Writing a blog is not as simple as just churning out lots of interesting well researched, topical content. No you have to be aware of the risk that it exposes the publisher to.
As this whole blogging idea is relatively new to me I thought I would start by writing a series of blogs regarding the risks involved in blogging. It was originally only going to be a single post but it turns out that there are either a lot of risks, or at least a lot of things to get paranoid about. So here goes with my first note of caution.
Reach
I'm not famous, I'm not a journalist, I don't have a background in publicity or any sort of controlled public persona. Yet I do rely on my reputation entirely to live my life, i rely on it to get involved in the local community, I've built a respectable one (i hope) with my neighbours, and at work it is key to delivering the job that I have. Day in Day out i use my position and reputation to carry the decisions that i take and to help broker agreements and build relationships. Integrity is key to that reputation and any threat to that integrity could have quick and broad consequences.
Personality
Relationships build up over time and as you work more closely with someone you know more about them and understand more about what makes them tick. You give each other little bits of information that help build trust and make yourselves mutually comfortable in each others company, and this makes it easy to take decisions and to agree on principal. A blog lingering in the background is not always helpful to developing relationships.
Professionalism
Think of the first time you meet a contact, you would introduce yourself by saying "Hi, I'm Paul I have 4 children and live on a farm, I hate shoplifters and have a rather unique view on prisons!" Yet , a blog post has no interaction with the reader and has no context as what the reader may want to know so essentially you risk losing control of how much your contacts know about your persona. Furthermore even with established contact a blog could cause problems. Take for example that you have built up a friendship with someone over time and got to know more about them and they you. You know their favourite sporting team you know they are a fan of Aqua, you know they are very good at their job and that they live in the Cotswold's, But then you find out that they believe in fairies. This new piece of information is in contrast to the rest of their personality and it brings into doubt there world view. Now if you'd found that out in conversation you could explore it in conversation and make it fit in with your view of that person. But simply reading it on a blog post gives no explanation of character and isn't set against everything else you know about the individual so it distracts from the job in hand.
Undermining
I'm aware of some associates who write blogs and some who publish or administer forums of some kind. Sometimes they work sometimes they don't sometimes they are of interest others not. But on more than a few occasions i have seen on-line content being used as the subject of an office joke, most of the time just idle tittle tattle but on occasion i have seen them used as a way to start undermining conversations where the subject matter of the blog, be it a particular series of books or a geeky hobby. The subject matter appears to be unimportant it is merely used as a conversation opener, "have you seen that Bob writes a blog about the x362 toner cartridge" Then the conversation goes on to air any grievances about the individual. The behaviour can be quite undermining, but I'm not convinced it has anything really to do with the blog and if the content were not published it would just surface in a different manner, but the fact remains that publishing content gives people an extra tool should they want to use it.
Mitigation
As every good project manager should im going to conclude by a brief summary of mitigating the risks. It does seem that reputational risk is quite an issue it is certainly a concern for me. I haven't even fully explored the potential impacts here. However, in reality the risk is just a manifestation of a real life equivalent, it just lays open that risk to a potentially wider audience, and removes mechanisms to control that risk. But ultimately the blogger is in control of what is published an awareness of ones reputation can and should effect what is published, even if it makes for a slightly duller blog. Being open with your personality will help, letting people know who you are in real life should reduce the likely hood of conflicts with your on-line life. Ultimately you have to be very careful about what you publish and be ready to defend it where needed.
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