Are you by any chance a shy bloogger? I have a sad news for you: you are going to fail as a blogger if you have not already. Blogging is about socialising, and a self-conscious person lacking good social skills can never be a blogger, let alone a good blogger.

Not sure whether you are a shy blogger or not, and what do I mean by that? Here are some clues: You think a hundred times before writing a sentence, you delete whole paragraphs from your posts just because they make you look bad, you are scared to say something foolish, and.. you are too shy in dealing with your readers. If you are shaking your head in horror, you are, sadly, a shy blogger.

Not to worry though, because shyness can be overcome once you know you are unreasonably shy about things others could care less about.

Shyness is characterized by fear, self-doubt, and lack of confidence. A shy person, in real life, would fear mingling with other people, lock himself in his room, and would try his mightiest to hide his shortcomings from others.

Those are all unreasonable fears, and can be eliminated with little effort on your part.

Here are my thoughts about overcoming shyness in blogging, and in real life in general (therefore not too focused on any one of them)

Kill your blogging persona

If you are shy, you probably have created a persona to represent you on your blog. The first step you are going to take is kill that persona. It’s your blog, and your readers look forward to hearing from you, not your persona. If you think you can hide behind a fake representation of yours, you are mistaken. People who are clever enough to be surfing the web and reading weblogs have powerful BS detectors. They’ll know you are being dishonest to them. You are not a good actor.

Reveal your innermost feelings

Are you afraid of darkness? Tell the world you are, don’t put up false bravado. If it’s any consolation to you, many people are afraid of darkness. When you reveal your innermost feelings and your so-called secrets, you’ll be amazed to know that many of your readers share your thoughts, and have experienced the same kind of emotions as you. You aren’t the only king of the embarrassing moments in the world.

Are you afraid of dogs? *cough*

Turn your shyness into excitement

Shyness usually comes with accelerated activity of adrenaline. Imagine the moment just before going to a party, do you feel a rush of anxious excitement in your spine? If you look at the excitement of going to the party positively, you can start looking forward to meeting all those people you dreaded facing (girls baby!) Make use of that adrenaline while it lasts.

And how does it relate to blogging you ask? Look at it this way: While writing a post, you remember a personal anecdote of falling into a street gutter. Your adrenaline starts flowing because of embarrassment and you are forced to craft a fake version of that anecdote. You tell your readers that your friend fell into the gutter while you watched him. Now, since you are kind of feeling guilty about being dishonest to your readers, you’ll probably leave a clue for your readers that your anecdote is all made up (shy people are not very good at being shy) So, why not relate the anecdote as it really happened and let your adrenaline pump some excitement into it? It’s even more exciting to see people laugh at your ‘cuteness’.

Be outspoken

One way to overcome shyness is to somehow gather the courage to call a spade a spade. If you don’t like religion, say so. Be critical. Don’t be afraid of challenging what you think is wrong. People won’t laugh at you, they won’t sneer at you. And if they do, why’d you care as long as you know you are right? Perhaps it would be a good chance to laugh at those goof balls laughing at you. There is no reason to be shy about expressing your real beliefs and opinions. You have as much right to have your own beliefs as anybody else.

Don’t be too appearance conscious

One problem with shy people is that they care too much about their personality and their appearance. Don’t ever write a post and then look at it from different angles with intention to modify it to make you look as good as possible (according to your own twisted standards) The thing is that there is no set standard of goodness. How people judge you varies from person to person. So, it’s time to start being yourself rather than someone else.

OK, above points are not radically different from one another, but they highlight different aspects of one point: Its no good caring too much about how others might perceive you, and it’s counterproductive to be shy.

AND while we are at it, did I tell you that I don’t have a girlfriend?