What does this goofy, badly photoshopped picture have to do with blogging?

Hang on, hang on.  All will be revealed, I promise

You see, I’m participating in a blogging event, through Firepole Marketing, called the Great Online Marketing Scavenger Hunt.    We are wrapping up the second week of a five-week event with over 100 challenges to complete.  So far it has been a lot of fun, and as you can see by the above photo, I am learning to do new things and break out of my comfort zone.  Most of the time, I will be posting my challenges on my tumblr, so the loyal readers of this blog will not be disrupted by the silliness.  But every once in awhile, like today, I will ask you to bear with me.

If you are a blogger, and have any interest in the Scavenger Hunt, you can check it out at the link above.  If you decide to sign up, be sure to tel them that TeressaMorris sent you.

If you have read this far, you deserve to be rewarded!! Leave a comment on this post, letting me know why the firecat wants the fish.  I’ll pick my favorite to win a special treat from yours truly!!

Bugbear: A persistent problem or source of annoyance. -Dictionary.com

I’m now at 10 months blogging.  I would by no means call myself an expert, but I do have a few pet peeves (or bugbears) that I write about from time to time.  The bugbear this week is family privacy.

I know, I know, who am I throw to throw stones? A good deal of my blog is about my family.  And even with all the pseudonyms, I know that if people dug hard enough they could figure out who my kids are.  But Boo and Bud are 20 and 17, plenty old enough to have their own Facebook page (or maybe even blog?) and to decide what they are willing or not for me to reveal about them.

Over my few months blogging I have noticed many mom blogs start out as personal blogs – a way to share Jon-Jon’s first steps with close friends and family.  But then these moms get bitten by the same writing bug I did and decide to expand their blog to include reviews, recipes, giveaways, etc.

The Problem:

The problem is that as these blogs grow their audience, they are still sharing intimate details of their children’s lives, including their birthdays, ages, occasionally real names, personal quirks, etc.  This information is now available for the whole world to read about.  Setting stalking concerns aside (although to me that is a big concern), what happens to these kids when they’re adults?  Here’s a question posed by a reader of the NY Times Parenting Blog way back in 2009:

What’s going to happen in 5 or 10 years (depending on the age of the kids) when they learn how to use Google and find what their parents have been posting about them for the entire world to read?

…, once you post something online, you can’t take it back. My friends and I joke how back when we were in school, the teachers always threatened to put things on our “permanent record”, and the web has now become everyone’s permanent record. How are kids going to react when they see what their parents have written about them and posted it for public consumption? Should parents use more judgment in what they write? Should they use pseudonyms? - New York Times, August 31, 2009

So, I’m curious what my readers have to say on this topic.  Even with my children’s permission, have I revealed too much about them?  How do we protect our children from the “permanent record” of the Internet?  Please leave your comments!!

I swore I would not be one of those people who acted like a blogging “expert” before my blog was one year old.  Well, I’ve only been blogging for eight months, and I am by no means an expert, but I do have a few pet peeves (or bugbears) that I feel the need to vent about.  Thus a new series is born!!

Webster’s defines due diligence as:

research and analysis of a company or organization done in preparation for a business transaction

More than once, lately, I have run into the situation where a blogger offers other bloggers an opportunity (sponsored post, ad placement, etc.). Then when I pursued the offer, I found out that either the sponsor was offering far less money than what had been mentioned previously, or upon googling the sponsor, I found that they had no track record.  Now I will not recommend or place ads on my blog for any sponsor or product I do not have first hand knowledge of, so I passed up these opportunities.  But I personally believe that the bloggers offering the opportunity should have vetted the sponsors ahead of time.  I know it is a lot of work to offer opportunities to other bloggers, but I also believe that taking that little bit of extra time to do your due diligence is well worth it.

Another thing I have noticed is that some bloggers (especially newbies) get so excited and anxious to do their first sponsored post or their first review, that they take whatever is offered them without doing due diligence or without thinking about whether this product or topic is something their readers would actually be interested in.  I understand if you’re trying to make money from your blog (so am I), but if you turn off your readers, you’ll lose your sponsorships anyway.

So the bugbear fix of the week is : Do Your Due Diligence!!