If you’ve been blogging for a while, you remember that thrilling moment when you realize someone is actually reading what you’re writing. Maybe a few comments appear. Perhaps your blog URL gets retweeted by a kind friend. Or maybe yours just went viral all of a sudden.
For me, blogging has been a slow burn. Being syndicated has helped grow my blog traffic, but for me the moment came the first time I realized I had a “fan.” That’s also the exact time when I began to struggle with authenticity. I started pandering for traffic and stopped writing from the heart. I forgot my mission in the pursuit of popularity. And like all bloggers, I had to learn the ultimate lesson. Your writing has to be authentic to survive. I had lost my authentic voice.
In hindsight it was a great lesson. The more I forget about pleasing people, the more popular my blog gets. When I think about it there were several signs that I missed along the road to fakiness. Hopefully you can learn from this hindsight and avoid making the same mistakes I did.
Here is a checklist to make sure you’re being authentic in your own work. More than a couple yes answers to these questions might be a red flag that your authenticity could be suffering:
- Do you check your traffic more than once a week?
- Are you looking up your colleague’s Klout scores to see how you compare?
- Have you stopped genuinely contributing to your favorite blogs?
- Do you others’ work based on their influence, not the content itself?
- Are you writing blog posts that mimic others you’ve seen because they were popular?
- Does writing your blog feel like a chore?
- Are you reading countless articles and ebooks on how to monetize your blog?
I’m sure you can think of more questions like these, and I hope you’ll add some in the comments. How do YOU know when you’re losing your authentic voice?
