06 Nov Losing my voice

I lost my voice for two years.

Not the words but my voice.

Come to think of it when I started blogging I wasn’t really sure what my voice was at all.  I just thought had to start writing, I had to start somewhere and the rest would come.

Well, WordPress tells me that since that first day, that first blog post on 29 November 2011, I’ve written 76 posts. There was a voice in there somewhere but it was hard to hear. That’s probably why I’ve only averaged two posts a month for the last three years.

But I persisted.  I kept writing and blogging and I kept looking for my voice.

What were the words I needed to write and who did I want to read them?

Everybody tells you if you want to write well, read a lot. Want to blog well? The same thing goes. So I read a lot of blogs from a lot of different blogging experts. Experts like Darren Rowse at Problogger and Kelly Exeter at A Life less Frantic. They all had a lot to say about voice but one thing they all seemed to agree, you have to find your passion. Find your niche in the blog world and your voice will be found and your audience will be there waiting. A bit like that movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it they will come.”

Then I panicked. What ARE my passions? Am I passionate about anything anymore?

Turns out I am passionate about quite a few things. I’ve narrowed it down to seven; reading, writing, learning, family, social media, health and fitness and and yoga. So that’s great but not really niche enough to build a solid audience.

Then just last week my voice started to get louder and I started to have some (as John Lee Dumas would says in his podcasts) ah hah moments.

I got serious and really narrowed down my passions down even further. At my core I decided I am passionate about discovery, connecting and wellbeing. Once I decided that, rewriting all my ‘about me’ profiles for the social media channels was easy. I had been procrastinating about that for six months. I’ve got a direction for writing my new posts and way to sort all my old posts and make nickywaywrites better.

I realised that my blog voice echoes my instinct to share information that might be interesting to or help others. If people reading my blog can learn something, be inspired, reassured or just have their day brightened then it’s working.

I’m sure my blog voice will continue to change in its pace, pitch, pause and modulation but at least I think it’s broken and it’s definitely not lost anymore.

Five ways to find your blog voice

1. Decide what your passions are.  Write about them.
2. Think about your voice in everyday life. Let your blog writing reflect that, the tone, the feeling, the emotion.
3. Think about the people you want to read your blog.  Write for them.
4. Talk to friends and family.  What do they think your strongest voice is?
5. Research other successful bloggers.  What did they do to find their voice?