A colleague started a blog last month but I didn’t read any of their posts nor comment on what they were doing.
My time is more limited than it has been and my interest level was low. Blame that upon their poor email writing skills.
They lack structure, contain grammatical errors and serve as a tool for curing insomnia so I had limited reason to believe a blog would be an improvement.
Fate smiles upon the judgmental so I was paired with them for an assignment and they asked me if they remembered hearing that I had worked in marketing.
“Yes, I have some experience there.”
“I recently started writing one of those blogs people do. I want to use it to make money. I am going to make some Tik-Tok videos and do some other stuff that I’ll place there. But I need to get people to read it. Could you look at it and tell me what you think. I need to know how to promote it.”
I told him to remember some people are internet famous and that doesn’t translate into income.
“Hell you could be talking to the greatest dad blogger you never read.”
“What is a dad blogger?”
I reframed and refocused the conversation about the task that pays the bills and let the opportunity to market myself go.
Anonymity
I am semi-anonymous online and that is mostly by choice. Some of you know my name and some have broken bread in-person multiple times.
Most of that is by choice, but there are a few who found out through other means and though there are good stories tied into that we’ll set them aside for the moment.
There are more than 10,000 posts in this blog on a wide variety of topics and a limited upside to being read for professional colleagues.
Should they be found I am confident and comfortable with having a discussion about them but my preference is to not engage.
We’re living in a time in which people are less tolerant and more sensitive on a wide variety of topics and I am sometimes a blunt instrument in my approach.
Why engage and risk irritation if I don’t have to.
That is tied into why this blog doesn’t have pictures of my family or the names of my children. They are entitled to living their own lives and creating their own digital footprints.
It would have been more profitable for me to take a different approach.
Had I used their names and pictures I could have gotten more brand ambassadorships, more sponsorships and more opportunities to become a bigger brand.
That is not how I roll and I know too many stories about other bloggers whose children are irritated about the stories.
It is also why I slowed down on some of the stories as they aged.
My oldest was 3 when I started this and they’ll be 22 this year. If people search for them online they will not find stories they can identify as belonging to him and I am good with that.
My baby will be going to college in the fall. She has no reason to worry about admissions officers turning her down or commenting on anything written about her.
She hasn’t done anything that would serve as grounds for not being accepted but you never know what or how people will interpret things.
Bottom line is my job isn’t to just teach them how to grow up and be good people, it is to protect them however I can…forever.
Most of that has gone through the natural evolution that comes with their not being little children anymore.
They don’t live a life in which they are enveloped in bubble wrap or prevented from taking risk.
Sometimes that is hard because I have seen them make choices I think are questionable, but I let it go because that is how you learn.
They have done a stellar job overall. But you never stop worrying completely and that is ok, it comes with the job description.
Hi Mitch,
When I got into blogging I was swept up in it. It restored my love of writing so I went crazy pumping out content and playing with Google to see if what I wrote would send more traffic my way.
Had no limits and no boundaries and since I covered anything and everything I got into it a bit on religion and politics with people who didn’t like what I had written. Always found it funny because no one was obligated to visit and though I had an ok amount of traffic it wasn’t like I was influencing significant numbers of people.
Anyhoo, the whole kid thing is important to me because I prefer them to have the ability to be judged on who they are not some post(s) their dad wrote.
That is solid advice on the blogging friend.
I find this intriguing on many levels. I’ve written on lots of topics, but I’m nowhere close to 10K on any blog (I’m around 6K across the board, but that includes articles I’ve been paid to write for others). I don’t care if someone comes across an older blog post and wants to talk about it, no matter what it is (although there’s a time limit to commenting because of spammers; those weasels!).
Even now, or especially now, I don’t care if someone wants to comment on any topic, nice or not, as long as they’re respectful and actually talking about what I wrote (nasty spammers again, ruining everything). The only concern that’s ever come up was from a cousin who saw something I shared on FB concerning my mother, who passed in September but also had dementia for years. She asked why I was sharing such information online; I said because no one has anything to be ashamed about and because it might help someone who’s been feeling alone to realize they’re not alone and it’s okay to talk about.
Life might have been a little different if I’d had kids, since I’ve always said it’s up to us to protect the privacy of our loved ones. I did use my ex in many articles as a lead in to my topic, and a few times I used pictures of us together… but I never used her name, and she wasn’t anywhere else on the web; I knew there were limits.
As for your friend and his horrible writing… I’ve also been there, and my rule of thumb is to offer a bit of advice ONCE, check on it a month later (if they’re still writing), and decide if I’ll visit again or leave and never go back. After all, I figure that’s what friends do.