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By Anonymous. By a Character.

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After the recent spate of character blogs in the PR space, I started thinking about character and anonymous blogs. Which are not that terribly different, in concept and in execution.

There are good reasons to use both forms. And both can be abused, to the overall detriment of blogging.

Let’s start with the good reasons. Anonymity. If you are in real danger.. for your life. If your company discourages blogging of any sort, on or off the clock (boo hiss), but you have something to say. Not about your company but maybe your life or your hobbies or your politics. Doesn’t matter. When attribution is dangerous, anonymity makes sense.

It also makes establishing credibility a bit harder. WHO are you and why should I trust you? More on that in a minute.

Character blogs are not that terribly different from anonymous blogs (and vice versa). Someone creates a character as the blog voice. Or they leverage an existing popular character as the voice. The writer isn’t "real."  [To some degree, all of  us create a blogging persona, but the more closely aligned your true self is to your blog self, the better off you will be in the long run. ]

I digress.

A character blog is extremely hard to do well. The blogosphere is conditioned to expect a real voice, and when it is a created persona, it reacts. Sometimes belatedly, but in the end, characters with unclear attribution are not well accepted. Bloggers want to know who you are. Are you credible? Do you have real authority in your blog-space, or is your authority as imaginary as you are?

 Now, in my opinion, character blogs can work, although we haven’t seen that many examples. Yet.

But they have to be honest. At a minimum, they have to be up front that this is a CHARACTER. And clear about the objectives. The best example is Manolo the Shoe Blogger. Manolo is all about the shoes. Yes, there are gossipy type posts, but everybody who reads this blog knows: it is about selling shoes. Full stop.

So anonymity and characters can work. They can also fail spectacularly.

Anonymity and characters fail when they are used as a screen for venom and bile. When the writer uses the form to deliver criticism without credibility. Absent being in danger for their life, when someone criticizes something, we want to know who they are, and what gives them the right.

That’s why companies typically frown on anonymity, even in internal blogs. A student in one of my recent workshops shared that her company actively encouraged internal employee blogging but would not permit anonymous blogging. Employees had to have the courage of their convictions.

By far, the worst evil is the character blog that does not admit it is a character nor provide us with information about the people behind the character.

When a blog is anonymous, we evaluate the content and make an assessment about credibility. When someone starts a character blog, and tells you upfront that it is a character, we make a decision about information and entertainment value.

But a blog that pretends to be written by a real person. Clouded in pretense and falsity? A fake persona?  Crystally clearly false, and definitely far from  honest and transparent. 

So, blog anonymously or as a character if that is your best or only choice. But if you can, speak up as yourself, or at least as the author of your character. And don’t use your blog to advance a vendetta, settle a score or just to stir things up. Try to contribute a positive voice to the conversation.

Truly, it is just as much fun.

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Are bloggers public figures?

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This week, the blogosphere has been a-buzz with two brouhahas that raise an interesting question about how we define a public figure. 

In the PR corner, we had  l’affaire smurfette, a gossip blog which targeted Steve Rubel and Edelman PR in its initial attacks. In the tech corner, we saw a series of increasingly personal attacks on well-known Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble following  the Windows Vista "announcement."

I’m not going to rehash the details of either of these issues. I’ve said what I had to say about the PR gossip blog. And I didn’t read all the Scoble stuff — there was just so much, and a lot of it just junk. Suffice it to say that criticism is one thing, personal attacks are another. Some of the comments I saw on Scoble’s blog were completely beyond the pale — they weren’t criticism, they were out and out attacks. What is the point of commenting in someone’s blog that you aren’t going to read it anymore? If you don’t like the neighborhood, don’t go. Just stop reading. If you want some more background, check out these posts from Naked Conversations and Neville Hobson.

Anyway, moving on from the details of these dust-ups, there is an interesting issue underlying both situations. Gary Goldhammer first posed the question in relation to the smurfette blog and Steve, but it is equally applicable to Scoble: are very well known bloggers  public figures, and as such, subject to a level of public scrutiny that normally we would call an invasion of privacy? In other words, negative attacks.

The possibility of negative attacks is one of the most oft-cited reasons why companies don’t embrace blogging (mentioned by John Wagner in the comments). Companies are afraid that having/putting their employees in a public venue opens them up to negative attacks. And they are right. It might. Might not. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t embrace blogging. They should. For all the reasons we all know.

But we truly haven’t given enough attention to the fact that if you blog publicly (not anonymously), you are a public figure. Full stop. Some may be more famous than others, but the minute you post, you are part of the public record. What you say can be used "fer you or aginst you" and you can’t control it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the only off the record comment is the one you haven’t uttered or written. Once it’s out there, it can go ever so far. Think of all the folks — a to z list — that have gotten into unexpected hot water because they just weren’t prepared for the impact of their blogged statements or actions. They didn’t realize that once they blogged it, they were no longer private citizens with personal opinions. It was public, baby. Subject to all sorts of new rules that most folks just aren’t prepared for.

What should we do? I’ve mentioned this in past. I think companies should give their employees who blog (whether personally or for the company) some basic communications training to help them deal with the fact that they are now quasi-public figures. When you blog under your own name, you own it. Forever. Most employees in a firm have never been in this position, and the first time they get roasted, it is going to hurt. Help them prepare. That doesn’t mean stifling or controlling their words. It means helping them understand how their posts will impact others so they can make an informed decision about what they write.

This kind of training would be at least as (and probably more)  valuable than the usual corporate orientation.

Thoughts?

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Women PR bloggers don’t like stereotypes

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This is the least pleasant post I have ever written. But I am going to write it anyway. Because I am really pissed off, and this is my blog.

Male PR bloggers: do you understand that the reason so many of your female peers are less than impressed with the blog that rhymes with Smurfette is not the digs at Steve or BL. They are big kids, they can handle it. It is the negative stereotype of women that drives us to distraction.

We have worked very hard in our careers, and are proud of our achievements. We have dealt with the "she’s too pretty," "not pretty enough," "aggressive," "too soft," "sleeping with the boss," "going to get married and have kids anyway," not to mention the glass/plexiglass ceiling and have been successful despite the roadblocks. With all due respect, there is absolutely no way a businessman can understand the issues faced by a businesswoman. In any industry.

And that is why many of us were less than pleased with the stereotyped persona of the PR gossip blog that has consumed so much attention this week. It was everything we have worked so hard to overcome. It was hard to believe that another woman wrote it. Oh, wait a minute..maybe it wasn’t a woman. And I don’t really care who wrote the damn blog, it’s the stereotype that does the damage. That it might be a man perpetuating his wet dream just makes it even more disgusting.

Yet the coverage in the blogosphere has been focused on the digs, and has (for the most part) ignored the women bloggers. Just today more than a few  posts that were really really  trying to be even handed still only represented the opinions of men on this topic. Pardon me, but yuck.

So let’s hear from the women PR bloggers. What did they think of this PR gossip blog? Oh.. wait a minute. None of us fell for this crap. We thought it was … crap.  Hmmm.

And to give credit where credit is due, more than a few guys stepped up to the plate.They got it. Robert French. Todd Defren. Daniel Bernstein. Gary Goldhammer. Mike Krempasky. Thanks.

The rest of you? We still like you, but get with the program.

And Amanda. She (or he) just keeps insulting other women. In her/his/its blog and in comments on others. So pardon me, but fuck off until you have the guts to attach your real name to your opinions. Google Amanda Chapel.

PS – this replaces the post I promised to write about neutering my dog if the smurfette blogger proved to be male. Uncross your legs, guys, we’re not looking for you….

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Gossip

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Not interested in gossip.

Don’t read gossip blogs. Any of them.

Boring.

What people do is far more interesting to me than who they may be doing.

People publicly standing up for what they believe in and taking responsibility for their actions. Now, that’s interesting.

Update: Go to infOpinions and New Millenium PR for the best posts to-date on the recent PR gossip blog. I can’t possibly say it any better so I won’t even try.

2d Update: I was really trying to NOT write about this PR gossip blog apparently originating in Chicago, but I’ve failed. It still won’t be any better than Robert’s and Andrea’s (above) but what the hell. 

I’ve been having a bit of a "comment-sation" over at Below the Fold about this, and I finally got a clear picture about why I disliked both the concept and the execution of this blog. It’s not the potshots that are the problem. The target of the nastiness is a big boy and I’m sure he can handle it. In fact, he did, with incredible grace, in this post.

And I like snark. Have been known to write a snarky post myself from time to time.

What turns me off here? Three things. First, the anonymity. Take your shots in public, please. Second, take a shot at an A-lister, fine, but make it about something of substance. A fake office pool on when he might "separate" from his employer? Not so interesting to me. Others may like gossip. To each his/her own.

And finally, the persona. Not a terribly positive image of professional women, and forgive me for stating what should be obvious, but women DO care about that. And men should too.

I know some people like the idea of a blog that humorously deconstructs the PR industry. If "rhymes with Smurfette" (well done, Steve) does that for you, enjoy. I’ll be reading something else.

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Les blogs francais (French blogs)

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This morning, I received the most delightful email from new PR blogger Philippe Cherel announcing his blog, PR.ojet Z, and thanking a number of PR bloggers (myself included, merci Philippe) for inspiring him in his blog endeavor.

He also mentions the same list in his inaugural public post today. Lucky for us though, he has been blogging away for about three months and has a nice collection of posts for us to dig into!

Inspired by a student in my recent blog workshop who asked if most blogs were in English, I had recently decided that it was time to expand my blog horizons beyond English language blogs.  Since the only other language I speak (relatively) fluently is French, PR.ojet Z  fits nicely into my daily reading and hopefully will help me brush up on my business vocabulary. Last time I lived in France for any length of time was the early 80s, well before the "PC revolution." And I was a student, so my day-to-day vocabulary is (was) decent but I really don’t have a great grasp on professional and tech terms.

The other French language blog I am reading regularly  is "De Quoi Je Me M.E.L." the blog of Michel Edouard Leclerc, the head of French supermarket/hypermarket group E. Leclerc. The name of his blog is great — both his initials and a play on words. The verb "meler"  in the form above roughly translates to: "What I meddle with." In English, we’d probably say, what I stick my nose into. And Leclerc definitely pulls no punches in his opinions. For candor, his US counterpart is probably Mark Cuban, although they talk about very different things. Leclerc also doesn’t strike me (at least so far) as a ranter, which Cuban can be from time to time.

UPDATE 4/2: I am getting slammed with porno trackbacks to this post, so both trackbacks and comments have been closed. Sorry. Send me an email if you have a comment or a link and I will add it manually.

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