Blog naked? I am not talking about you wear or don’t wear while in front of your computer, but how much do you choose to expose of yourself to the world as you blog. On the class message board, several students have been expressing concern about how much of themselves that they want to share with the Internet world and that is important consideration that each blogger needs to weigh. This isn’t just a concern for beginning bloggers but experienced bloggers  as they weigh the pros and cons of sharing themselves online. Sonia Simone at CopyBlogger was inspired by last week’s Biz School for Bloggers to write a great post on this topic, titled Feel Great Naked.  She does a great job of offering hints about protecting yourself and the ones you love while providing a convincing argument about how it is the personal aspects of blogging that engage your reader. She also touches on the use of aliases and gives examples of professionals who have opted to work under a pseudonym.

We have been talking about using an alias on the class message board and I cover it this week’s lesson. You can develop an online persona for a number of reasons. The primary reason is to protect your identity. There are two factors to consider. The first that is if the only thing that you change is your name, what you write about will often give your readers clues about you like the region/city that you live, the composition of your family, your lifestyle, your socioeconomic background etc.  I use one of my aliases “Frumpz” on a review blog. Generally readers won’t know that Bean Fairbanks is Frumpz but after reading the fourth post on Washington wine, Seattle restaurants and/or Seattle events, they probably can figure out that I am in the Seattle area. I am quite comfortable with that level of exposure. The review blog would be meaningless if I chose to hide the locations of the reviews.

The second factor to consider is what will I do if I develop this online persona and I want to do more with it. This something regular authors struggle with when they are known for one style of writing but want to try something very different under a different name.  They may choose this due to a fear of failure or a fear of alienating their current fans. What do you do when that new writing style takes off  and your publisher wants you on tour and your face on the book jacket? Related to this is that blogging is more than just writing posts, it is about gaining authority to attract readership. How will this online persona promote the blog? Will you use this persona to comment on other blogs and build a reputation? I often use another persona online when I am promoting women’s health issues and relationships.  Gender, health, sexuality and relationships can be “hot button” topics. That persona could talk about my experiences as working as a patient model for the medical school. I probably don’t really want potential customers or students to base their decision to hire me on the fact that I use my (naked) body to teach physical exams, I want them to base their hiring decision on my technical and business skills. The persona that I use to develop authority in health promotion is different than the one I use to teach computer and business skills.

Oops! I just put information on an official business blog about something that I said I might not want students to know. In actuality, I thought about the disclosure and I felt OK about it. I made a purposeful choice to disclose that personal information because I decided that served the blog post in two ways. First, it was a real life example of using alternate personas for different aspects of who I am. Notice I did not give you the name of that persona. Truthfully if you REALLY searched for it you might find it but not without some serious work on your part. Secondly, that disclosure demonstrated a conscious choice on my part to share information that gives you more information as a teacher. I don’t just teach online computer classes, I also have taught for years at the medical school and the naturopath university. Maybe, just maybe, that gave me more authority in your eyes and built my reputation in your eyes. I gambled. It might have backfired. You might think that is too weird that your instructor sometimes teaches naked (well I am wearing a hospital gown so I might as well be naked!) or someone that teaches in a medical school is going to be too technical of a teacher for this course or… Your comments to this post will let me know if my gamble paid off.

As Sonia points out, it is the personal information that hooks us. It allows us to connect with the author in a different way and we often care more about what they say. The trick is to do it as a well informed decision versus a slip of the keyboard mid rant. I really stress planning your blog in the first week of class so you can make some of these choices. Sonia stresses the need for planning as well.

Don’t wing it. Sit down and work out, in writing, exactly what you will and won’t talk about. Maybe you’ll talk about old boyfriends but not your current husband, or you’ll say anything about your parents but nothing about your kids. Decide exactly where you draw the line, and live by that.

If you write a post that goes over your particular line, you can edit it and save the personal stuff for your private journal, or sleep on it (at least two nights, ideally) and post it anyway. Either way, you’ll have made a conscious decision.

Sonia says use your personal journal but you can also password protect the post as another option. The other thing that she stresses and with which I agree is that you share only what is yours, and not some one’s elses story.

As covered in the lesson, there is a huge spectrum of private to public online. In the lesson I mentioned some people have lost their jobs due to their blogs. The most famous is Heather (Hamilton) Armstrong whose blogging about being fired made her famous Heather not only blogs “naked”, she runs down the street naked waving a banner saying LOOK AT ME!. She says whatever is on her mind and is not shy about sharing her thoughts and prejudices in colorful language and humor. Her blog Dooce is not for the thin skinned or faint of heart. Sometimes I think it aometimes goes towards Too Much Information (TMI) but it also so popular that she was just on the Today show and her blog supports her entire family so the parents can stay at home with the kids.

Not all successful blogs have a personal element, but many do. This includes business as well as personal blogs. Businesses that can bare their mistakes and show the actions that they have taken to remedy the situation gain trust and customer loyalty.  It will be up to you decide how personal in nature your blog will be overall and on a post by post basis.

Prizes are a time honored gimmick to promote events and businesses, but do they work? The short answer is sometimes. Recently Rachelle Chase did an online promotion by giving away three copies of Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging by Lorelle VanFossen  To be eligible for the prize, her readers were asked to add a comment about what they like or dislike to read. She had about thirty people post their comments.

There are three groups of cost and benefit here: blog readers, Rachelle and Lorelle. Let’s look at the blog readers first. Obviously, three of them won a new book. About half of them had links to their blogs with their comments. This gave their blogs additional exposure.  Rachelle looked at their blogs and some of her readers looked at their blogs. The cost to the readers was minimal. Basically, the cost was the time involved in writing their comments.

Rachelle’s cost is basically the shipping on the three books. Her benefits? Other bloggers posted about her contest. I heard about the contest on another blog and it directed other readers to her blog. She had about 30 people that posted. The other third of the comments were from Rachelle and Lorelle, and part of their “cost”.

Lorelle’s cost was her three books and, as mentioned above, the time to respond to the readers. Her main benefit is the increased exposure to her book and to her blog. It was at least the 30 readers that commented but we don’t know how many read the post, learned about her book and/or visited her blog.

Rachelle provided additional benefit to all three groups by her topic selection. Her prize was a book for bloggers. So, she picked a topic of interest of bloggers. Her reader-bloggers, Lorelle and herself all gained the benefit of information about blog turn ons and turn offs. Although a couple of comments contradicted each other, definite themes emerged.

Was it worth it? Take a look at the comments on Rachelle’s post and let me know what you think. Did all three parties gain more than they spent?

Professional bloggers work around the clock to stay on top of their competition. Often the first person to post the scoop is the one that wins. That is the post that makes the top of the list and garners thousands,  sometimes even hundreds of thousands of hits.  This insistent pressure to be the first is taking its toll, particularly on professional bloggers that are paid by the piece. Two professional bloggers have died of heart attacks in the past year, and their fellow bloggers are taking notice. Working from home doesn’t mean low stress. Advertising dollars is often a cut throat business and that is true for blogging for advertising dollars.  According to an article in today’s New York Times, bloggers that work as contractors or employees for media outlets are feeling the crunch as their pay may be based not only the post but on the number of hits that their post generates. Independent bloggers who have created their own media outlets are not immune.

“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”

Other professional bloggers complain of sleep deprivation, relationship issues, poor health and weight gain.  Hmm sounds like many a workaholic to me. The key is balance. Like others driven to succeed and to be the best, sacrifices are made. Only the individual can decide when the sacrifices are too great.  For me, with my limited energy and disability, I am delighted when my revenue pays my web hosting bill. If there is enough that month to sample and review another couple of bottles of wine, that is all good too!