Professional Bloggers Need Thick Skins

As a professional blogger sometimes it requires that you have a very thick skin.  A large portion of blogging is of course the written word.  This written word is your voice it is the style of your writing and it defines you as a blogger.  I have been putting bloggers together with companies for a while now and one of the toughest parts of that is matching a company and their mission and message with a blogger that fits with the personality of the blog.  Some bloggers are great technical writers and do a great job with describing technical terms and processes.  Other bloggers are pithy and have great sense of style and humor.  Companies sometimes are demanding both.  As you can see it’s tough to put the proper voice of the blogger with the company blog.  It’s not to dissimilar from matchmaking.  Not every match is one made in heaven.

As a person that manages many bloggers it is very rewarding to tell a blogger that a company has chosen their voice and blogging style to head up their blog campaign.  It is equally devastating for me to tell a blogger that the company has decided to go in a different direction with the voice of the blog.  Bloggers tend to take ownership of a blog and adopt it making it their very own, and to tell them they have to turn that over to another is a difficult process.  This is why it is necessary to be a thick skinned individual.  Business is business to the company and they see it from a different perspective from their end, no matter how attached a blogger has become to the blog.  This is not something that happens often but it does occasionally happen so bloggers need to be prepared.  For now, I need to go to a blogger and make the “It’s not you it’s me” speech.

[photo via  DeclanTM]