Geraldine DeRuiter is the very talented wife of Rand Fishkin, who holds her own with her highly successful blog The Everywhereist.
Geraldine’s husband’s job requires him to travel a lot so when she was laid off, she decided she’d start following him around the world and blogging about her adventures. This change in her circumstances ended up as the biggest blessing in disguise, as what started as a way to show her husband what she saw when he was off presenting has turned in to highly successful travel blog which has even featured in Time Magazine.
The main essence of DeRuiter’s talk was about digging into what makes people love something and to love a blog. In short, it’s about being yourself not worrying about being perfect.
DeRuiter asks what makes you love a site? Does it have to be useful? She then goes on to talk about how usefulness doesn’t always equate to love. Love can’t be replaced, it lasts. DeRuiter provides an example of how she has been reading gofugyourself.com for 10 years. Loving a person is difficult, loving a blog is easy.
She encourages the audience to figure out what it is you love. What can you write about every single day? If you are passionate about something, you’re uniquely qualified to write about it.
Travel isn’t DeRuiter’s biggest passion. Rand is number 1, cake close second 🙂 But she has an opinion, it’s ok for people to disagree. People share opinions, not Wikipedia articles.
DeRuiter encourages us to use photos of ourselves on our blog ‘About’ page, by using photos of ourselves it helps to create a persona and provide a narrative about us. Even include photos of loved ones. She also suggests to make sure you let people find you easily, use different ways that people can choose to connect and follow you.
Be imperfect, let your guard down says DeRuiter. Use a conversational tone. Think about it like you are talking to friends and sharing stories about yourself.
She then goes on to talk about not asking too much of your readers, yourself and your blog. Try and limit the number of call to actions. Also remember to be patient. An audience won’t show up overnight after a few posts, at least not a lasting one. When you are writing posts remember to not just write for the audience you have, write for the audience you will have.
DeRuiter encourages you to be the thing you’ve been waiting for. Luck can be part of the way there but you need to do the rest yourself.
Don’t be afraid to be yourself encourages DeRuiter. Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be anything other than who we are.
