwartz’s personal blog and wish I could do it… I need some motivation. 🙂