On Blogging To Impress Others
A long time ago, a friend of mine who was helping a prominent human rights organization was going to be interviewed by a local TV station in Texas about the experience she had working for that organization. My friend had both good and bad experiences with the organization, yet she told me that she would sugar coat the entire scenario, “I am going to tell them how we are given a lot of support, since I may end up applying for a job right here.”
She did not lie during the interview, yet she did not reveal any of the bad experiences either. What was the result? She was honest, and she also ended up getting a very good job with the same organization.
I was thinking of that tonight, and that made me wonder: many bloggers do the same thing, by blogging in order to impress others, so is it all right to blog to impress others?
Many corporations blog only to impress potential customers
Take blogs by many corporations. Many companies are giving their employees the opportunity to blog. Many of such blogs, however, are similar to advertisements, where employees blog about the benefits of a product and not on the bad things that may affect an actual customer. Such corporate blogs blog to impress readers, who might end up being potential users of specific products or services.
Many non-corporate blogs try to impress someone online
You could be impressing an employer, or you could be impressing a friend. Usually, many blogs try to impress their readers through attractive content, so the concept of blogging to impress someone is something that is being adopted on a wide scale already. Take many personal blogs, and you may notice that a blogger may write good things about an offline friend differently than writing good things about an online friend, simply because of the fact that the offline friend may not read that blog, whereas the online friend might.
Do bloggers realize when or if their blogging habits revolve around impressing others?
There is usually nothing wrong with the concept of appreciating or impressing people in different ways. You may pay for one friend’s meal while giving another friend a ride. That does not mean that you appreciate one friend less than the other. You are simply appreciating both friends in different ways, while still doing things to impress them. The discussion of whether or not appreciating someone and impressing someone are the same thing is something I will focus on next week.
Online, do bloggers realize that their blogging habits may be influenced by the fact that they may want to impress someone? It may be easy to see in person how we may be extra nice to a specific girl or a guy that we like, but online, can we notice similar traits?
Do you know if you blog to impress someone?
What do you think? Do you know if or when you blog or do something on your blog to impress someone, whether it is a sponsor, another blogger, a reader, or even a search engine?
:
( May 19th, 2007 at 1:06 am )
Bes, sometimes I wish I could get into your head and find how your brain works to come up with such interesting topics for your blog.
What a thought-provoking angle to look at the nature of blogging - blogging to impress. I think all bloggers are guilty of that, although I do not really think that it’s a sin to impress others
I think that it drives us to excel, motivates to do our best. It’s like dating - we’re all trying to impress the person we date, but once we achieve the closeness (or get married) we’re not compelled anymore to keep impressing the other person with the same force we used to before. Which is sad, in my opinion. We start taking each other for granted.
So as bloggers, we shouldn’t start taking our readers for granted after managing to impress them with our writing once or twice, but keep impressing them as often as we can.
However, it’s a different story with the corporate blogging - I can’t really blame them for showing off only their best side, but I’m too bored to read those kind of blogs. So they won’t be impressing me with that propaganda
Quote
Reply & quote this
:
( May 19th, 2007 at 1:45 am )
This is a very interesting topic. It’s the first time I’m asking myself if I write to impress somebody. Well, it depends. Sometimes I write to impress the loyal readers. Some other times, I just write to impress myself
. Almost all the time I write to impress search engines. Sometimes, these three overlap. Other times, especially if I write to impress loyal readers, I forget about search engines. When I write “how to” posts, I just want to pass on information that I consider useful. These posts are carefully written to impress search engines, because I want to have them read by as many people as possible.
Quote
Reply & quote this
:
( May 19th, 2007 at 1:54 am )
You know what, Simonne? I thought the same thing - sometimes I’m writing to impress myself. But then got sidetracked…
Quote
Reply & quote this
:
( May 19th, 2007 at 2:10 am )
I’m fairly controversial, so I write to impress those that like controversy. So in a way, I’m impressing those people that don’t like the perception of others being impressed. Interesting…
Quote
Reply & quote this
:
( May 19th, 2007 at 7:04 am )
“Many corporations blog only to impress potential customers
Take blogs by many corporations. Many companies are giving their employees the opportunity to blog. Many of such blogs, however, are similar to advertisements, where employees blog about the benefits of a product and not on the bad things that may affect an actual customer. Such corporate blogs blog to impress readers, who might end up being potential users of specific products or services.”
I was going to say pretty much the same thing.
Except it would have applied to all bloggers [that are trying to impress people]. Anyway, I agree. They’re like advertisements — showing the good without the bad.
That’s why you can’t believe everything you see or hear. It sucks, but that’s life.
Quote
Reply & quote this
Find/Add me at these places: Flickr | MySpace | Twitter :
( May 19th, 2007 at 8:33 am )
Vivien-inspirationbit, thanks for the kind words.
I feel flattered.
You are right, many or “all” bloggers do that, and also, it is not a “sin to impress others.”
Many bloggers do take their readers for granted, specially after their sites become famous and after the bloggers do not feel that ignoring their readers will harm their blog popularity or income.
Also, you have a point about corporate blogging; they have to advertise their products and show their services in an impressive manner. It is interesting that you use the word “propaganda.”
Also, I am sure many of us get sidetracked when we try to impress ourselves. Sometimes, when I want to write something, I end up modifying and editing it so much, that I start aiming for a topic a bit different, or sometimes completely, than what I had originally started to write about.
Simonne, thank you! I am glad that you found this topic interesting, and I am impressed that this topic made you think about something for the first time.
Impressing yourself is awesome. Many bloggers do different things to impress search engines. SEO revolves around impressing search engines.
You bring up a very interesting combination of impressing readers and impressing search engines; impressing search engines results in impressing readers who use the search engine to look for something. Thanks for sharing.
Ronalfy, that is an interesting example. That should also go into a “quotes” area, along with Vivien’s, Simonne’s and Nicole’s comments.
Yes, what you are doing is interesting. You can maybe write a post around the topic of impressing others who do not like the perception of others being impressed.
That should help a lot of people realize their views on the concept of impressing others.
Nicole, true. Such a concept can apply to all bloggers. Impressions are indeed sometimes like ads, specially for corporate blogs; showing the nice side of a product is being honest, yet hiding some facts while revealing others does sound like an advertisement.
Thanks for sharing Nicole.
Quote
Reply & quote this
What others are saying about this article elsewhere
[...] Do you blog to impress others? I’m sure all bloggers are guilty of that, although I don’t consider that it’s a sin to impress others. I think that it drives us to excel, motivates to do our best. It’s like dating - we’re all trying to impress the person we date, but once we achieve the closeness (or get married) we’re not compelled anymore to keep impressing the other person with the same force we used to before. Which is sad, in my opinion. We start taking each other for granted. [...]
[...] On Blogging To Impress Others at The Reasoner She did not lie during the interview, yet she did not reveal any of the bad experiences either. … their readers will harm their blog popularity or income. … [...]
[...] She started questioning the possibility that he could be impressing her in order to appreciate her. That reminded me of my post last month in which I hinted at the question of whether or not impressing someone is the same as appreciating someone. [...]