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What not to blog--Part 2 (from my colleagues)

May 10, 2008


In the last post, I explored my own blogging off switch. 

In this post I report back on what happened when I asked my Twitter buddies to contribute their own what-not-to-blog advice.

My buddy Ken, who works with me at Springfield as our CFF coach, advises that we try not to blog about horizontal-striped fashion as it will lead people to bad clothing choices that make them look larger than they may really be.  (He took the what-not-to theme a little too seriously.)

I asked him to focus.  For Ken, this was a tall request, but he eventually responded:

• You probably shouldn't blog negatively about your employer unless you are able to provide a positive alternate to whatever issue you are addressing.  Don't just do the problem post, do the problem and solution post. 
• You want to have your post function as a resource--internally to help your place of employment. Or, your post can serve as an external resource for your readers to explore or implement an idea.
• Don't blog from an uninformed state and don't blog about something that you're not prepared to defend. Chip and Dan Heath's book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, quotes a well-known military warning, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." Similarly, says Ken, no post survives contact with the reader.  You have to continually be in read-and-react mode. You can't predict with any certainty the varying reactions of a diverse readership.  You can't expect to blog in a vacuum.  Don't blog without backup. And be aware of the opposite reaction. 
• Don't blog with irresponsible adjectives. Or expect reaction when you use even slighly controversial adjectives.  Ken recalls, one edublogger described one of his classes as weak. He found himself having to defend his use of that word against 40-odd comments, even though every one of his commenting readers knew what his realistic shorthand meant. Ken advises: adjectives spawn contention, far more contention than do unmodified nouns.  Some adjectives are bound to provoke discussion. Pick your adjectives with care.

Michael Baker says, don't post more than audience is willing to read. Don't use specific names of individuals/group if post is too negative.  

Cathy Nelson says she avoids posting:

Specifics about school or work, especially if it might be misinterpreted by readers who work with you.

Cathy advises:

• If you feel emotionally tied to a post, have someone else read it to see if it reads that way.  (Recently a blogger used a post to state feelings and opinions, seemingly stomping all over others' feelings in the process.  The blogger's complaint is that everyone is not focusing on the topic at hand.  Perhaps if others had proofed it, the post may have come out with the point being the emphasis, rather than a lot of emotion and room for misinterpretations.)
• Don't blog when angry.  It will come out in the post.
• Don't blog with retaliation in mind.
• If you post to a blog and then realize it was not a good idea, don't delete, but rather edit it out, and replace with a note that the post was removed by the author.  Visitors sometimes come to a blog b/c an email from a friend, a tag, or from their reader.  It is disappointing to find that 404-not found error.  A more polite a professional way to undo a post you regret is to edit the contents of that post with a simple statement that it was removed, and close the comments.

In the what-to-do category, Cathy says:

One thing I really ADORE about Doug Johnson is that when you comment on his blog, he ALWAYS responds as a comment to you on his post, but also emails you a copy.  It takes a little extra effort, but at least you know he saw it and responded to it.  I even asked him once if his blogging platform automatically emailed a person if he responded to their comment, and he confessed no, it was just good manners and his upbringing that made him feel obligated to do it.  What a KIND and thoughtful person--even if his posts and commentary are sometimes funny, sarcastic, and use flavorful language!!

Ed tech consultant Linda Braun thinks about the what-not-to-blog issue all the time . . .

Partly because many of my students are on Twitter and partly because when I blog professionally it's through the YALSA lens and not a personal Linda-as-librarian lens (or Linda-as-human being lens).   Some of the things I struggle with/think about before posting on either the YALSA blog or Twitter are:

• How much can I push the envelope when it comes to the audience that the blog/microblog is geared towards.  For example, often I start to write about topics that are of interest to me professionally but I realize, as I'm writing, that others might not be interested - either because they aren't thinking about technology in the same way or because they don't have the same kind of personal/professional investment.
• Related to the above, I ask myself whether or not the post will actually turn people off in some way as opposed to helping them to gain understanding or think about something in a new way.  I have pretty strong opinions about libraries and how they serve and don't serve youth. But, if I feel like a post might antagonize people so that they won't be able to pay attention, then I don't publish it.
•  That isn't to say that I don't sometimes try to be intentionally provocative. I often post things that push boundaries - as I mention above - but I want to make sure that the push is made in a way that gets people to think and doesn't turn them off entirely.
• Will I be presenting myself in a way that is not appropriate within an educator and/or professional context.  For example, since students read my Twitter, I'm really careful about tweeting messages related to things I'm doing with friends or info. that has to do with behaviors that might seem unprofessorial. However, that doesn't mean that I don't tweet about movies, music, etc.  I think it's OK to talk about personal interests as long as they don't get into things related to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. (Does that make sense?)
•  Related to all of this, in the early days of the YALSA blog I tried very hard to write all the posts without using "I."  It seemed to me that I didn't want to present the info. as something personal to me.  However, I've changed my ideas on that and have decided that the use of I does make the blog personal and helps to connect with readers.

An academic librarian said to me recently that she has a Facebook as Shannon the librarian and not a Facebook that is for the library. Her thought is that students like to connect with the librarian as a person and not the library as a non-personal entity. 

I also believe that readers of blogs and microblogs want to connect with the content on a personal level - even if it is professional - so as a blog author I want to have a personality that readers can connect to in some way. (Even if it is she is so annoying.)

Some very cool advice, buddies! 

Meme:

So I ask the larger edublog community, without any specific pointing, when does your own off switch turn on?

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Posted by Joyce Valenza Ph.D on May 10, 2008 | Comments (3)