Blog Ethics: Take Two
I couldn’t resist making a few more comments regarding blog ethics after following the issue a bit more closely in the PR corner of the blogosphere over the last few days. Essentially, we have a lot of hypocritical things going on here. Let’s examine:
1. We have people saying that PR blogs like Strumpette shouldn’t make it into Edelman’s Social Media Index, because the blogger actually writes anonymously, while at the same time saying that it’s OK to censor a listing like this (supposed to be based somewhat in reality), meaning they’re actually advocating not being forthcoming in PR blogging.
2. We have people still whining about Debbie Weil asking for blog comments, saying if people leave the comments, they should be transparent by disclosing how they found the blog. I wonder how many comments those bloggers have left where they were honest about why they were commenting (because it’s a friend’s blog, a colleague’s blog, because they felt obligated after the blog linked to them, etc.).
3. The whole issue of whether or not asking for comments (if the posts inspire or provoke them from a reader) is ethical is pretty amusing. As for being hypocritical, here’s something to chew on… how many of these bloggers have “bookmark this” or “digg this” links on their blogs, or essentially do the same thing when networking with tools like MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog. If asking / begging for comments is unethical, then wouldn’t essentially begging for more traffic be just as bad? What about those bloggers who are leaving comments on other blogs constantly just in the hopes of getting return comments or traffic? By these standards, that’s unethical too. Hell, just about every blog marketing tactic is unethical if we really want to get down to it. So what a lot of these bloggers are saying is that it’s only ok if you’re “sneaky” about it, because apparently stating your motives up front is a “bad” thing.
Enough for today….
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