Topics to Absolutely Avoid on Your Blog

Running out of topics and subject for your blog can be terrifying, especially if you’re facing a time crunch. When this happens you may think turning to a last resort is a good idea. Perhaps you’ll go for something controversial, for example, to shake things up and get people talking?

While some controversy can be ok if you plan it out carefully, most of the time it ends up being very negative. So for 99% of the time you operate your blog, it’s best to avoid the following subjects. While there could be merit to a blog post about these topics, there’s little plus to taking the chance.

Politics

You likely feel strongly about certain things in your personal life. You don’t like this particular facet of government, or you think a political candidate would be great for so and so office. When you get into your business, though, it’s best to leave all this out.

Think you have an idea how your customers lean? You’re going to find out quickly when you write a blog post about recent government moves or political battles. One of the best lessons you can learn as a PR pro is you can never totally predict how people will react to anything. Just when you believe you have your audience pegged you’ll be surprised.

This is especially true for anything divisive like politics. Not only could you chase away customers who lean the other way, you could annoy some who are tired of seeing political rants.

Religion

Religion is another hot-bed of problems just waiting to nip you in the heels, but not for the reason you think. Sure, it’s another divisive area with some feeling strongly about their religion and others feeling the same about a totally different one, and still others tired of hearing about it online.

But something else could come back to bite you: your branding efforts. I would argue that bringing religion into your branding (unless that’s already part of it) could get you off track even more than politics. It’s such a personal matter that has such little to do with business 99% of the time that it’s almost like breaking the fourth wall in a play.

On top of that, you risk rebranding yourself. For example, if your taxi cab blog business blogs about the Mormon Church, you’ll be known as “the Mormon taxi cab service.” Whether or not that’s accurate or fair is irrelevant – it’s just how people will see you from now on. It’s not really worth the confusion and headache.

Dirty Laundry

I’ve seen one blog that actually does this and uses their “ugh, life stinks and people are idiots” attitude towards their branding. And it works, quite well. However, I’m still going to say you should not air grievances, especially if it deals with the company at large.

Nobody wants to hear about your dirty laundry. Feel free to yell at each other over personal IM, text, or in the office. As soon as anyone thinks it’s ok to move it to the public space – like in a blog titled “10 Reasons to Not Take Someone’s Soda Out of the Fridge” – you’ve gone too far.

I don’t care how “casual” you see your business and brand; it’s just an awful road to head down. Keep it at least partially professional and try not to mix your personal and business worlds like that.

What are some other topics you should avoid on your blog?

By Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases and author of PR Fuel