Blogging True

When blog mavens Susanna Gardner and Shane Birley say "Keep it true", they mean bloggers should double-check posts for accuracy before making them live.  "Like a newspaper writer or any other publisher, you should have a process you follow to make sure you’re publishing facts and not fiction," the two authors remind us. "Opinions are okay as long as they’re labeled as just that," they add. 

In my opinion as a professional ghost blogger, using correct spelling and grammar in your blog posts is just the beginning, because "blogging true" means a lot more than tending to basic blog "hygiene".

For one, be chary of copyright infringements. Always attribute material to its author, naming the source in your blog. If you think delving deeper into a subject will be valuable to your readers, provide a link from your blog to that source. Attributing credit where it belongs is not only a show of good online manners, it keeps you on the right side of the law (remember that all material published on the web is copyright by definition, as I brought out in my earlier blog post, "Ties That Tell The truth In Blogging").

Speaking of earlier blog posts, Gardner and Birley encourage recycling "oldies but goodies" from your own blog. To keep it "true", just tell readers you’re bringing back a thought – or even an entire post – from the archives.

An important aspect of "truth in blogging" is delivering copy that is worth your readers’ time and attention. Enriching blog posts with famous, correctly quoted, sayings is a great idea; Bartlett’s Quotations is one good source for those. Varying your vocabulary adds quality and interest to your blog posts; Roget’s Thesaurus is a good source for synonyms.

John Bartlett himself commented on the practice of "linking" to others’ writing.  While the great man left this earth more than a century ago, in 1905 B.B. (before blogging), his words are very apropos to the concept of "blogging true":

"I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own."

Needless to say, you’ll want more than just a thread of your own thoughts in each blog post, but Bartlett’s concept of tying others’ ideas into your posts is very apropos for business bloggers who want to enrich blog content.

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