2010
Speaking to people through your blog
Guest post from Graham Jones – Internet Psychologist
As you sit there reading this you could, for all I know, be in your dressing gown, or in a posh suit in your high-tech office, or on a train reading it on a mobile phone. I don’t know much about you or your environment, but I have to try to take that into account in order to truly connect with you. Whatever your situation, you have an advantage over me – you can see my picture and you can make some judgements as to who I am; you can guess my age, for instance, or consider the mood I might be in. These are all factors in boosting communication.
When you are face-to-face, in the flesh as it were, you make adjustments to the kind of things you say and how you say them, taking into account your perception of the other person. Online that is much more difficult – but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Every time we read a blog post we try to work out the kind of person the blogger might be so we can “get” what they are saying. For instance, the writer may be meaning to be funny but you interpret it as rudeness. In a face-to-face setting, you’d be able to check the body language and the tone of voice and realise it was a joke, not a serious point.
It is a blogger’s job to get as much of their personality across as possible – using pictures and snippets of personal information – so that the reader can get closer to the writer and more easily understand their material. In fact the best bloggers are really personal and we feel we know them well.
There is something else that good bloggers achieve – and I hope you feel this this happening to you right now – they engage in conversation. Hopefully, you feel as though I have been speaking directly to you. You may have even found yourself mentally nodding in agreement to some of the points I have made. In other words, when you hold a conversation with your reader, you connect much more easily than when the material is more abstract in nature.
If you are going to engage your readers more with your own blog or on your own website, you need to converse with them, rather than simply have text which is abstract and doesn’t really connect. The more you know about your readers and their situation, the better – indeed if you can get to know some of your readers as individuals you will be able to write directly to them; having a person in mind when you write makes your material much more communicative.
Some key words to use are “you” and “I” – these help establish a connection and reflects the language you would use face-to-face. However, as in good conversation your blog should have more “you” words than “I” words – focus on your reader, not yourself.
Try also to get your tone of voice in your blog – use the words you would say rather than write. Indeed, a good way of checking if your blog is written well is to read it out loud. If it sounds OK, it will read OK. If it sounds stilted or wordy, you need to re-write it until it sounds right. That will mean your blog post will connect much better because people will hear you.
This is important – when we read text on a page or screen, our brain passes the information into a part of our cognitive system known as the “phonological loop”. We first get the visual image of the words and convert the squiggles and strokes into patterns we recognise as phrases and words. Then, we pass those words through the “phonological loop” which is a process whereby we check the sound of the words we are seeing. This system ensures we double-check the words we are seeing to ensure we construct the right meaning of the text.
However, it also emphasises the importance of sound; if your blog post sounds right when read out loud, it makes it easier for the reader’s brain to process your written material.
This makes your blog faster to read, which increases reader enjoyment and engagement. Remember a blog is a conversation; your written material needs to speak to your audience.
Graham Jones, Internet Psychologist, advises companies on how they can increase their engagement with their online audiences. He is the author of 16 books about the Internet and is a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on the subject. His blog is at www.grahamjones.co.uk
