Blogging etiquette was the intended topic for today.
I’ve been blogging for three months now, and some things still confuse me. After scanning 40+ articles about blogging etiquette, I had a considerable amount of information to share, but, truthfully, it was kind of boring, and I found myself disagreeing with some points … and … I realized that blogging still freaks me out at times.
What should you do when you leave a comment and realize you’ve stuck your foot in your mouth? Please give me a delete button for my own comments! Commenter’s remorse is a real thing and will cause you to break out in a cold sweat.
As I compiled blogging etiquette information, I went back to some of my older posts and made some minor changes. When I checked my email later, there were notifications of new comments to those posts. OH MY GOSH! It never dawned on me that some people get alerts whenever I send up a post, and updating these older posts spammed the people who get the alerts. I’M SO SORRY! I spent 20 minutes under my desk until the red drained from face.
An unfamiliar author with an unfamiliar book left a comment and asked me to interview her on my blog. She wanted to connect with my followers. I was kind of freaked at her cheekiness and deleted. Should I have done that? Maybe her etiquette was good and mine was bad?
The fishermen bloggers confuse me. They will hit my like button daily for many days, so I finally go to their blogs, and if I like what I see, I follow. They hooked me, and I never see them at my blog again. Not that they need to come back, and it’s not really a thing to freak out about, but it adds to the confusion of blogging etiquette.
So that all of my research doesn’t go to waste, let me share some of the blogging etiquette items that I couldn’t wholly agree with:
Blogging Etiquette Expert “You must credit everyone.”
– Give Credit. I have a wee problem with the credit thing. You are asked to credit everyone about EVERYTHING. I counted as many as 30 links peppered throughout one article, with very few of them being relevant. These people would want me to link/credit all 40+ articles I encountered to cobble an etiquette post together.
When Morgan Le Fables posted the link to Anne Rice’s video talk to aspiring writers, and he gave his opinion about the video, you bet I credited him when I used his blog post as a stepping stone to make my own post about the video.
But according to the experts, that’s a no-no. You should come up with your own original ideas and not use the ideas of others. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be posting.
I don’t agree. Plagiarism is one thing, but reading a post about keeping track of the little things in your writing gave me an idea to show how I’ve done this in my own writing. If I publish, I’ll credit the author’s blog for the idea. I get a lot of inspiration from reading other blogs.
– Use correct grammar, punctuation, capitalization when commenting. I can see trying to have your actual blog post cleaned up as much as possible, but I’m not one to do a lot of proofreading and editing for a comment. Plus, I spilled a Starbucks Frappuccino on my keyboard, and some of my keys still stick. You won’t always get a capital *i* from me. I think we should be a little more forgiving in the comments section.
This is when I gave up working so hard on the etiquette post:
– Respond to all comments.
– Don’t respond to all comments.
– Leave a comment if only to say you liked the post.
– Don’t leave a comment if you aren’t contributing to the conversation.
Oh my gosh! Who doesn’t want a comment? I would assume if someone didn’t want comments, they would turn them off – or at least say, “serious comments only.” If someone simply slapped a smiley face in my comments section, I would be happy they took an extra moment of their time to let me know they read my post and found it enjoyable.
For me, everyday good manners and common sense go a long way in blogging. Be nice, have fun, be 
yourself. Hide under your desk for twenty minutes if you commit a faux pas.
By the way, Part One is kind of funny, because I was still pretty shy and really freaked out when more than 20 people showed up to my blog one day. Part Two was when I unfollowed blogs because I was afraid they would think I was trolling for Likes/Follows.
What are your thoughts on blogging etiquette? Does blogging ever freak you out?
Breezy Books 