Are you putting your reader to sleep? Use a variety of voices to keep them awake.
I had a college professor who had a lot of knowledge and experience that he shared with us through the most incredible droning voice. He spoke. We yawned. He kept speaking. We nodded off. He spoke until nearly all of the class was an immovable gelatinous mass of non-reaction.
It’s too bad, really, that he had been given the important topics for our Senior Seminar class. He was the most qualified, but didn’t know how to deliver those qualifications. Few of us probably remember the content; we just remember the delivery.
Which brings me to your blog.
Is your blog droning? Are your readers tired of hearing just your voice? You might be qualified to talk, but maybe your blog needs better delivery.
Diversity on a blog keeps readers from dozing off. Which, in the case of a blog, means it basically keeps your readers. Boredom creates a fast exit, and fast exits make for slow returns.
The Diverse Blog
Before you start down the merry path of a diverse blog for your brand, keep in mind what that is and isn’t.
A diverse blog isn’t one that has photos of cats, free recipes, and tips for marketing motorcycles (that’s more like a personal blog). That kind of diversity doesn’t make sense. That’s a blog that doesn’t fit into any category in an RSS reader, and readers certainly won’t subscribe to your brand’s email list because they aren’t interested in two-thirds of your content.
Instead, a diverse blog is one with a common theme or goal, but written from the perspectives of a variety of people. It might be a team blog, or it might be a single-author blog with frequent guest bloggers who are in tune with the content of the blog.
Why So Many Voices?
On the Todaymade blog, we have a couple of different writers and contributors. This helps us keep both the ideas and the styles of writing fresh. We don’t want to drone. Different writers naturally create an ideal blog mix in both style and content.
Style Variety
Each writer approaches their craft with a different writing style and thematic approach. You can’t mimic a style that isn’t yours; it fails and the reader knows it. The same topic, written in a different style, provides a reader with additional views (and hopefully better understanding) than just one attempt by one writer.
Having multiple authors means your blog will approach the same topic like a prepositional phrase. Your blog will talk next to it, around it, over it, on top of it, or through it. It will approach a topic as if it were a story. It will feature strong how-to posts, conversational posts, and funny posts.
It will do all of this because each writer naturally excels in their own style and approach.
Content Variety
If only one person came up with ideas for the blog, we wouldn’t have well-rounded coverage and the content and writing style would be like that droning college professor. Diversity in authorship and idea creates content that is interesting to readers.
Let’s say we were writing about a house. I might not have thought about the need to talk about the back of the house; the front seemed the most important. A team member, though, might have something important to say about that back yard. The blog needed both of our ideas to give a complete picture. The reader wins. Each contributor comes up with ideas others hadn’t thought of. Creativity is a kind of springboard: we use the ideas of others to propel our own in new directions.
Having a cohesively-themed blog isn’t an excuse for a boring blog. Bring several writers and contributing minds together. The blog will take on a fresh life of its own.
