Every author remembers the first book they published, unfortunately. I thought about this yesterday in Greek class. It was exam day, and so I did what I always do when we have an exam -- I offered any student who got a perfect score on the exam a free copy of one of my books.
One student asked me about my first book, Paul, Apostle of Weakness. "Didn't you once tell us that this was the worst book you ever wrote?" Well, I did tell them that. Like so many doctoral dissertations, the book was overly filled with academic jargon and unnecessary footnotes, intended to impress academics. I've since discovered that solid scholarship and an engaging writing style are not incompatible. My next book, Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek, adopted a much more conversational tone. Studies have shown that 250 percent more people read an entire blog post when it's written with a conversational tone instead of a formal one. Conversational writing has many advantages. It creates an intimacy by using language that's familiar to your audience. You avoid words you'd never use in real life. Remember, you're writing to connect, not to impress. You keep sentences short. You say "I've been" instead of "I have been." You ask questions. You even end sentences with prepositions! You tell personal stories. In short, you write like you're speaking to a friend.
So give it a try. Give your readers a good reason to come back to your blog or FB page. The point is to be conversational, not wordy and impersonal!