One of the things I love about blogging the most is the discussion, and I’ve seen a few of my favorite people in the blogosphere lately discussing the differences between blogging for personal use, and blogging for personal branding. Is there a difference? I think there IS a huge difference between personal blogging vs. personal brand blogging.

Personal blogs, the way I see it, often aren’t writing for an audience. They don’t expect anyone to read. They don’t expect employers or companies to read. They write whatever they want and expect 0nly friends or family to read. Most of the time they are not looking to connect with a larger audience, but are just writing updates about their lives for close friends and family and themselves. It doesn’t matter if their blogs are self-hosted or blogspot, it doesn’t matter if they have bad design or poor spelling and grammar (as many do), and there’s no rules to what their content should be like because they’re not writing for readers, but for themselves.

Bloggers who write for personal branding are writing for an audience, they are expecting people to read, they are expecting anyone who Googles them to find it, and they want to impress. They want to demonstrate their knowledge and passion for whatever it is they care about. They’re not necessarily writing for “therapy” or writing to update their friends and family on the daily details of their lives. They ARE trying to add to the community, connect with people they haven’t yet met, and add value to other people — so they follow the blogging etiquette, they write posts which they like, but they also think will be useful to or resonate with others. They blog less about their lives and more about topics and ideas. Because as Seth Godin often points out: blogging is about the exchange of ideas.

For me, I rarely read blogs that are strictly personal. And I say strictly because there are plenty of blogs that combine the personal AND the professional, and I really enjoy those. Blogs that are strictly personal are only interesting if you know the person. Otherwise, why do you care what some random person did today, unless they can write about it in a really beautiful and compelling way? But usually they don’t, because the point of a personal blog isn’t to impress readers. I’ll read my friend Caitie’s blog or Muff’s blog but they blog strictly to update their friends on their lives. I probably wouldn’t have read their blogs if I weren’t good friends with them already, and thus interested in their lives. Personal blogs are hard for me to get interested in because I read blogs to learn new information, new ideas, and new perspectives and opinions. I don’t see any value in reading personal blogs unless you  know the person writing the blog.

Personal bloggers often refuse to modify anything they write to make it appear more professional (better spelling and grammar, more focused topic, a purpose for every post) because they say “I write only for myself and not for what people want.” Ok, fair. But anyone who Googles you is going to find what you wrote anyways. What do you want them to see? Some claim this is inauthentic. I think it’s being as authentic as you can possibly be. I want people to get to know the things I think are the things that make me unique. I don’t want them to see haphazard collection of details of my personal life, and then make their own call on whether I’m a driven, passionate person. No matter what you put on the internet about yourself, someone will see it. Employers WILL google you. So are you projecting the image you want them to see? I’m not saying that’s the only thing you should have in mind when blogging. But it should be one of the things you keep in mind.

So my blog, when I first started it, used to be strictly a personal blog that my friends read. Then I started reading about careers and personal branding last year and realized I needed to get my A-game on if I ever wanted to be successful in today’s world. So I moved into more of the “personal branding” realm of blogging. I don’t agree with people who say this is about “selling yourself as a product.” I’m not trying to sell myself at all. What I’m doing is establishing myself as someone who is passionate about certain issues and topics. That makes you an interesting person and will further your career– but it doesn’t make you inauthentic or a salesperson. It just makes you someone who knows what you want.

I still blog about my life sometimes, but I try to combine a good mix of personal and topical posts. But I write to contribute to a community, so it would be foolish to think that I am writing solely for myself and can write whatever I want. And therefore, I try to make sure every post I write has a point or shares something interesting with the people who are reading. I don’t think that makes you less authentic though. I think anyone who reads this blog can still get an authentic picture of who I am.

Jun asks: is there a divide? I say yes. Because some of us are reading and commenting on and writing blogs in order to add value to a community. I don’t feel blogs that are strictly personal add value. But personal bloggers have their own purposes and interests. So is there a need, really, to bridge any such divide? I don’t know.

What do you think?

For some other interesting posts that started this conversation: check out Akhila, Natalie, and Jun’s great video post.