{3:27 minutes to read} More than just being informative and showcasing your expertise, your blog should be an expression of who you are… as a professional, and as a person. Your blog can be a handy tool for referrals. The more distinguished your blog is, the more interesting it tends to be. When someone reads such a blog, it ought to sound like you. Correspondingly, your partner’s article would represent her voice.
Then again, this is my preference and suggestion for you. You may, however, prefer your blog not to sound like you, and not to have the personality of any one person in your firm. Well, that’s why we call it your “Author Voice Preferences” (AVP). We document such preferences in your Master Checklist (Google Spreadsheet).
The AVP process is one of the unique aspects of phoneBlogger.net. Your AVP gets to the heart of how you want your articles to look, sound, and represent your voice. During the launch call, I asked you to answer 4 questions to determine what your AVP is.
But we recognize that for many of you, answering those AVP questions was an odd experience. Perhaps you had never worked with an editor before, and so you had never had to think about how to convey your preferences. Or, perhaps you had always written your own blog, and they naturally came out the way you wanted them to be. Some of you might have gone with our default preferences, even if it’s not 100% what you prefer.
AVPs change over time, and sometimes they become outdated or obsolete, just the way other styles change over time. Our individual clothing styles have changed from childhood, adolescence, and through adulthood. And, as part of a broader perspective, fashion has changed through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and to the present day. This evolution is true for your AVP and profession-wide blogging best practices. That is why it is important to think of the AVP as a living document.
We want you to continually think about your AVP, represented by the questions below. While we offer default blogging best practices (bolded below), your AVP always trumps ours:
FIRST / 2nd PERSON (“I & You”), OR do you prefer THIRD PERSON (“One should,” like a whitepaper or journalist)?
CONVERSATIONAL (e.g., contractions: “don’t”), OR do you prefer more CORPORATE style (“do not”)?
EYE-CATCHY blogging (like numerals & ampersands), OR do you prefer the text to be TRADITIONAL?
Do you like the way you express yourself (keep VERBATIM) or do you sometimes find yourself looking for the right words (edit/suggest Creatively)?
The purpose of the AVP is to make the pB experience easy and efficient. It avoids what I call “sticker shock,” so that we are not presenting an article to you in a way that is contrary or opposite to what you want or expect. For example, my AVP states that I prefer 1st and 2nd person, and yet as I conducted the interview for this blog with my dedicated editor (Pamela), I told it in the 3rd person. It was then the editor’s job to make the article correspond with my AVP.
Our editors use your AVP as a reference guide. So, we want to make sure that it is continually updated. This brings us back to the title of this article: Is Your AVP Still Right for You? You may like to look at it again in your Master Checklist; it may even be posted at the bottom of your article Google doc. Want to look at it together, and even brainstorm new topics which represent your voice & personality more accurately? Let’s set up a time to do so!
Vikram Rajan, Co-Founder
Telephone: (888) 952-4630
Email: Vik@phoneBlogger.net
Website: phoneBlogger.net
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