How To Find Your Blogging Voice?

All the 'how to blog better' advice always goes on about how you should blog about your passion. If you do, it'll come through in your posts, instantly making you more interesting and more likely to make your fortune from the comfort of your living room.

I agree that you should blog about something you're passionate about - why would you want to regularly sit down and write about something you find dull? Surely even the motive of finding your internet business cash cow wouldn't really be motivation enough to buckle down to it, when it comes to the slow drip feed that building up a blog takes. Post by post, day by day, one new reader at a time...

But writing passionately isn't an automatic route to great content. Finding your passion is different from finding your voice. I've been doing this Traildreamer blog for over a year now. It stems from various interests and passions, it has tracked aspects of my journey. I know I don't do much of what you're 'supposed to' if you want to increase traffic and make money, but I do feel I have found my 'voice' for this blog and I have a small number of readers who check in regularly. When I have something I want to say, it flows very naturally and I enjoy it. I hope that comes through in the reading of it. I'll never be a pro, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of this blog.

I've recently started a new blog, one that links much more closely to my professional interests, and I hope may lead to my own business in some way in the future. I'm not ready to add a link here to it, because I really haven't found my voice over there yet. Each post is clunky and awkward. The content is scatty. The focus switches. I'm trying to write about professional interests that get me really worked up, excited and enthused on a daily basis in my 'real life', but finding a way to talk about it coherently and consistently in a blog is proving unexpectedly tricky. This is stuff I do all day, but it's not stuff I've ever written about or even talked about much.

I've noticed this clumsiness in other blogs I've followed, as they switched from being personal journeys or philophy of life musings to something more strategic. I'll not name them, that would be indiscrete, but I'm guessing it's something that happens quite often. I'd love to know what others think about this. Have you seen the process in blogs you've followed? Have you been through that transition yourself and can offer some advice?

I don't yet know how to find your blogging voice. But I need a new one, and I'm going to be working on finding it. I'll let you know how I get on.

Image from Beverly & Pack