10 Tips for PR Pros Who Want to Blog Personally

This blog post by Stephanie Smirnov is so good that I asked her permission to repost her words here, and she agreed. Stephanie is President of Devries Public Relations in New York, an active blogger (PRMama.com), one of today’s outstanding leaders in the field of communications and someone I admire:

Blogging about work and personal life can be tricky. I’m not a one-woman show: I have 100+ agency colleagues, a CEO boss, lots of clients from (mostly) conservative companies and several corporate overlords at the huge global company that owns this agency. I wish I could tell you I’m uncensored but I’m not. I watch every word I write. Although there’s a disclaimer on my “About” page stating this blog doesn’t reflect the opinions of my parent company, there’s never a time when I’m blogging that I’m not seen the president of this agency. For better or worse.

Stephanie Smirnov (Twitter: @SSmirnov)

I’ve made some mistakes and raised some eyebrows. There was the time I chose to expose the dark side of my working mom balancing act in a post so raw it threw my CEO into a real tizzy. He didn’t calm down until I showed him the slew of supportive comments from some of our most senior – female – clients.

There was the time I wrote a bitchy critique of a cause marketing campaign that – oops –was executed by a PR agency owned by the same corporate parent that owns DeVries. I had no idea and had I known, I wouldn’t have written it. Not smart. That little scandal was great for traffic (too bad 90% of it came from outraged colleagues at the sister agency) but I had no choice but to take the post down.

As frustrating as colleagues and clients can be, no post is worth my family’s livelihood. I’ve learned to restrain my baser blogging instincts without compromising personal integrity. Here are some tips that will hopefully help you do the same:

1. Don’t write something publically you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. I learned this from Heather “Dooce” Armstrong — who should know. She famously was fired in 2002 for writing things about colleagues she’s since said should’ve been said in person. (Or not at all.)
2. Don’t snark on your boss. Snark is awesome, I worship at its altar daily. Being snarky about your boss in a public post? Stupid.
3. Don’t snark on your clients. Unless your brain has fallen out of you head, please don’t. (See above.)
4. Don’t blog reactively. If you’re writing about something emotionally charged, wait a day before hitting “publish.”
5. Don’t make accusations. If you do, you better be damned sure you’ve got your facts straight about whatever you perceive the offense to be. If not, the blogosphere will quickly bring it to your attention. And it probably won’t be pretty.
6. Don’t malign people’s characters. Asshat behavior is fair game, personal attacks not so much.
7. Do your homework. If you’re going to critique work done by industry competitors, make sure you know exactly who’s behind the work. No good comes of attacking a sister agency’s campaign, or making fun of a ham-handed press release written by someone at another agency who just happens to be your boss’s daughter’s best friend. Not that I’d know anything about that. {sigh}
8. Go easy on the dirty laundry. Oh I know, it’s all about authenticity. I’ve been told there are junior people at DeVries who like when I blog about work frustrations or family life because it shows a side they don’t get to see in the office. But do they need to know about a family member’s gastro-intestinal challenges? Is it enriching for them to hear me bitch about my weight? Does a senior client at one of the world’s leading beauty companies need to know I haven’t shaved my legs or touched up my highlights in over a year (hypothetically speaking?) This may be blogger sacrilege but sorry, I think there is definitely such a thing as Too Much Information.
9. If you’re blogging negatively about a client’s competitor, disclose it. If you decide to slam iPhone and your client is Motorola, it’s wise to note the Motorola relationship. It doesn’t mean your gripe with Apple is unjustified, it just means you’ve got to protect yourself by calling it out. Do you really want to be the person who shows up in PR Newser accused of planting negative reviews about your client’s arch rival? That’s a bad mistake to make, even if it’s an honest one.
10. If you’re blogging positively about your client, disclose it. It’s absolutely terrific if you genuinely love the widgets made by your agency’s Client X and have been using them since you could walk. Nevertheless, you owe it to the Transparency Gods to reveal somewhere in your post if the widgets you’ve been gushing about are made by your client. Gush away, just make sure people understand there’s a material relationship there.

Thanks, Stephanie, for sharing your wisdom. Check out PR Mama.

Category: Featured, Personal notes