The negative effects of blogging…

I heard you gasp! How can I think that there is a negative side of blogging AND I dare to blog about it? Give me the chance to explain.

Blogging has a wonderful quality to it, first it’s a more personal way to interact online, it’s pretty similar to a conversation and that is the reason it becomes viral, people read blog posts, they leave comments, create pings and trackbacks, then they comment about them in various places: message forums, social networking sites, Twitter, etc, and before you realize your blog posts are everywhere and that is AWESOME! Right? That is what we are want to create!

But this quality can also be a double sided knife so as with anything, you should be blogging smart… carefully plan what you want to accomplish before you start a blog, AND before each blog post. Here’s why:

1. You’re leaving a “paper” trail – OK, I heard about this precisely this morning! What it means is this, if you started a blog for your business opportunity XYZ and then 2 months later, you were no longer with that company and started another blog for the new company ABC you joined, and it didn’t work either (like it happens) and now you’re blogging for your fabulous new company 123, even when you shut down the blogs and cancel those accounts, if someone googles your name or keywords related to those blogs you created in the past  ALL those attempts could show up in the Google search results! Yes, even after many years.This jumping from one “best opportunity ever” to the other could give your readers the impression that you lack focus, are indecisive, don’t know what you’re doing… and that is exactly what we DON”T want! We want to be perceived as experts!
2. Your blog is a reflection of who you are – A blog is your own voice! People are reading what YOU have to say about a particular topic so you need to be careful not to ruin your reputation by being too controversial, rude, use obscene words, etc. You want to be yourself, you want your readers to get a taste of your personality, and feel like they know you, but you must always be professional and respectful.
3. You need to keep it fresh – Blog readers (and Goggle and other search engines by the way) are always searching for new content. They expect to read something new and they expect to read it frecuently, a stale blog will not help you in your marketing efforts and could give the impression that you are not as reliable, serious about your business or up to date as your competitors who post on their blog 5 times a week!If you suffer from  “TBFTS” (Total Block for Finding Topics Syndrome) you better find a cure for it. Check Yahoo news every morning and see what people are talking about, try to find a way to relate what happens to you in real life with your business or products, use Adwords keyword suggestion tool so see what the most popular searches are, talk to business partners, ask other people what unanswered questions they might have related to your business, industry or products.

So basically, the best quality of blogging can also work against you and your online business if you are not careful, but now that we know all this…  what are you still doing here? Let’s blog!

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About Mariangie - She lives in Puerto Rico where she works full time as an Agronomist, owns a home based business since 2004 and is the proud mother of 2 bright kids (and 2 cute cats).

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