Maintaining a Professional Image As a Blogger, a Post by R. Clint Peters

I was recently asked what was necessary to become a blogger/web master/Internet guru.  The person asking the question was a gamer, and wanted to show off his expertise by creating a blog where he could detail his experiences.

I thought about it for a while, and then replied that the number one necessity was to be professional.

As a blogger, what does that entail?  What does a blogger do to create and maintain a professional image?

First, being a professional blogger is not limited to blogging.  Being professional is a requirement in all forms of your communication with your present and future blogging public.

A few weeks ago, I discovered a blog site dedicated to marketing the books of subscribing authors.  Each subscriber posting something twice a week for a few weeks did the marketing.  The post could be a Tweet, or even on their own blog.

I thought this was a great idea, until I got a series of correction emails.  The blog master had sent out an incorrect link to something, and now had to correct the error.  In the first two or three weeks, there were several errors each week, but the errors have diminished lately, or not as many emails have been sent out, especially to me.

Why is this important to me or to anyone who wants to appear professional?  The primary answer is that correcting three or four emails a week indicates the email author doesn’t know what he or she is doing.  Where else does the blog author have problems in communication? Even though the corrections are made in an email and not the blog, the lack of professionalism is grossly apparent.

Yes, blogging is not an exact science, and there is a learning curve.  However, if the blog master does not know what he or she is doing from the first blog, it is best to learn about blogging before jumping directly to the final product.

Many years ago, I had a great idea for a book.  I spent many hours at my keyboard, composing four novels.  Eventually, I submitted my novels to a vanity publisher.  All four of those novels are trash, and require a complete rewrite to get them to the same professional level as novels written since I began my journey to learn a little about writing.

Did I waste three years of my life writing trash?  Yes and no.  Yes, I wasted three years, but then I did the proper work to discover what I had done wrong.  And I continue to learn, almost on a weekly basis, about how I should write.  One day, hopefully soon, I plan to regain the rights to my books, and use my new-found knowledge to completely redo my mistakes.

I am no longer a member of that book marketing organization because of the errors made in the emails.  Errors in emails are indicative of errors in other areas.  If I associate with an organization making errors, I will get the reputation of not being professional.  Yes, there is such a thing as guilt by association.

The second necessity to be professional as a blogger is to learn to be a professional writer.

I discovered a blog that looked like three monkeys had been banging on typewriters for a month, and they didn’t have correction ribbons.  The punctuation was atrocious, there were many spelling mistakes, and the author had a severe problem with the use of “there” and “their”.  I have no idea what the blog author wanted to say.  My focus was on how badly the blog was written.

A third requirement of professionalism is to be consistent in your topic.  If you are blogging about video games, don’t go off on a tangent about how to build a house.  You could be a contractor who likes video games, but in most cases, you need to choose your primary profession.

If you want to be considered a professional, stick with your chosen profession.  If you want to create another profession, you can always change your name, start a new blog, and write about a new profession.  I actually have seven blogs.  Three of them are personal, ego blogs. (An ego blog is a blog posted so someone can see their name up in lights.  It is of value only to the one posting it, and has little relevance to anything.)

Finally, in addition to being consistent in your own writing, insure your followers are consistent in the writing they submit.  The blog I wrote about earlier, with the punctuation errors, had numerous submittals by other authors, with the exact issues the blog master possessed.  I still have no idea what they were talking about.  For that matter, I don’t want to know.

I am confident that the readers of The Book Reviewers Club blog have experienced some of the same issues written about in this blog.  Please take a few minutes, write down your experiences, and submit them to http://theauthorsclub.wordpress.com.  Your fellow authors want to hear about your experiences.

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