Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Do you agree or disagree with this statement: A blogger’s first name should be in a prominent place on his/her blog.
I guess I must disagree, since my name is not particularly easy to find on my blog. (It’s Cheryl, by the way.) I guess I don’t see why it’s inherently important! Some bloggers choose to blog anonymously for various reasons, which seems like a valid choice. Some bloggers are building a brand, and in that case having your name, or easy links to the rest of the work you’re building/promoting is good marketing. (This will become much better on my blog, once I do the redesign I’ve had in mind for, oh, two years or so…)
On one level it’s nice to know the person behind the review, but on another level, their name doesn’t matter that much. There are a lot of people I know through the internet alone, who I think of by their username or blog name, even when I learned their “real” name somewhere. I put “real” in quotation marks because…what we choose to call ourselves online is real, in a way, for the realm we’re blogging in. So if you think of me as “Marvelous Tales” rather than Cheryl, that’s totally valid. I probably think of you as “Bookish Reads” or whatever your blog or username is!
Do you like to know the “real” name of a blogger? Do you think it should be prominently displayed?
As you say, it depends on whether your blog is relevant to your name or not. Mine is. Yours is not. I must admit, I like to know your name once I’ve got to like your blog, though 🙂
As for your real name, that’s another matter entirely.
I’ve seen this issue of whether to use your real name or not addressed both ways by bloggers I follow. Some just put it all out there, revealing more personal details about their life than I ever would if I had a blog. Others go to great pains to protect their privacy, even if they are blogging about their personal life (giving online nicknames to children and never showing their picture or only a back shot of them, for example). I think if you are building a brand that depends on your identity, such as being a food blogger or style blogger, even if the actual name of your blog is something different, you would want people to know your real name as the person who is doing the blogging and providing the content. But in your situation, I think it’s less important since you primarily do book reviews. But for marketing your own books, it might be worthwhile to reveal more of your own identity. It’s a judgment call between publicity and privacy.