What's the appropriate ratio of personal to professional posts?

If you are going to blog, be an expert...or at least act like one, but definitely don't be a person (yay sarcasm!)

Heather's "Marketing and Finance at Microsoft" Blog — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 21:57:05 GMT

From MarketingProfs.com, Susan Solomon writes about blogs that bore her. I agree with some of her points,...

re: What's the appropriate ratio of personal to professional posts?

John Dowdell — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 19:23:00 GMT

Agreed. One of the difficulties in any online conversation, though (not just via blogs) is that some do feel the need to "educate the world" on what is proper to believe. If they're propounding a view that you suspect may be destructive to others, then it's a tough choice of figuring out what the right thing to do actually is.... :(

re: What's the appropriate ratio of personal to professional posts?

Heather — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 01:42:00 GMT

John-I was recently taken to task by another blogger for recommending that people don't blog on things that are "super controversial" (ooops, I said I wasn't going to use that term anymore), but it's nice to see that I'm not alone.

Some people think "why would I want to work for a company that wouldn't let me say these things", but I see 2 additional issues:

first-the issue you raise. You really have to know the purpose of your blog and if it's to build community, some personal topics can be devisive and therefore destructive to your purpose.

second- and I wished I had piped in with this one before- is that some people are just not that open about their opinions. I have very strong political and religious opinions that I really share with a very few people. I guess I feel like I "could" air those things more publicly, but I don't want to and it has nothing to do with fearing for my job. It's just not who I am.

Frankly, there are a lot of things that I think I could get away with doing at Microsoft that I am not comfortable with. At the end of the day, I am responsible for staying close to the purpose of my blog and true to my personal comfort level.

Thanks for the reminder ; )

re: What's the appropriate ratio of personal to professional posts?

John Dowdell — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 22:21:00 GMT

Re: politics... it's one thing to reveal the person you are, but quite another to consciously introduce topics which you know will be divisive.

Political blogs per se are great, especially when they listen to each other rather than call each other names, but in this type of work we're trying to draw people together rather than drive them apart.

re: What's the appropriate ratio of personal to professional posts?

Michael Gartenberg — Sun, 20 Jun 2004 23:01:00 GMT

Of course I would. Cream cheesecake in fact with a graham cracker crust :)

Michael Gartenberg's Jupiter Weblog

TrackBack — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 00:22:00 GMT

OK, but you would send me a god cheesecake recipe if you had one right? Mmm, cheesecake ; ) Agree with your comments on politics and religion. It's not something I would feel comfortable blogging on either.

re: What's the appropriate ratio of personal to professional posts?

Heather — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 17:27:00 GMT

Sounds like consensus is that personal posts-enough to make your reader feel like they know you-are appropriate. I guess we all need to keep in mind though that nobody finds us as fascinating as we find ourselves ; ) Or as funny, evidently...

There are certain personal areas that I don't feel comfortable going into (politics, for example) that I know others do. So I guess subject matter---and the extent to which you'll get personal---varies by blogger.

re: What's the appropriate ratio of personal to professional posts?

William Luu — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 12:54:00 GMT

I think the correct ratio is up to your personal discretion. Basically, how much you want to give to your readership.

I've kept a personal blog for years, so my mistake at times is to over personalise some of my blog posts on my new blog. If anyway does read my blog, you'll probably notice a lot of my posts on topics have my own personal spin on it (not that it's hard to tell). But you know, you gotta have that human element on blogs.

Just look at Scoble, he posts about meets he does (like the geek dinner, the meet with the church guy, other blogs he reads, blog posts he finds interesting, and so on). A blog definately needs that personal touch, otherwise why blog?

I'd get bored of a blog if it was rather bland and no personal touch to it. It'll be just like picking up a magazine to read the articles. Doesn't really give you the view that there may actually be an individual there writing up the posts.

But of course, you don't want to go overboard with it. And you also don't want to be posting entries about topics you shouldn't be :)

re: What's the appropriate ratio

John Dowdell — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 00:21:00 GMT

I'd echo Jeremy's "people care" observation... there's value in getting a sense of the person behind the words. It's a way to evaluate what you're reading. Some exposure is very useful for readers.

Of course, there's a risk that what they will learn is "why should I waste my time reading this bozo any longer...?" ;-)

At Macromedia, about the most formal I've seen recommendations get was "don't blog about your breakfast", but I haven't seen anything more concrete.

It would likely vary with the particular blog, but for personal efforts that are seen in some type of association with the company, then making it easy, productive and fun for the reader seems like a strong goal. Does it reward the reader's time? We can reach different answers, but that seems to be the best question to ask, true...?

jd/mm

re: What's the appropriate ratio of personal to professional posts?

Jeremy C. Wright — Wed, 16 Jun 2004 20:55:00 GMT

I know you dont' consider me a corporate blogger (I'm not, I dont' write from an internal position), but I'm also not a personal blogger. I'm a topical blogger which, ultimately, puts me in with corporate bloggers.

Early on I found myself rarely saying anything personal. But, when I did, the response was always great. So, I do it whenever something comes up. New car, new baby on the way, major announcement...

And you know what? People care.

My readers read my blog (in my opinion) because of me. They can go to lots of other places to find business stuff. They can go to loads more for IT stuff. They can only come to my blog for me, and as such they get a dose of me mixed in.

That said, I have had users complain about how much personal stuff I post (not a lot, but definitely on occasion). So, I temper it. I try not to post too much at once. But, still, readers care.