I know. What's the point in having a blog if the whole world can't see it? Well, here's my dilemma:
Regardless of whether this is business or personal, imagine you've never met someone before. You begin interacting with that person over email. Pause. What do most of you do? I know you'll never admit it; but, you probably google or facebook them (if you use 'Google' and 'Facebook' as a verb, it's not capitalized). Unless they have a common name that is bound to bring up multiple hits or search results. However, the dilemma is not about Facebook, because I can control my Facebook profile access.
My dilemma is that in the course of my normal business practice, people who I've never met will inherently not trust me. I think it's the nature of most initial sales interactions. Naturally, they'll want to google me to find out more about me. They'll want to know if they can trust me. (Note: At this point some of you are assuming that I flatter myself into thinking people will google me. However, I actually have real statistics that verify this claim. 7.65% of visitors to my blog came from a Google search. Thank you, Google Analytics.)
So, my question is this: will my blog help people (maybe potential customers) trust me or will it hinder in that process? I've been thinking about this for a little while and I go back and forth. I just really want some additional opinions.
7 comments:
This article sums up my feelings so well even though it was written almost 15 years ago [before blogging was as popular as it is now] Your blog is such an inspiration and keeps me connected to you from a distance. I know you have the freedom to accept or disregard the posts that come through and I feel anyone - from the world - who visits your blog ends up going away uplifted. If you did go private as you've contemplated, please include your 64 followers... that is really only the tip of the iceberg - I am so thankful to call you my friend and hope any responses I've posted would reflect that. http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/27908/The-power-of-words.html
it will only help "humanize" you. leave it public. you have nothing to hide.
If you're blogging about sketchy things like how you got wasted the night before partying, then you should obviously be leery. However, I would imagine most people will see through your blog that you are an outstanding, trustworthy, uplifting individual. With the quality messages that you share, I would venture to guess that it would only help them trust, like and respect you even more once they see what you stand for. (Also, I bet you didn't know I read your blog... thanks for keeping it public. Glad to see you are up to such great things!)
I totally understand where you're coming from Adam. Here's what I think: you shouldn't have to worry much about leaving your blog public because what you post doesn't alienate people. But, in case you're still worried about being "googled" then you could change your url so that it isn't your name. Blogger also has a feature under the 'Settings' tab that allows you to choose if you want your blog to be searchable through search engines. You can change it to "no" if you don't want google to find you.
It might not be a bad idea to go private. But if you do, I want in please.
go private. I did. no regrets, my stuff isn't necessarily for the whole world tho. I don't have the kind of wisdom and insight you do :) hope all is well with ya brother
Elder Ruri... if you go private please oh please may we have top secret access? Hope all is going super well for you!
Love from,
alex and kelly xx
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