Blog, blog, and blog some more to promote yourself or your business, I’ve said in the past.  It’s a good idea, all right, but today we’ll look at a couple of things you need to be careful about.

An article by Geoff Simon identifies those things as medical and legal advice.  From there, you may be able to imagine a few more possibilities, but deaths and/or bankruptcies are pretty bad outcomes, so it seems best to concentrate on them.

Simon writes, “A blog that gives any sort of advice regarding either of these professions is simply asking for trouble. . . .  [I]t is inevitable that someone will take information from one of these sites, apply it to his own life, and meet with utter disaster. Then the blogger, his company, and probably the web server will become embroiled in a lawsuit.”

Simon goes on to close one possible “out,” adding, “Naturally, there would be an argument about personal responsibility and the fact that there was a disclaimer on the site discouraging action without receiving professional advice.  Yet disclaimers seem to have little impact on lawsuits anymore and most people admit to skipping over them when perusing a site.”

No one’s saying doctors and lawyers shouldn’t blog - the former could write about getting in new lollipops, at least - but a certain amount of caution certainly seems necessary.  Consider if the same sort of care needs to be taken when you’re writing; it’s hard to imagine that lawsuits are much fun.

Share: del.icio.us Reddit Google Netscape StumbleUpon Technorati