When you blog on your personal blog – either for just sharing your thoughts or promoting something (including your personal branding activities,) you need to know how transparent you should allow yourself in sharing your personal information in your blog posts.
I mainly blog about general issues and my business ventures. I touch the private issues of my personal and business life in a general manner. However, many keen to share their private life in their blogs, treating the blogs as their diaries.
The fact is, blogs are not diaries. Diaries are for your own eyes. Blogs are visible to each and every Internet users. People do forget this fact and pour their heart out into blog posts that will contain rants, personal struggles, and such (let’s be honest here – not many blogs contain no rants-type-of-blog-posts.)
However, bloggers need to know when to stop – or else, things will backfire and will give them bad days… and more.
Scary blogging stories…
Consider these real-life stories – of course, with hidden identities.
A blogger blogs her story of the difficulties in getting care for her loved one (Ms. Y) in a particular hospital. She gets both encouraging comments that make her day AND stupid comments that make her angry (“Ms. Y will die. Deal with it – we are all going to die, anyway.” I mean, what the… ?
And there are more stories…
Another blogger rants about his boss in his personal blog – his boss founds out, and the blogger get sacked and lost his job.
This one comes from a blogger that use “reality” blogging style, documenting his journey from a debt-ridden life to debt-free life. He uses his real name, posting real income and stuff (I know many bloggers do this – usually in the make money online and personal finance niches.) His personal life is laid bare – so to speak. The impact: Scam offers flooding in, people calling him a scammer, people check on him – and find his address, his office address, etc. “thanks” to the honest blogging style.
How about getting sued by a company claiming that a particular blogger was spreading lies via his blog and social network? How about losing business clients because the business owner blogs about his recent trip to Africa, taping him killing an elephant in a hunting-for-fun activity?
Blogging and $$$
Blogging and Internet marketing is often inseparable. At times, we share our opinions; we also occasionally share interesting products/services relevant to our readers. In doing so, we often promote our own or affiliate products/services.
Promoting something we ourselves benefit from is not only acceptable, it’s recommendable. Like a blog you just read? Why don’t you share it with your blog readers? Like a service you just try? Why shouldn’t you let your readers know your experience with it?
However, when sharing the above involves money in the equation, you need to be careful. Sponsored review, writing about an affiliate program you just joined, recommending a product you just try – those stuffs can make you real money off your blog.
BE WARNED – money is the root of all evil 🙂
Money in itself is not “evil” – you need money to support your daily life; you need money to grow your blog. However, money can attract you to do the whatnot, including LYING TO YOUR READERS.
Yes – especially when it comes to money making, some bloggers are pathological liars – they create a fake-yet-believable situation from which they base their blog posts on. Some others are just scammers, not liars – but you get the point…
“I’ve tried this great service and my income from blogging jumps from zero to $5,000/month” – a blogger can write a convincing blog post, telling lies with a complete set of screenshots (photoshopped, of course!) to make convincing claims.
Why a blogger lie? There are some motivations, but the most common motive I know: He/she simply wants to make more money – that’s all… So instead of spending time and money to try the products/services, they just lie…
It’s difficult to know whether a blogger is lying in his/her blog post or not… that being said, as blog readers, you need to find the truth yourself.
Bloggers need to set a boundary – or else…
… your off line and online reputation will be tarnished. You need to know when to stop sharing too much information in your blog posts. Avoid posting about your loved ones along with their personal information.
Consider this as an example: “Well, today is my son’s birthday; he and his friends will go to XYZ for a small celebration at 10 AM” – this sentence offers enough information for bad guys to track your son! So, beware!
If you’re running a blog as a business, it’s important for you to have disclaimers in your blogs if you are “selling” something from your blog posts. Disclaimers can inform your readers why you wrote the blog posts and how you will be compensated from your blog posts.
As of for me, I want my articles to be as genuine as possible. I CAN’T AFFORD TO LIE – my online reputation is at stake 🙂
If I think a product sucks, I will write so (us bloggers are smart people – we can write negative opinions in a positive way!) If I don’t have anything to say about something, I just write a general, informative post based on facts (with links to relevant sources.)
So – here’s a question for you. Let’s be honest here: Will you lie (even with the so-called white lie) to your readers?
