It's 2018. Forget your journals and your diaries; with today's technology, blogging is the way to go. But, if you write your journal entries with the vocabulary of a Shakespearean sonnet or the lengthiness of an iTunes user agreement, you might not be cut out for blogging. I love a good blog, and after analyzing a few of my favorites, I've discovered that writing in the plain style is one very important key to success. In this critique of the personal blog, I analyze a recent post from the fashion, travel, and lifestyle blog, Truelane. This blog, along with three more blogs with similar followings, illustrates that successful personal blogging relies on the use of plain style.
Before I get into my argument, I want to clarify that this critique is focused on personal blogs. A counter argument would be that a successful blog requires ethos and that plain style is not the best way to establish credibility. The official style, because it is formal and so thorough, may be believed to be the best way to establish credibility. In the case of the personal blog, credibility is established not through a show of knowledge, but through an honest revealing of personality and by being relatable. If you’re reading about someone’s life, you want it to be conversational, not difficult to decipher. I want to make it clear that my argument isn’t that all blogs should be written in plain style (although I think most are), but that specifically the personal blog is more successful when written in plain style.
Chelsea Lankford is the full-time blogger behind Truelane. Chelsea is a 26-year-old who blogs about everything from jewelry details to solo travel to life in the internet age. In this critique I will be analyzing her post "How to Make it as a Micro-Influencer," published on January 12, 2018. Before we really get into the aspects of plain style and the spheres of human activity, I offer some of Chelsea's readability statistics:
Grade Level:
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6.3
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Readability:
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74/100
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Average Sentence Length:
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15
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Long Sentences:
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12 (26.09%)
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Passive Sentences:
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2 (4.35%)
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Note: these findings are from the 674-word excerpt of the post that I analyzed.
There are many elements of plain style in this blog post. One of the main components of the plain style is active voice. While the official style is dripping with passive voice, the plain style avoids it—therefore making the writing more personal and easier to read. Needless to say, having a personal voice is crucial in a personal blog. This blog post is only 4.35% passive voice, which indicates that the writer is keeping a personal and active tone.
Another thing this blog post lacks is difficult jargon. The longest word syllabically is "opportunity," while the longest word by letter count is "photographer," neither of which are particularly advanced. Difficult jargon is a staple of the official style, and the lack of it in this excerpt is further proof of Chelsea's use of plain style. Rather than being difficult to decipher, the language is plain and easy to understand, which contributes to the overall conversational tone. On a slightly different vocabulary-related note, this post includes a lot of hyphenation. Some examples include "blogger-turned-model, "full-time," "meet-up," and "big-name." These words strung together by hyphens are a more understandable alternative to challenging vocabulary. Instead, the hyphenation of smaller words helps paint a picture in simpler terms.
Finally, this blog post features a lot of repetition and emphasis, a couple key features in plain style. Chelsea makes a clear argument by reiterating important points in succession—what rhetoricians would call conduplicatio. For example, she mentions early on that blogging "is luck and being in the right place at the right time." In the next paragraph, she explains her experience and makes a clear tie back to the concepts of luck and timing: "Sincerely Jules and Sea of Shoes were just getting started—right place, right time. Another big blogger at the time, Natalie Off Duty, visited Seattle and we got together (my first blogger meet-up!). I was offered my first campaigns after brands that followed her blog found mine—luck." In addition to being clear by means of repetition in her language, Chelsea uses punctuation and bolding to emphasize her main idea. Additionally, Chelsea makes the post visually appealing--using images, shorter paragraphs, headings, and bold font to break things up.
There are plenty of examples of the plain style in this blog post, but it's important to consider the audience and spheres of human activity this blog reaches in order to fully understand why the plain style is so important. As previously mentioned, Truelane is the personal blog of 26-year-old Chelsea Lankford, covering fashion, travel, and life. Chelsea has found enough success with Truelane to blog full-time. She started branding her blog as Truelane when she lived in Minneapolis, and has now returned to her hometown, Seattle. Instagram is her most influential social media platform, where she has 66.4k followers.
I know plenty of the Truelane audience is made up of people with backgrounds similar to my own: roughly-millennial, from the Midwest, with some level of interest in fashion, travel, or at least an aesthetically pleasing feed. The spheres of human activity this blog reaches include fashion, travel, social media, and can even be narrowed (although not explicitly) to people in the Seattle and Minneapolis areas. People who read Truelane have some kind of interest in fashion, travel, or the blogger lifestyle. What does that mean? It should be informative and entertaining, but it's also leisure reading—which means it should be easy to read. The audience is looking for something conversational and personal. First person, active voice, and conversational tone are key in personal blogging. It keeps the reading easy, interesting, and also establishes the blogger's credibility. What's a personal blog without a personal voice? Unsuccessful, I imagine. Plain style is a crucial component of success in personal blogging.
After analyzing Truelane, I made sure plain style isn't just a trend in this particular personal blog. I ran readability tests on three more personal blogs from similar micro-influencers. Here are the statistics:
Champagne and Macaroons (65.7k followers)
Grade Level:
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5.7
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Readability:
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70/100
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Passive Voice:
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4.55%
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The Styled Press (31K followers)
Grade Level:
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8.5
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Readability:
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65/100
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Passive Voice:
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0%
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On a Sugar Diet (16.7k followers)
Grade Level:
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6.1
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Readability:
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80/100
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Passive Voice:
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0%
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The proof is in the readability tests: successful personal blogs, like those listed above, are all about plain style. Chelsea Lankford's recent blog post "How to Make it as a Micro-Influencer," illustrates the effective use of plain style in personal blogging. The spheres tied to this fashion, travel, and lifestyle blog suggest that the language should be upfront and conversational. Even Chelsea knows the value of plain style. Near the end of this post, which is all about the ins and outs of successful blogging, she writes: "I've tried to be as plainspoken as possible in this blog post, and I hope you find some of it helpful rather than discouraging." So, there you have it. The key to a successful personal blog? Plain style—it's as simple as that.
Rachel Bernard
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