Be Honest with Your Blog Readers!
It’s been a LONG time since I’ve published a vent & gripe onto my blog, so today…I’m bringing it back and it’s on a topic that I feel very strongly about. This will be a lengthy post and I’m sure it will piss off some of those in the blogging world, but it’s something that needs to be said.
When I first started up my blogs back in 2009 and 2010, you saw blog author’s & publishers being honest with their readers when it came to product reviews and product recommendations. Just like all of you, I read and cruise many blogs and I’ve done so for many years. Matter of fact, I started blogging before blogging became cool.
However, over the past few years blogging has exploded and many people have jumped into mommy & lifestyle blogging. Yay, more the merrier. But, I’ve also seen things change and it hasn’t changed for the better.
Now when I cruise a lot of blogs, I’m totally appalled at some of the crap that I’m reading. Whatever happened to bloggers being honest with their readers? I can go to a ton of blogs, scroll through hundreds of their product reviews and find not a single NEGATIVE word said about a product that they’re reviewing and/or featuring. NOT A SINGLE WORD!
Your readers deserve the truth! They’re not dummies and they don’t believe that out of the past 100 products you’ve reviewed & featured that you loved 100% of them and loved everything about them. Come on now, like I said, readers are not stupid and it’s YOUR JOB to also point out any and all negatives that you find with XYZ product and you can do so in a tactful, but honest way. It’s NOT all about pleasing the company and/or brand. It’s about being HONEST!
The next thing on my “GRIPE LIST” is all of these phony article & affiliate lists that I see bloggers publishing. Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about:
My Top 10 Favorite New Beauty Products
My Top 7 Favorite Laundry Room Items
My Top 5 Favorite New Frying Pans
My Must-Have Bath & Body Products for Spring
My Top 12 New Toy Recommendations for Christmas
etc. etc. etc.
Here’s why I have a problem with these types of lists.
If you’re going to publish lists like this to drum up affiliate sales for yourself, you need to have personal hands-on experience with each & every product you’re recommending that your readers go out and buy. If you don’t, that’s false advertising and your readers deserve better. You should ONLY be recommending products to your readers that you have personal experience with. You have no right to mislead readers by making product recommendations if you have no experience with it. It’s just wrong!
I totally believe in monetizing your blogs. Heck, my blog is monetized too and yes, I do publish affiliate links. However, EVERY affiliate link you find on this blog, me or one of my writers have personally tried the product. We don’t write up articles, insert a slew of affiliate links, lie to our readers with phony product recommendations to try to make a sale. Come on, readers deserve better!!!
Furthermore, by law…if you’re a U.S.A. blogger, you must properly disclose when your blog posts and/or social media posts contain affiliate links. These days, I see way too many bloggers not including the disclosures. Readers do have the RIGHT TO KNOW when they’re clicking on an affiliate link. PERIOD. Enough said!
I’m sure with me blatantly speaking out on this topic, I’ll piss off some blogging friends and that’s okay. My loyalties lie with my readers and social media followers who count on me to give them my HONEST opinion and to properly disclose my affiliation to any product that I’m featuring. That’s right, I said it. MY LOYALTY IS TO MY READERS!
Those who regularly read The Classy Chics blog will tell you, we publish negative things within our reviews and we do so very tactfully as we realize that not all people will love all things. The important lesson: Be honest & build credibility with your readers!!!
To all of The Classy Chic blog readers: We promise to always give you our honest, 100% unbiased opinion on a product. We promise to always disclose when we’re using an affiliate link within a post. That you can count on.
I would love to hear some feedback from all you. Please keep your feedback CLASSY and CLEAN! Thanks!
