Thou Shalt Be Transparent

The deeper I dive into Paul Gillin's The New Influencers, the more I grow to like blogging. This week, we needed to read chapter 2 for class. Chapter 2 was super interesting and elaborated on some big blogging "No-No's". One thing Gillin hammered home in this chapter was the importance of transparency. On page 23, he defined transparency as "a kind of mashup of principles that include honesty, integrity, humility, open-mindedness and fairness." This was a perfect definition for a new blogger like me...dumbed down enough so I can understand it. He continued to point out some things that a blogger shouldn't do that I was unaware of like:

• You shouldn't revise a post once it's posted
• If you do want to correct something, you should comment on your own blog
• You should only delete a post when you believe it may do harm or mislead readers

All things that go along with transparency that I just learned. He then goes on to say "the idea is that blogs, like diaries, should lay bare the thoughts of the author and chronicle the development of his or her ideas over time without revising the process that got the person there." This is the reason I enjoy blogging. People write how they speak, which to me, makes it easier to relate to whatever the person is blogging about. It's nice to be able to have this sort of freedom to express thoughts and opinions. Gillin also highlighted the importance of commenting. I like to comment on other people's blogs. It has to make them feel good that someone is reading their posts and it generates conversation. Even if someone disagrees in a comment, it will likely spark another comment from someone else, which is great! Overall, I really enjoyed this chapter. It was easy to read, interesting and valuable. I'll end with a portion of the chapter that I highlighted, circled and starred...

"Transparency is about a lot more than just not lying. It's about opening yourself to inspection, analysis, judgment, praise and ridicule."