Children are inherently curious. As a child, many of you must have written down things that you could not express or talk about. Most of you must have even written your first love letter as a teenager, attempting to translate your emotions into something more tangible. Or perhaps, you were one of those kids who were so overcome by guilt but too scared of your parents to tell them how you had made a mistake, so you wrote it down in a letter.
Since childhood, we have been trying to translate our thoughts and emotions into words through pen on paper or fingers on the keyboard. This expression of thoughts and feelings comes to everyone. A personal blog is nothing but this very expression of feelings, thoughts, opinions, and ideas.
Every individual has his/her own thought process. For instance, if you ask two people to express their thoughts on love, they won't have the same take on it. To understand this better, let's try to understand what the word "personal" implies in a personal blog.
Most words exist in pairs. As without light, there would be no darkness, or without lies, there would be no truth. Similarly, without public, there would be no personal. Personal exists in relation to the public.
Thus, "personal" is a very intimate word. It is an umbrella term for anything and everything that belongs to you. Your friends, your family, your interaction with them, your thoughts, your actions, your opinions and so on and so forth are all personal. Hence, "personal" in "Personal Blog" implies that it is all about you that is the writer.
Now that you understand this, let us look at the four pillars of a personal blog that you must follow -
1. Dedication
Everyone can be personalized with their words, and anyone can blog. However, when you put those two words together and start maintaining a personal blog, there are a lot of long hours that come with it.
Even if you do it for a minimum viewership, you cannot be posting ten times a month and going under radio silence for the next ten. You have to regularly update your personal blog because once you put these blogs together, it forms a narrative.
Without dedication, a personal blog becomes a broken narrative. It affects your viewership. After all, it is personal, a reflection of who you are, or more specifically, what your thoughts or opinions are. Hence, you need to be more consistent in expressing the same otherwise, you won't be able to develop a bond with your readers.
2. Purpose
Why are you writing the blog? Do you want others to learn something from what you write? Do you want to entertain readers? Is it purely for the sake of expression or is it a message to a select few people?
There can be endless reasons which can motivate one to write blogs. You need to find those reasons and form the purpose of your blogs. Finding a purpose will define a lot of things for your blog like the tone of your blogs, how formal or informal your language should be, how much should you modify your writing style, and so on and so forth.
You must also remember that no one starts to write a personal blog, purposeless. There is always something or the other that drives one. Identify that purpose and channelize your energy into it. You cannot have a purposeless personal blog.
3. Artistic expression
If you take a close look at varieties of personal blogs, you will find that none of them are just lecturing notes or journal entries. This is because personal blogs are not meant to be bland or dull but to express and present the most vivid picture. Thus, adding photos, sketches, or paintings always helps.
Remember, writing is also an art. It has several hidden layers to it and paints a different story for everyone. If you can incorporate the same into your words, your blogs will attract readers.
4. Love
The root of all personal blogs is love. Your blog won't feel genuine to the readers if words do not come from your heart.
You have to write about something that you care about, something that you really love. Without the zeal and without the love for writing, for expressing, for giving that particular chain of thoughts a platform, it is all meaningless. If you do not believe in something and yet manage to convince someone else of the same, you are a good writer. However, if you believe in what you write, you don't even have to try convincing anyone, everyone believes in you anyway.
Hence, dedication, purpose, artistic expression, and love are the four pillars of a personal blog. They have to stand together in order to provide a solid foundation for a blog to stand upon. At the end of the day, the most important person who will ever read your blog is you. Do justice to yourself and your personal blog will be a success.
Written by - Daniel Humphrey
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