This is a continuation of the thread I started with yesterday’s post: The risks of blogging.
One concern that people have about blogging is that, with your words out there on the internet, and forever enshrined in Google’s memory banks, what you say can come back to haunt you.
Here’s my take on that:
First, that works both ways. If you make a mistake, it may be a public one, especially if you don’t follow up wisely when it’s pointed out. Then people will come out of the woodwork to watch you self-destruct. But you also have a public record of all the smart things you said. You are building a portfolio, a relationship, a body of work, in a sense. In my opinion, the people who really have to worry about this problem are those who don’t have anything to say, have something to hide, or are just more of the “same old, same old.”
Maybe you see that something you wrote is being twisted and used against you, that’s when having a blog is a great strategy. If someone takes a quote out of context, or takes a cheap shot at you, you can write about it. You can point to the post and show how your opponent is giving out false information. One reason that Mark Cuban started his BlogMaverick personal weblog is because he was tired of having his words filtered through reporters or misquoted, or of having 2 hours of interview cut to 500 words. (Source: I Want Media: One Question, as quoted in Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright (great book!).
Blogging is a great way to give your side of any misunderstandings.
There’s no way you can control what negative things people may say about you, whether you’re blogging or not. As any professional writer can tell you, people will take your words and run them through their internal filters. Even in the best of circumstances, what comes out is different from what you wrote. The only way to avoid that is to not do anything, not strive for anything, not be anything.
What you can control is how you react to those issues. And blogging is one more tool to use to counter negatives, when done in the right way. (more…)
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