As you start to develop your brand and blog style guide, you may become conflicted over the narrative voice that you want to use. Does jumping into the first person seem too informal? Should you even reference yourself in a professional blog, or is that too casual? These are common questions that I often answer when working with clients for the first time.

Spoiler alert: You can see where I stand on the issue. I believe there is a time and place for using I/we as long as it matches your brand goals.

This post will focus on the different narrative voices that you can choose for your branded blog. It will cover why some companies limit writers to the third-person and the pros and cons of using each. Finally, it will empower you to choose your narrative voice, whether it is the first-person, second-person, or all three.

Know Your Points of View

Let’s take a step back to grammar school and review the different points of view that you can choose for your writing. You have three main options:

• First person: we recommend following the industry best practices… our clients have benefitted from…
• Second person: if you are considering… the best choice for your brand is… 
• Third person: small business owners who need… if they find themselves lacking… their best option is…

As the team at ACM training explain:

“The first person (me) puts the writer centre stage. The second puts the reader (you) in the spotlight. And the third views things from an audience’s point of view (he, she, they) – way up in the cheap seats at the back of the auditorium if you like.”

Bloggers as a whole are split on which forms of voice are best. While some think the third person is the best option professionally, others think it is too formal. Meanwhile, other writers suggest avoiding the first person unless it is used to position the writer as a position of authority.

Consider what Georgy Cohen of MeetContent has to say: 

“I believe the use of first-person is a privilege. It connotes a truth, an intimacy, an authentic perspective, and thus a power unlike any other. It is innately personal — in some instances confessional.” 

He goes on to say that this privilege can easily be abused – and points to clickbait publications like Buzzfeed who use it as a shock-factor.

While he has a point, the first person, especially the first person plural, can be used to create a sense of community and connect a group of people. For example, the sentence: “While we try to stick to our New Year’s resolutions, many of us fail by the end of January.” is more engaging and inclusive than, “Most people can’t stick to their resolutions,” or “If you already gave up on your resolution…” It can be used to create more compassion and intimacy.

Your Age and Background May Reflect Your Narrative Choices

There are several factors that contribute to your point of view selections, including your upbringing and education. If you have an academic or journalistic background, then switching to a more colloquial writing style might seem unprofessional to you. Additionally, age may even play a factor. 

One study from 2014 by the University of Pennsylvania’s World Well-Being Project (WWBP) looked at the Facebook posts of 75,000 volunteers. They found that the older you are, the less likely you are to use the first-person, preferring the third-person instead.

“When we are in new situations and are trying to establish an identity, we tend to be more self-focused, which comes out through higher rates of ‘I’-words,” social psychologist James Pennebaker, author of The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us, explains. “[But as people age] we become less concerned with our own shortcomings and can sit back and watch the world a bit more objectively.”

This doesn’t mean you can shake off any request to use the third person with an “ok boomer,” response, but it may help explain why someone writes a certain way. I would also like to add that since the days of MySpace and Livejournal, the internet has favored more colloquial writing. This means that younger generations may favor the first person along with a more casual writing style because it is how they feel comfortable communicating on the web.

Your Narrative Voice Reflects Your Brand

The challenge is that we don’t always have the luxury of writing how we choose. Brand managers and marketing executives set the tone for their blogs – and that includes the point of view. Copywriters need to put aside their personal preferences to match the tone and writing style of their clients or bosses. 

Your blog content reflects how you interact with your customers – and how you expect them to interact with you. Opting for a formal way of speaking and professional manner of voice may convey a sense of authority, but it doesn’t always make your brand seem approachable. While a medical office or law firm may want to seem confident in their writing, they also need to be compassionate. This creates a conflict between the blog manager and senior marketing teams, who want to connect with the target audience without losing their authoritative branding.

It is Possible (and Likely) That You Will Mix and Match Your Narrative Voice

As you develop your blog content, it is likely that some posts will focus on the second person while others use the first person. An announcement about a leadership change will likely use the first person, while a how-to guide will sway more to the second-person. Allowing your writers to determine the best voice for your blog can help them focus on the message, rather than massaging sentence structure to account for an outdated style guide.

It is also possible that you will use different tenses within the same post. For example, if you are creating a tutorial, then you may start off using the second person, but then jump into the first person to explain why you do things a certain way.

The key to success when jumping around tenses is to have guidelines for consistency. You can use whatever tense you want as long as you have a reason for it. You may switch between the second and third person to break up the synonyms and improve flow, or you may require writers to stick to one narrative style throughout one piece of content. It’s up to your brand.

Test Different Writing Styles to Find Your Brand Voice

As you publish your first few blog posts this year, work to establish your brand voice that other writers and marketers can follow. This voice should be consistent across all site copy and printed materials. 

Test different writing styles that match your brand to see how your audiences react. You may find that the first person point of view is more inclusive than you realize, paving the way to make it more acceptable in your blogging.

Image by Hugo Ataide from Pixabay