Blogs: Things to Consider When Blogging on Social Networks

By Rodney Brooks, on February 28th, 2010

Social Networks

Blogs and blogging, are becoming increasingly widespread and social networks are also becoming more and more popular as well.

These networks include popular websites such as Facebook and MySpace.Com, where users can create personal websites and interact with other users.

They include a broad range of components including text, images, audio, video and blogs.

Here, users can voice their opinions, provide updates on their lives, offer insight into current events or accomplish any number of other goals.

However, bloggers who employ social networks to maintain their blogs, have to consider various factors.

This article will discuss some of these factors including whether to make your site accessible to the public or keep it private, considering the audience and dealing with harassment.

Should I make my blog public or private?

Most social networks enable you to render your website either public or private. Private websites are only accessible to the user and other users you specifically approve to view your website, while public websites are available to all users of the system.

These same capabilities also apply to the blogs which are maintained on these networks. For this reason, you must determine whether or not you wish to make your blog posts available to the entire network or to only a part of it.

This decision will be largely based on a matter of personal preference. Social networks can be quite populated and some bloggers may be uneasy about their information being available to such a considerable audience, while others may have no apprehension about the size of the prospective audience at all.

You should carefully consider this option prior to starting and always maintain the option to modify these settings after the blog has been established, in case you change your mind about your original decision.

Consider the blog audience

Bloggers who utilize these vast networks, must also carefully consider the potential audience for their blog. The majority of social networks include a broad cross section of the general public. Therefore you must be aware of this audience when posting and should consider how the entries will be interpreted by the audience.

While it will never be possible to get around offending all potential audience members, you may want to consider at least attempting to ensure the blog entries you post are appropriate for all members of the network. If this is not viable, you can consider making it private.

How to deal with harassment

Another aspect you should be aware of when using social networks, includes the potential for harassment from other members.

This can be in the form of impertinent comments posted in response to blog entries.

Depending on the degree of the harassment, you may elect to either ignore these comments or take stronger measures. You should reassess the policies of the network and solicit their assistance in dealing with harassment from other users.

In most cases dealing with the problem may be as easy as blocking the user from making comments on the blog, but in a few cases, it may be necessary to communicate with the administrators in an attempt to get the user banned from the system.

In this situation, the administrators will examine the situation and make a decision regarding whether or not the user has violated their terms of service.

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