Finding Your Voice

You've heard it your whole life. "Find your own voice! Be true to yourself!" But that's so abstract!

What does that even mean?

While expressing your voice in your relationships, clothing choices, leisure activities, and vacation destinations comes naturally with time, finding your written voice is often exponentially harder. If you're writing copy for your website, for instance, you will likely shy away from your voice in favor of being "professional." If you work in a doctor's office or a law firm, then this is fine. Continue to be professional. Personally, I don't care one little bit if my lawyer or doctor has a distinct voice on their website. All I care about is that they went to an embarassingly high brow school and have the skills to keep me alive or take care of my assets.

If you work in ANY OTHER FIELD, then please recognize that you can be professional while still having your own unique sound. People won't buy your product simply because it's a great product. Or rather, they might, but it's often hard to get them to read your entire website to learn about your product if your copy is tastleess and crappy.

To make it un-tasteless and un-crappy (yes, those are made-up words. If Shakespeare did it, so can I), you need to put yourself into the writing. You need to make people relate to you as a person or a brand. Once they like you, they'll buy into the concept of your website and read all you have to say. If they don't like you, or they think the writing is boring, then they will leave your page faster than they arrived.

So how do you write like yourself?

Try to pretend you're writing in your diary. You have no filter in your diary. You can say absolutely anything your little heart desires. Then, tone it down. Obviously, you need SOME filter because this is the Internet, and the Internet is "written in ink." (I totally stole that quote from The Social Network.) You need to convey your message in a conversational tone to engage your readers, while still making sure that YOU are present in the writing.

If you happen to have a dazzling personality and you are great at this already, then awesome! Go on with your bad self! If you haven't quite mastered this, give me a call. I can write your copy and make it JUMP OFF THE PAGE! (Just kidding, that's a terrible cliche, and words can't even jump.) But I CAN make it sound like you and successfully sell your product.

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