Jekyll and Hyde is probably the most famous split personality case, even though it’s fiction.

But are you doing the same thing with your blog posts and emails?

Do you come across as one person in real life and a different one when you write on your website or send an email out to your list?

It’s an easy trap to fall into.

There are so many different reasons or excuses you can use.

Maybe you think people need to be treated differently online.

That was certainly the case with a recent Twitter troll, Brenda Leyland.

I’m not going to judge that and I’ll leave it to you to decide (that’s me sitting on the fence, something I’m regularly accused of in real life!) but it strikes me as a case where the things said online were way out of synch with what would have been said in a face to face conversation.

Sometimes it’s the other way round.

A controversial person turns “corporate” when they’re online.

And sometimes – Michael O’Leary springs to mind here – you get the feeling that the public and private personas are very closely aligned.

And I think that should be your aim for your website and emails.

Get the two views of you as close as possible.

So that people reading your posts or emails or watching your videos or listening to your podcasts feel as though they know you.

Think about it for a few seconds.

There are almost certainly a handful of emails that you look out for and stop near enough everything to read.

My best guess is that it really is a handful – two or three people at most.

Because most of us get lazy or time pressured.

And that’s when shortcuts start to get taken – because it’s easier to just switch into your internet personality and tap away at the keyboard or waffle away on a video, unscripted.

Either of those can actually work.

Tapping away at the keyboard instead of wondering what everyone will think about what you’re writing can let your personality shine through.

And waffling on a video without the benefit of a script sometimes works. And sometimes doesn’t – that’s why I tend to ignore the annual Ed Dale 30 day challenges. Not because they don’t have good material. But because I haven’t got the time or patience to listen to Ed for 30 minutes when the main information would take about 5 minutes maximum to deliver if it was organised.

But that doesn’t stop Ed from getting lots of supporters.

The material is good.

But for me it’s just too long winded.

Now if you had a video with some bullet points and elaborated on each of those, that’s a different story.

It’s what you’d likely do if you were chatting with a friend in a coffee shop.

OK, you probably wouldn’t have a list of bullet points to go through but you may well pick up things on the way to natter about later in the conversation.

The closer you can get your websites and videos to the friend in a coffee shop conversation, the more your personality will shine through.

Will you alienate people with this approach and cause them to unsubscribe or click away?

Yes.

That’s fine.

The famous phrase is that you can’t please all the people all the time and that applies to the web as much as anywhere else.

Shock jocks on the radio realise that.

In fact, for at least some of them a good percentage of their audience tune in to be outraged.

If that’s your style, do it.

If it’s not, don’t do it.

Go with being you first and foremost.

That will help on a number of fronts.

You won’t have the “should I, shouldn’t I” conversation in your head each time you create some content.

You won’t have people who meet you in real life thinking they’ve met an imposter.

It just makes all round good sense.

So take a few minutes to look at your website and any pre-written emails you send out and any other things that go to making your online personality.

If any of them aren’t congruent, start working out how to change them so that they’re more closely aligned with the real you.

And if you’ve got any thoughts about this post, use the comments form below.