Chiseling Out Your Blog Voice

Have you been watching Fashion Bloggers? It’s been so great to hear how other bloggers create content and what leads them to do what they do. This blogging journey has been a little lonely for me. Writing anonymously and focusing on the project being for myself (and not for the freebies and fans) hasn’t always been easy.

Not only am I the worst at publishing posts without proof reading them first (sorry to everyone who has had to put up with my typos over the years), I’ve also found myself in the whirl wind of what to publish. Only my stories? News? Information to help people? If so, which people? Capetonians? Those visiting Cape Town? Competitions to draw traffic? Brands I’ve not heard of but everyone else loves? Only talking about myself, but how boring is that? To YouTube or not to YouTube. Blogger vs vlogger vs content marketer vs content creation vs writing. It can be tough out there in the blogosphere.

What has always concerned me is that I don’t think I’m as fun online as I am in real life. I’m quite funny. I crack people up from time to time but that’s difficult to include online. “Expert” bloggers always say that you need to find your own voice. But I question, HOW?! Yes, you have to inject yourself into your blog by writing honestly and about things you like. But how do you make it unique? That’s the part I’ve struggled with.

So I asked myself, “What makes your personality unique in real life? What little things do you do that’s really ‘you’?” Well, I really like animals. In fact, ever since I was a kid I’ve counted animals. I didn’t think this was weird until Mr Love said to me one day, “Why on earth are you counting them!?” I don’t know. It’s what I’ve always done. And still do. I also like to point at things while he’s driving. That can drive him nuts. I don’t mean it, I just get so darn excited when I see things that I have to exclaim to share them. I like human emotion. I like to see people caring for each other. I know how precious life is and when I see others realising that too, it makes me happy (with tears in the eyes).

So I gave myself an exercise – to go down to Kalk Bay on Monday and see if I could capture some things that I REALLY like. That might seem like a silly thing to say. I’ve been sharing things I like with you all along. True. But I’ve also done posts which I thought YOU would like, even if I haven’t. So here are my collection of pictures that I accumulated. They are another step towards defining my true blogging voice. Do you have any tips for me?

I like the way sunlight make trees glow.

I like this pink boat called Miriam. Who is Mariam? Who loves her? 

This man told me about his ‘klipvissie’, the scavenger of the sea. Also known as a “Rock cod”. I love the kid in the background. HAHA

Trying to improve my photography. Mr John always gives me tips.

This man was feeding this old grumpy seal. They seemed to know him.   

I like this slime rope shining in the light.

 This one was too cute.

Lifestyle VS Fashion Blogging

I feel that fashion blogging has a certain amount of content guarantee since the focus is always on the clothes. The creative is important and how it’s photographed for filmed too. Should all bloggers rush out and buy a huge camera? I don’t think so because (as we’ve learnt from Instagram) executing a good idea isn’t always down to expensive tools.

Lifestyle blogging is all about on the go, on the move. You attend an event, you take pictures and that’s your content. Do I know how to use Photoshop to over sell them? Nope! So it’s all about finding the balance between high quality lifestyle shots but that are also realistic (in my opinion).

Lifestyle blogging differs from fashion blogging where shots are often being set up, whether on the street or on set, where clothing is always the focus. Lifestyle blogging is about balancing actual life and events in a realistic sense, but also so that it looks good. But not too good (I don’t think) as you want the images to be realistic to what you experienced. I wish I had more natural photography talent. Then again, I can always see when my pictures are not up to scratch, but don’t always know how to FIX them, in order to produce high quality content. Many bloggers love to post tons of selfies, this isn’t my style (and unless you’re really good looking I’m not sure you should go this route either!)

Setting up shoots also costs money (when you start out) and time. You have to be prepared if you want to make high end, quality images. I work full time and on weekends in summer, which doesn’t make this easy.

If you have any great blogging tips about improving your photography and how to get your personality across in words, please leave it below. Thanks for reading. Penguins.