Online Voice – Part 1 – How I found my voice

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I’m currently prepping for my Northern Voice talk on “Finding Your Online Voice“.  This post is the first of the series.

Since I figured saying, “Well, you start blogging and then, after a while, you find your online voice” might not be very inspiring to participants, I wanted to ask other bloggers (via a survey) about their process.  Tomorrow I’ll be posting some of the cool responses I received.

As for me, my process was really trial and error (for both blogs – especially the humour one, which, as I’ve repeatedly stated, I nurture and feed much more consistently).

For Your Dose of Lunacy:

I really didn’t know what I would write about.  I just knew that it was necessary to have a blog if I was to consider myself a person in-the-know about social media/technology.  I had fancied myself a writer since I was a kid –  and that wasn’t entirely an asset.  My early writing was a bit too stilted and pompous (as far as I’m concerned), a little too long, and not very natural in tone.

I tried to write about the wacky occurrences that I had had in my life, and there’s still some of that in my blog, but I also realized that there were things I liked to rant about, and that I did that in general, in real life.  And so I found myself ranting, but I really didn’t realize the theme until I read a description a friend of mine had written about my blog which described it as (something like) “amusing weirdness from the net”.  I thought: “Really?! Well I guess I do write about that kind of stuff alot. OK then…”  And an (admittedly very loose) theme was born.

For this one, Me Like The Interweb (which I started after the other, in order to somewhat separate the raunchiness from my business thoughts):

I originally considered doing (and probably did to some extent) what I thought was “de rigeur”.  At the time, most seemed to be blogging about what they attended (be it conference session, webinar etc.), what they thought of it and what it made them think about on the topic.  Also many would comment on items that were popular at the time. While that can be very valuable for those bloggers and their readership, especially if they had something astute to say on the subject, I really felt this wasn’t the direction I wanted to go.  For one, I don’t have something smart to say about everything that happens – and certainly not succinctly.  And secondly, I am too obsessive (and possibly long-winded) to put together a “quick” post that is still interesting and well-written.  As such, writing is time-consuming and I have to pick my priorities.

So, unless I am really inspired to blog by a talk and/or feel there is something monumental to discuss about an event I attended, I won’t. This blog tends to be a bit of a brain dump – albeit it far more hygienic and organized than the inside of my head.  I write more when I have a talk to give.  Hence, these posts.

In general:

I can say that my Your Dose of Lunacy voice sounds much more like me – if you know me well, and catch me on a ranting day.  (Also, I’m a little nicer in real life)  This blog is my other half: more how I sound at talks, and when I’m being professional or introspective.

A critical thing I want to mention is: I never expect anyone to read my blog (at least not consistently) because of me.  I really believe in the importance of the content, and overall write under the assumption that no one cares about who I am, and that the post better be interesting (or funny) even if they don’t know me or care anything about me.

What about you? Did you have a path to finding your online voice.  Or did it just come naturally?  Any tips?

—

P.S. I have a few comedy articles on Zug.com.  The general theme of these concern FAILS in my life – and your reading will prove that they didn’t occur in vain…

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