Personal Blogging Isn’t Dead: How to Share Your Life Without Oversharing

Personal blogging never really disappeared. It changed.

The internet became more commercial, social media absorbed many of the quick personal updates people once published on blogs, and bloggers learned that useful evergreen content could bring readers through search for years. But readers still connect with people, stories, opinions and experiences. In fact, as the web fills with increasingly generic content, a recognizable human voice can be one of a blogger's greatest strengths.

The challenge is learning how to be personal without making every part of your life public-and how to tell stories that strengthen your blog rather than creating privacy problems, damaged relationships or content you later wish you had never published.

Personal Blogging Is Not the Same as Publishing Your Entire Life

One of the most useful ideas in the original guest post on this page was its warning about writing about other people. That concern has aged remarkably well.

The original author, Tom Koh, wrote about getting into trouble after mentioning a university lecturer and about discovering that a friend did not want her name used online. His practical advice was simple: think about the person you are writing about and consider how the story would feel if you were reading it aloud to them.

That is still a good test.

You own your experiences, but another person's involvement in your story does not automatically mean every identifying detail needs to be published. Depending on the situation, you might leave out a name, remove identifying details, ask permission, wait until circumstances change or decide that a particular story belongs in your private life rather than on your website.

This becomes even more important when children, clients, medical information, family conflicts, workplaces or other sensitive situations are involved.

Your Personality Can Be Part of Your Brand

Older personal blogs often functioned almost like public diaries. Modern blogs are more likely to have a defined topic, audience or business purpose, but that does not mean personality should disappear.

A gardening blogger can write about the year the tomatoes failed. A business blogger can talk about a launch that did not work. A food blogger can tell the story behind a family recipe. An author can explain where a story came from. A homesteader can talk about what actually happened when a supposedly simple project became anything but simple.

Those stories do something a generic list of tips cannot: they give readers a reason to remember you.

The useful question is not, "Should this blog be personal or professional?" It is, "Does this personal story help the reader understand the subject, the experience or the person behind the site?"

You Do Not Have to Hide Every Strong Opinion

The original guest post warned bloggers about alienating readers with strong opinions. There is some truth in that, but blogging has changed enough that the advice deserves more nuance today.

You do not need to make yourself bland in order to keep every possible visitor.

Readers may connect with a blogger precisely because that person has a point of view. At the same time, deliberately provoking people simply for engagement can create an audience and business you do not actually enjoy managing.

Before publishing something controversial, consider what you want the post to accomplish. Are you explaining an experience? Teaching something? Starting a thoughtful conversation? Standing for something that genuinely matters to your work? Or are you posting because outrage happens to attract clicks?

A sustainable blog does not need every reader on the internet. It needs the right readers to trust what they find there.

Build Relationships Without Chasing Old Linking Tactics

The original article also remembers an earlier blogging culture built around blogrolls, exchanging links and visiting one another's sites. Some of the technical SEO discussion in that section is dated, but the human idea underneath it is still valuable.

Blogging is better when bloggers know other bloggers.

Today that relationship might grow through a blogging community, an event, a mastermind, a collaborative project, a guest appearance, an interview, a conference, a social conversation or simply becoming a genuine regular reader of someone's work.

The important distinction is intent. Build relationships because people and communities matter-not because you are trying to manufacture links.

That principle is also part of why the Biannual Blogathon Bash still matters to Building Better Blogs. The goal is not simply to sit alone and publish faster. It is to work on our sites together, exchange ideas, learn from one another and make progress.

Mix Personal Posts With Evergreen Content

Another idea from the original guest post is especially worth keeping: not every post has to have the same lifespan.

A personal story can capture a specific moment. An event recap may matter because it documents something that happened. A milestone post can become part of the history of your business. None of those pieces needs to be forced into an evergreen SEO article.

But it is also useful to publish material that can continue helping people months or years later.

If you write about spending an afternoon working in a coffee shop, for example, the story itself might be temporary. But perhaps the experience also gives you enough material for an evergreen article about working away from home, staying productive while traveling or choosing a good place to work remotely.

The answer is not to erase the personal story. It is to recognize that the experience may contain more than one useful piece of content.

Updating Old Posts Does Not Mean Erasing Your History

This is particularly important here at Building Better Blogs because this site has a long archive.

Older articles can contain outdated platforms, screenshots, SEO practices and services while still containing ideas, conversations and milestones worth preserving. Updating an old URL does not have to mean pretending the original article never existed.

Sometimes the best approach is exactly what we are doing on this page: publish useful current guidance at the top while preserving the original guest contribution below as part of the site's history.

That allows a longtime website to grow without treating everything old as disposable.

A Simple Test Before Publishing a Personal Story

Before you hit publish, ask yourself:

• Whose story is this? Am I sharing my experience or revealing someone else's private information?
• Why am I telling it? Does the story entertain, teach, connect or add meaningful context?
• Would I be comfortable with the people involved reading it?
• Does it fit the audience I want to build?
• Could part of this experience become useful evergreen content too?
• Will I still be comfortable having this attached to my name several years from now?

You do not need a perfect answer to every question. The point is to publish intentionally rather than treating the internet like a private conversation.

The Best Personal Blogs Give Readers a Reason to Care

Personal blogging is not dead. The strongest version of it simply has more purpose.

You can share your life without sharing everything. You can have opinions without manufacturing controversy. You can write timely stories while also creating evergreen resources. And you can build a business without stripping all of the personality out of the thing that made people want to read you in the first place.

That balance-useful information, genuine experience and a life outside the blog-is exactly the kind of blogging Building Better Blogs wants to encourage.

From the Building Better Blogs Archive: The Original Guest Post

The following guest post by Tom Koh is preserved from the earlier Building Better Blogs archive. It reflects blogging, social media and SEO practices from its original era. Some platform and linking references are no longer current, but we are retaining the contribution as originally published because it is part of the site's history and because several of its underlying observations helped inspire the updated article above.

© Flickr User barkbud

Do you remember a few years ago when blogs were 'cool'? Back then every wannabe metropolitan city dweller between the ages of 13 and 40 had one, but it meant something very different to what it means today. Back then running a blog meant keeping an online diary of your personal life and everything that happened to you, usually in an amusing tone and often as an exercise in vanity.

Something changed over the last couple of years though that saw this breed of blog all but die out. Perhaps Twitter is partly responsible - for creating a new medium for self expression of the masses that was much easier and more accessible than writing a full blog. Alternatively it might be partly due to the success of WordPress which gave bloggers the tools to turn their sites into actual websites - and that created the new form of blog which is generally just a kind of 'lite' website that posts on subjects like SEO.

But there's nothing wrong with the old style of blog - while it's no longer quite so 'hip' that does mean that there's less competition out there for the next online Adrian Mole, and a great personal blog can be addictive reading if you have the right tone and walk the line well between being entertaining and writing stylishly. This is a great outlet for wannabe comics or for anyone who has an exciting life, and it can build a big following as a result. Still though there are a few things to watch out for which I'm going to address here before you start spilling your heart out to the world...

Censorship

© Flickr User notionscapital

This is a very big one. The problem is that when you write about your life that means inevitably writing about other people and while it's fine to say what you like about yourself, you should respect the privacy of others. During the time that I ran my own personal blog I once insulted a lecturer at my University who then threatened to kick me off the course (or even sue me for libel!), and on another occasion I wrote about a friend of mine who didn't want their name used online because they'd been recently harassed by an ex.

The safest thing to do when you write about real people online is to use pseudonyms, and to run anything you write past that person first. Be polite, and imagine that you're reading it aloud to them as you write it.

Blog Rolls

Back in the day, blogging was a very social thing to do and it was important to build up a network of other bloggers to exchange notes and links with. One way this was done was through a 'blog roll' which was a great way to exchange visitors. Be wary though as Google recently de-indexed 'blog networks' which resulted in a lot of collateral damage affecting blog rolls that weren't doing anything wrong. Communicate with other bloggers yes, and maybe consider doing some guest posts and each other's blogs, but don't build up too large a network as you might bring yourself to the attention of Google in the bad way...

Alienating Your Audience

The thing about personal blogs is that they often contain a lot of personal opinions. You're writing this for yourself and there's no editor to tell you off which means it's easy to sometimes get a bit carried away. While it's great to use the internet as a platform for self-expression, there's no need to alienate readers unnecessarily if you want to keep the maximum number of visitors possible. If you have strong views on abortion, politics, religion; then consider keeping them to yourself (or at least addressing them tactfully), unless that's specifically the topic of your blog.

Lack of Updates

Personal blogs often have lots of regular posts which keep the readers coming back, but that's not what I'm referring to here. I'm referring to updating old pages. The problem here is that the chronological and time-sensitive nature of most personal blogs mean that few owners will consider updating older pages. This isn't great for SEO and it means there's only a few pages that are ever going to generate you revenue. As such then, try to write at least some of your posts to last (rather than a diary entry for instance you could write 'ten reasons I love cafes') and then go back to edit these from time to time so Google knows they're still relevant.

So there you have it, a few tips to help you on your own blogging journey. This is by no means comprehensive however, and many of the issues you won't discover until you start writing yourself. Just make sure that you keep your feelers out and that you recognize at least the potential for certain pitfalls along the way...

Tom Koh is an avid blogger and an expert in internet marketing. Through his blogs, he provides tips for getting website hits that will help your business prospects.