Here’s a challenge many bloggers face — say you blog on topics based on your experience. Now that experience may be a result of your profession and a day job or it could be the based on life experience and your personal life. Now, often these lines between the blog life and personal or professional life seem to blur and we find ourselves writing about things that impacted us or happened to us. The problem is that often these events involve other people. Not companies, institutions or political parties, but people.
And people is where things become complicated. A recent storm has erupted over a teacher who blogged about her students and in the process said some rather unflattering things and used language not expected of a high school teacher. Now the school teacher thought her blog was private, meaning that only her family and friends cared to read it. She didn’t realize her students had discovered it, until it was too late.
But I want to step back from the teacher’s situation and ask all of you to take a serious look at what you say and do in your blog and how that could affect your personal life or those around you. Professional bloggers don’t necessarily believe that their blog is private. In fact, we often strive to accomplish the opposite and create a very public presence. But often we write under screen names and sometimes we assume those protect our privacy. But often that little screen of privacy fails and people discover the real identity behind the blog. When that happens, you want to make sure that you haven’t said anything to embarrass yourself or those important to you.