Five Sure Signs That You’re Oversharing On Your Blog

Pexels Image: CC0 License

Blogging is often the art of building a business from your everyday life. As such, depending on your niche, you may feel notable pressure to share your personal opinions, your day-to-day life, and a whole lot besides.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact, it’s this open sharing of information that has helped blogging communities to become such an important part of our daily lives. But, sharing online also has its downsides, including leaving yourself vulnerable, and removing your inherent need for privacy. 

Most bloggers get around these potential downsides by finding space between what they share online and their private lives. But, that’s a fine line to tread, and many bloggers end up oversharing to the detriment of their blogs and themselves. In this article, we’ll consider five telling signs that you’re one of them. 

# 1 – You feel like you have no privacy

When everything that happens to you is fodder for your next blog post, you can soon start to feel like nothing is truly yours, or that you have to turn everything you do into some kind of blogging series. That’s an issue, and it’s a sure sign that you’re sharing too much. To overcome this, try to keep at least a few hobbies off the pages of your blog. That way, you can get stuck into those private moments without constantly feeling like your audience is watching and waiting for the next installment. 

# 2 – You share your personal information

Nothing says oversharing online like exchanging personal information on your platform. As well as being a significant safety risk, posting things like your exact location or even your address is a sure sign that you’re crossing very important blogging boundaries. Rather than freely handing out your address, set up a PO box that allows followers to send you things or products if they want to. Make sure that you also avoid things like sharing the view from your windows or posting any outdoor shots of your neighborhood or home which could see followers finding you in real life.

# 3 – You share about the people in your life

Pexels Image: CC0 License

It’s tough to share your life online without also exposing your closest family relationships or friendships. After all, these people are incredibly important to your life, and they likely also accompany you on many of the outings, etc. that you blog about. But if you post about the people in your life without permission, or expose intimate details about them, then you’re definitely oversharing. Instead, you should try to keep things more insular, and share only about your own thoughts, feelings and experiences, or about minor details of the other people present after receiving their express permission to do so. 

# 4 – You worry that you’re overexposing your kids

There’s a lot of discussion at the moment about how much of our children we share online. Amongst mommy bloggers, especially, even big names are starting to blur out their children’s faces or share less of their children in general. This is due to increasing concerns that kids shouldn’t be online before they consent to doing so. If you’re regularly posting your children’s faces, or personal details/stories about them that they may find embarrassing in future, it may be best to step back. Instead, use some basic filters on their faces where necessary, and keep any personal stories general, instead of highlighting ‘this happened to my child…’ 

# 5 – You’re not above a rant

Unsplash Image: CC0 License

Your blog followers likely feel like your family, which means that you may feel the need to rant about every impassioned feeling you have regarding things like world affairs, politics, or even a conversation with the neighbors. But, as well as leaving you at risk of requiring an online reputation management service if you overstep the mark or impassionedly speak on something without facts, these rants are generally a case of oversharing in action. After all, the majority of rants are incohesive and likely out of context. You could always go away and develop a more coherent blog post that somehow ties those issues into what you do on your blog if there’s a way to do so. Generally, though, it’s worth keeping your rants at home, and not putting that angry stuff on your professional blog. 

If any of these oversharing issues sound familiar, then you could probably benefit from taking a step back. After all, your blog should be a snapshot of your life, not a complete insight into every move that you make.