Personal Blogging versus Work Blogging

I have been blogging for nearly five years now (this blog was my first, and was started in October of 2006) and have come to be quite fond of it.  While I do not blog with the frequency I once did (remember those times when I could hit five posts a day?  Yeah, that was excessive) I still enjoy the format of blogging for sharing thoughts, interests and just generally whatever.  Up until very recently blogging has always been simply a personal outlet of expression.  But all that changed last week when we began to integrate blogging into the workplace.

I have not done much of this “work” blogging yet, but already I can tell that it is going to be different.  While the idea is much the same – post content that will display in a reverse chronological order, for others to read and comment on – the execution feels different.  I think it is that idea of “this is for work purpose.”  While there is encouragement to allow for a somewhat more casual voice and attitude towards blog posts (versus more formal work emails or discussion contents), there is still that awareness that anything written will be scrutinized by the eyes of any other employees, including superiors.  This isn’t to say that I’d plan on writing anything inappropriate or inciting, but more so, that the limitation causes a greater degree of scrutiny.

When I write blog posts I tend not to pay too close attention to style or prose (probably to a fault).  I feel as if my personal voice in my blogging is conversational and nonchalant. I don’t stress too much about grammar or spelling, besides simply running spellcheck and reading through once before clicking “post.”  Sometimes I ramble on for a while, without saying a whole lot.  All and all, I would describe my writing process, especially on this blog, as being a close approximation of my natural conversational form.

Writing for a workplace blog makes maintaining that voice difficult at best.  While I like the idea of a workplace blog being more casual than other forms of internal communications, finding that line of appropriate casualness is challenging, and the result often comes out sounding strange and unnatural.  I spent a good bit of time the other afternoon, reading and rereading a blog post I’d just written, thinking to myself “this just doesn’t sound right.”  I figure, with time, and a bit of practice, I will find a voice that works better for the workplace blogging, but in the meantime it makes for an interesting contrast with the laid back personal blogging that I have become so familiar with.  I’ll let y’all know how it works out.

~ by Nathaniel on August 15, 2011.