Blogging has become such a rage that not to consider it as a means of becoming a thought leader in your area of expertise seems naive.Blogging allows you to create a web presence reaching your buyers directly. You avoid a middle man and it is a cost effective way of promoting yourself and your services for free!
But the way you go about it deserves forethought and planning. Yes , you can you can use social media to voice your personal opinions, do some social networking and become a member of the on-line community, but before you do, read this cautionary tale.
I have a darling, smart friend who having completed her undergraduate degree, attended a Career Fair and snagged a job with a research and technology firm. The recruiter, impressed by her innovative ideas and her 4.0 average in journalism, made her the new editor of a “green” newsletter for their corporation.
Tossing her Birkenstocks aside, she purchased smart, sensible flats, carried a briefcase and worked continually putting out the company newsletter. She felt her life was just beginning -that is- until she stared blogging.
In the company newsletter, she maintained a corporate voice and but felt emotionally hamstrung and found herself surfing the web at night reading hilarious and fiercely opinionated blogs on-line. Blogging was the perfect personally- disguised vehicle to express the unfiltered “her.” She found her matrix; a no-holds- barred on- going conversation with an anonymous group of like- minded readers. Reading blogs became a welcome cocktail after spending the day behaving in the marketplace.
Now she felt it was her turn. Logistically, setting up a blog was easy.
Our girl followed the directions on the web and chose a service, customized her space by selecting some zany but sexy shots of herself and for a laugh posted a shot of her collection of Ms. Piggy paraphernalia.
She found herself blogging late into the night and she entered into, no, not the twilight zone, but a hip, edgy exchange where language is uncensored. She divulged funny and embarrassing office exploits – like getting a little drunk at the bar after work and doing an “on the dime” albeit, snarky imitation of the CEO’s erratic diatribes.
Other bloggers responded and before she knew it she was the new Carrie Bradshaw blogging about being sexy and single in the corporate scene with friends.
Sure, she alluded to some of the issues and concerns of the company but she also celebrated the collaboration and the company's break-through research.
Her first quarterly review was a rave there and there was talk of her attending graduate school and life couldn’t be better, until the following Monday morning when she was called to the CEO’s office and introduced to the company’s attorney.
Our girl Friday was reported for divulging company and propriety information in her blog. One of her colleagues recognized some company references while surfing the web and reported it to the front office. I guess he recalls the dead-on imitation of the CEO. Tracking her down was easy.
Pages of her blog lie on the conference room table where huge sections were circled in red and she winced upon seeing the face of the CEO as he glared at her quips, the 4x4s of her sexy poses and, oh god, the Ms. Piggy collection lay spotlighted out on the table.
She was no longer the company’s best Brand ambassador.
Without much ado, she packed up her things and before slinking out the door, she was informed no legal action would be taken if she signed a release form that states she had no hidden agenda and would cease blogging.
Legal action? Hidden agenda? She never realized the blog would even surface. “Surface?” the lawyer queries-“It is there for life.” Life? As in a life sentence? She promised to cease and desist blogging immediately.
Blogging, the once cozy conversations with strangers, had become a public flogging.
Our sadder but wiser heroine has become a Blog detonator! She called her college roommate and suggested she remove the shots of herself that limit her career to being a Playboy Bunny-- as a major in accounting she must know the Playboy mansions are no longer the rage.
She notified her cousin that his anarchistic quips about the government may prevent him from getting into Colgate and working with the Pentagon. She recommended to her Uncle that the shots of him dancing – dead drunk - at his daughter’s wedding come off Facebook in this precarious economy.
She learned hard and fast that once you put something on the web- It sticks- it just keeps coming up- in the most surprising of places. That wonderful feeling of anonymity is a false one- think 6 degrees of separation.
Remember you are writing in permanent ink once the hypnotic pull of truth- telling calls you. And as your fingers start dancing over the keys, know that you have now entered some place far stranger than the Twilight Zone – it’s Ground Hog day in Cyberspace.
Legal action? Hidden agenda? She never realized the blog would even surface. “Surface?” the lawyer queries-“It is there for life.” Life? As in a life sentence? She promised to cease and desist blogging immediately.
Blogging, the once cozy conversations with strangers, had become a public flogging.
Our sadder but wiser heroine has become a Blog detonator! She called her college roommate and suggested she remove the shots of herself that limit her career to being a Playboy Bunny-- as a major in accounting she must know the Playboy mansions are no longer the rage.
She notified her cousin that his anarchistic quips about the government may prevent him from getting into Colgate and working with the Pentagon. She recommended to her Uncle that the shots of him dancing – dead drunk - at his daughter’s wedding come off Facebook in this precarious economy.
She learned hard and fast that once you put something on the web- It sticks- it just keeps coming up- in the most surprising of places. That wonderful feeling of anonymity is a false one- think 6 degrees of separation.
Remember you are writing in permanent ink once the hypnotic pull of truth- telling calls you. And as your fingers start dancing over the keys, know that you have now entered some place far stranger than the Twilight Zone – it’s Ground Hog day in Cyberspace.
While blogs provide us with an avenue to share our perceptions, express our feelings and occasionally uncork our frustrations, they make public our observations. Though they remind us that we now have even greater means to express ourselves, they also remind us that sharing our honesty and insights in a democratic society is always subject to more scrutiny and has consequences...While blogs encourage us to reveal ourselves; they also remind us to be responsible for what we think and write. They remind us that there are consequences to our words.
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