Marketing a Home Business

The delicate balancing act between writing as a release and protecting your family’s privacy became even more complicated with the invention of the blog.  Once, your biggest worry was a wandering eye finding and reading your journal.  Now, if you blog, your journal is exposed to nearly 2.1 Billion people worldwide.

Most bloggers throw their words to the internet to connect with people in similar situations, share knowledge and seek advice.  It makes sense to write about daily challenges.  Making it too personal, however is unwise.  Here are some suggestions for venting without over sharing.

Make Your Blog Private

Invite friends and relatives to view it.  This allows for nearly 100% privacy as long as you trust your friends and family not to over share with their friends.  Another caveat:  if you want to make some cash with your blog, private is not an option.

Clever Concealment

I use aliases for my children and avoid posting pictures online. When it comes to aliases, the sky is really the limit.  I know of bloggers who use numbers for their children.  Some have nicknames like Pete and Repeat.  Be cute.  Be clever.  It’s all up to you.  I have aliases for my kids.  They work.  My kids know who they are.  My friends can figure out which kid is which.  The rest of the blogosphere hasn’t got a clue.

There are bloggers who have a strict no kids/ no photos rule.  I can’t stick with that myself but if it works for you, great!

Don’t Blog

Instead of flinging information out wide to the internet, find communities of like-minded, similarly situated folks and share on the message boards there.  Google your issue.  If there isn’t a community in existence that meets your needs, that looks like an opportunity!  Remember to require membership and watch carefully for spammers!

Write in Third-Person

Instead of “my son” use “a child I know”.  Your friends and family will still know who you’re referring to if you’re well-connected to them in real life but your child is not exposed to random blog readers.  This is the easiest way to keep confidentiality.

Respect the Anonimity of Your Kids

As your children get older, it may become more important to them that you not share their lives online.  For the sake of family harmony – because it will give your teens one less thing to be difficult about – please respect that.

Respect the Preferences of Your Spouse

Mine doesn’t always like my rants about his profession so I have learned to tone it down.  I do not always love what we refer to as “his other wife” but I’ve found other outlets for venting.

I know you’re thinking “BUT THIS IS MY BLOG!  Why can’t I write what I want?”.  The bottom line is that your family is more important than your blog.  If they ask you not to talk about them in the blogosphere, respect that.  There are other ways to vent and share.  Call a friend for a cup of coffee.  Walk the dog.  Anything that preserves family harmony and lowers your stress in healthy ways is a good choice.

From the creative blogging studio of Lisa Sharp. Lisa is an avid blogger who delights in delivering first class content by using first class tools like Grammarly grammar checker the most reliable grammar tool on the web.