I hope your Thursday is off to a good start. I’m at the SEM for SMB conference, and you can look forward to an upcoming post on all the things I’m learning about social media, and how that can be useful for freelancers.
In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about a freelance writer’s responsibility to manage her online persona well. Several of my friends are now bloggers, and we’ve chatted about how we have to sometimes edit ourselves when blogging.
After all, if you are a professional, a public blog should not be used as therapy. You don’t want potential or current clients thinking you’re unstable, irresponsible, lazy or any number of other qualities that might raise a red flag. For more on this, see yesterday’s post on Freelance Writing Jobs, “Confessions of a Freelance Writer: ‘I Blogged My Way Out of a Job.’”
Freelance writers who blog should present an online persona that is informative, but still approachable. I’m not saying to write like a robot. But, as a rule, I avoid those things that divide people, like religion and politics. What you post online stays there forever, so be sure to edit before hitting publish. And, if you’re a teacher, be sure to warn your students about the permanence of their online musings. Check out another Freelance Writing Jobs post on this, “Online is Forever.”
I was teaching high school English when MySpace started to really gain momentum. And, I told my students one day that teachers were able to view their MySpace profiles, which were mostly public. One student remarked, “You can’t look at that, that’s private!” That was in 2004, and I hope we’re all more aware now that online privacy is an oxymoron.
Image courtesy of stock.xchng
Thanks for the link “Confessions of a Freelance Writer…”! I’ve only come across your blog recently and am planning to spend the rest of my day going through it =)
Comment by joey — July 18, 2008 @ 2:15 am