3 Reasons to Blog About Your Personal Experiences

A couple months ago, I was losing motivation for one of my blogs. I was running into writer’s block on a regular basis and I just couldn’t think of compelling topics. I talked to another blogger and asked him for advice. He gave me one of the best insights I’ve ever heard for bloggers. He told me to write about my personal experiences.

I took his advice and it really helped. Since that time, I’ve enjoyed blogging more. My posts per month has gone up. My traffic has gone up. I’m getting more comments.

So today, I sat back and thought, “Why is blogging about personal experiences so effective?” Here are three reasons I came up with.

1. It lets you write faster.

One of the things that would frustrate me is my speed in producing content. Or I should say, my lack of speed. It used to take me over two hours just to create a 500 word post.

But when I started basing my posts on personal experiences, I found that the words would naturally flow. Now I can complete a post in 45 minutes to an hour and a half.

Also, this strategy helps me write longer, more comprehensive posts since there is a wealth of knowledge from my personal experiences.

Think of it this way. Let’s say you have a gadget blog. You can give your opinion on the latest gadget. Or you can actually buy the gadget and try it out. Or least go to the store to demo it. You’ll definitely have more to say if you use the gadget yourself. And you’ll write more efficiently because you have the experience to draw upon.

2. It builds trust.

Trust is one of those things that can be tricky to measure. Especially online, it’s difficult to tell how much trust you’re building with your audience. However, we can look at our friendships and see that self disclosure is one of the foundations to building close, trustworthy friendships.

Consider your best friends. Other than your family, aren’t your best friends the people you know the most? Everytime we share something about ourselves, we

By the way, I think sharing our experinces has to include our times of difficultly.

No one has a perfect life. If you blog as though you’ve got everything together and haven’t experienced hard times, you look like a fake.

Look at the big names in the internet marketing niche. They have shared their struggles.

Darren Rowse, the problogger himself, wrote about his early days when he lost much of his traffic when Google changed their algorithm. Shoemoney is a classic example. He wrote about his projects that flopped and being fat. Aaron Wall from SEO Book consistently writes about his personal experiences including his frustration from dealing with overbearing readers and his struggle with low self esteem.

3. It helps people remember you.

Let’s face it. To succeed in blogging today, you have to be memorable. The blogosphere is a lot of more crowded than in years past. There’s more competition and it’s only increasing.

One of the ways to help people remember you is to share your personal experiences.

Our human minds remember stories much better raw facts. We can recall the plots in the movies we’ve seen and the novels we’ve read, but we have a hard time remembering the facts from our college textbooks.

In their best selling business book, Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath say that telling stories is one of the best ways to help people remember you. They give a great example of Jared Fogle, the famous formerly obese college student who lost over 200 pounds by eating at Subway every day.

Subway could’ve gone the typical route and advertised their food as having less fat and less calories, but most people would not have paid much thought. By highlighting a story, Subway increased their sales and became part of a celebrity phenomenon.

Performancing offers marketing services to promote your personal experiences.