When I went to my first Internet marketing conference I had a huge surprise.
It wasn\’t the amount of information that I picked up sitting in the audience.
And it wasn\’t the fascinating conversations I had sitting in the restaurants and the hotel bar in the evening.
It was the fact that people knew me.
At that time, all I\’d done on the Web was create a few websites and sell an ebook about Google AdSense. But when I walked into the hotel that evening, I had people like Armand Morin walk up to me and say \”Hey Joel, it\’s great to see you.\”
How did he know who I was?
I had my picture on my website. That was a bit of a giveaway.
But my blog isn\’t really about me. It\’s about my company. It\’s about Internet marketing. It\’s about the things that I\’m trying to do to make life richer for other online professionals.
Occasionally though, I\’ll write about things that have nothing to do with business. It could be the service I\’ve received from a major company. Or it could be a trip I took with my family. Or it could even be the fun I\’ve had playing a new computer game.
Those things might seem off the point, but they do something very important. They tell people that my website is created by a real person. They draw me closer to my readers and they build a connection.
Most importantly, I enjoy writing them.
Whatever the topic of your blog, it\’s important to leave room for the human stuff. Try to write about things that touch other people as well as yourself. (Whenever I write about a company that treated me badly, for example, I know that other people will have had the same experience and that I\’m likely to be touching a chord.)
Those might not be your highest-earning posts – so you wouldn\’t want to do them too often – but they can have a huge effect on your readers\’ loyalty, massively increase your brand awareness… and save you some introductions at your next conference too.