From a marketing perspective, a blog can be a great way of getting the word out about yourself, your business, or anything you care about. A blog can get your message seen by interested viewers and people who come in from search engines, and most of the time more blogging equals more visitors. Our own blog represents a sizable amount of the traffic we get from Google, Yahoo, and Bing, since we are covering relevant and timely topics that web searchers want to see.
However, there are some important guidelines for bloggers, whether they are in a business or personal environment. If you aren’t careful, you could find yourself shunned by your friends, fired by your company, or even facing a lawsuit.
Here are a few tips for safe blogging in a changing online world.
- Use good spelling and grammar. If you’re representing a business, poor grammar in your blog is going to work against you. People who read your blog are going to assume that if your spelling is bad, you may not be accurate in other areas.
- Keep it positive, or at least newsworthy. If you’ve got a product to sell, then you can expound on all the features and benefits of the item. If you’re selling a service, talk about what’s good about your customer service, on-time delivery, expanded service area, or extended hours.
- Avoid anonymous postings. Anonymous blogs may be important for people who could face real retribution, but they can backfire for people who are libeling others in print, or slandering them in online videos (AKA “Vlogs”). The right lawyers can get a blog owner to uncover your identity, as a New York Blogger has recently learned.
- Don’t Defame Others. It may be tempting, but saying bad things about someone else online usually makes you look like the bad guy. If you’re blogging for your company, then you should consider your long-term employment prospects if they’re contacted by someone else’s attorney.
- Don’t reveal inside information. Normally this is only a problem for company executives, but anything that might raise or lower the stock price of your company should be left for the quarterly report. For example, you shouldn’t reveal news about layoffs or acquisitions in a personal or business blog. If you aren’t sure about revealing a company news item, get written permission from someone in charge. From a personal blogging standpoint, the same general rule applies if you’re privy to news about other people and they haven’t told anyone else. Sometimes a new baby, job promotion, or engagement is being kept quiet until the appropriate time, and you shouldn’t forget that a popular blog is going to be read by “friends of friends.”
Most of the time, you don’t have to obsess over your blog postings or your online identity. There are a few “famous anonymous” bloggers out there with a following, but the average blog is going to serve an audience of friends or people looking for specific information. The great thing about blogging software and websites is that they allow for an easy exchange of information between people around the world. Ordinary people can share knowledge and find others with a similar mindset, set of hobbies, or common opinions. Companies can provide customers and prospects with useful product or service knowledge that can present solutions to common problems. A good blog can be rewarding on both a personal and professional level, but only if it doesn’t create more problems than it solves.
Tags: blogging tips
