Business Sphere

Dusting my bookshelf one languid afternoon, I’ve found an old book by Robert Fulghum. The book is titled “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.”

I realized that Fulghum’s ideas can be applied perfectly to blogging, especially the following six things:

1. Share everything.

2. Don’t hit people.

3. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

4. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

5. Live a balanced life—learn some and think some.

6. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

1. Share everything.

When you blog you journalize your thoughts, ideas, feelings, observations, musings, rantings – all intended for public viewing.

Therefore it is important for a blogger to be concise and precise in his/her articles or posts, to be understood and to share to the public, especially to his/her target readers and subscribers.

For example, when I left Entrecard I published a post, sharing to my readers, fellow EC users and to Entrecard itself the three reasons why I left Entrecard.

My purpose was to communicate and forewarned the public the fact that, among others, many Entrecard sites have viruses and Trojans, and users drop at their own risk.

A few users criticized my post, saying that I was bashing Entrecard. But now I feel vindicated after the Entrecard admin has published on the EC blog on March 2, 2010 a post titled “Help Entrecard fight against viruses and Trojans!” and a follow up post on March 5, titled “Is Entrecard cleared of virus and dead blogs?”

2. Don’t hit people.

Play fair. When you blog, e.g. write articles and post it, it is basic to be fair. Don’t hit people unfairly. Never accuse a person unless it is true. And allow the person to comment on your post. Do not turn off comments.

For example, I read the article in some blogs owned by bloggers from the Philippines (taken from forwarded e-mails circulating on the net) titled “Who owns a house like this?” and “Who lives in a house like this?” with various pictures of a palatial house or a mansion located in the wealthy community in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California.

At the end of the article, it says: This Mansion is in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA and belongs to: Senator Manny Villar of the Philippines.

It turned out that the story was a hoax and was a black propaganda against Manny Villar, who is running for President of the Philippines.

Why did the bloggers concerned not investigate first the facts before publishing the story? To me that is hitting Manny Villar below the belt, accusing him of having a palatial house which turned out to be false.

3. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

A good blogger writes original post, or if he /she wants to publish an article because it is relevant and useful, to acknowledge authorship thereof.

Therefore, copying contents from other blogs, magazines, or stealing content is cheating and cheating is bad and wrong.

4. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

When you hurt a person or persons because you had published an article that turn out to be not true, then saying sorry and apologizing is the proper thing to do.

Don’t be defensive and rationalize. “Do unto others what you want others to do unto you” is always a golden rule to follow.

5. Live a balanced life – learn some and think some.

Don’t make your blogging the “be all and end all” of your existence.

You can enrich your blog by your experience learned elsewhere, not by spending a lot of time on your computer.

When you are preoccupied with your blog, always think that there is a more exciting life out there, in the real world and apart from the virtual world.

6. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Applied to blogging, when you blog, be sure to have traffic or visitors to your site; otherwise, if no one is reading your posts, then you are just wasting your time, no matter how high quality or unique your content is.

Hold hands with other bloggers, which means you must network  and establish linkages. And you must stick together with your online friends, sharing information, helping one another grow, learning from one another, thus enriching your blog, your blogging, and life itself.

Indeed, all I really need to know about blogging, how to blog and what to blog I learned in kindergarten.