How To Avoid Unpleasant Cross-Cultural Incidents In Blogging

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The internet is such a world-wide phenomenon and everything you do here can be viewed by people all over the world from different cultures, religion and background. Any thing you write, post or any message you try to convey can not be limited to certain group of people unless you take extra measure to ensure that. The internet receives billions of visits everyday from different parts of the world. Each visitor comes with his or her personal views, perspective, convictions and with different intentions, hence no two visitors will read and understand your post in the same way and interpret it with the same tune.

The fact alone that we use one common language to reach almost two-thirds of the world’s population, doesn’t mean at all that we have other things in common, like our views about human rights, politics, finances, God, after death life, sex equality and so on. If these factors are not evenly addressed, they might pose serious difficulty and challenges to the sustainability of your online business. If you want to make money from people all over the world, you must then try not to offend them with your posts; most times you may not even know when your post has become offensive.

Yes, you can be very offensive to people from certain countries or group when just trying to get out a little joke, or to use some funny words. Sure, why not; there’s nothing wrong with that, but will your unintended victims consider you innocent and go away with it? The choice is yours. From my experience, through my Software Reviews and Coupons blog, most times your choice of words might not just irritate one person, but a group or perhaps an entire population. Situations like this might cause some serious problems like virtual wars, online protest, etc, because of something you wrote in your blog, a picture you uploaded or an image you created about something or somebody.

While you are trying to make money like others are doing online, instigating such reactions, I am sure, is not one of your agenda and it can be avoided. You are trying to convey a message and unintentionally write something, that even when it might appeal to a lot of people, it gets others irritated; some people misunderstand what you say. Yes, even when nobody will come knocking down your door, you might find that you are pissing users off around your blog and getting close to no positive response in return.

Improve Your Global Writing Skills

Here are some tips to help you improve your skills on putting up global blogs.

How To Reference

Referring to cultural factors and figures should be made with universal statements that have no attachment to any particular group. Ask yourself whether all your audience would understand what you have written and if not, better do away with it in time. When you want to make reference to religions or cultural believes, it is always better to choose phrases or statements that are not seen as internationally offensive. Sometimes people from the west just have the impression that everyone out there is a Christian. They seem to forget that there are over one billion Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists etc who might be reading their blog (and vice versa of course). Try as much as you can not to thread beyond your limits.

Applying Humor

Have limitation on how you apply humor. Humor is seen as a weakness in certain places while taken as a sign of appreciation or pity in others. Likewise jokes might be welcomed by certain population but ridiculed in others. In any case, you must make sure that you are writing for your audience and not to please yourself.

Using Jargons

When you want to apply jargons use ones that are internationally acceptable. While this might be difficult to find, you have to be sure to keep within the lines. Avoid using jargons that your audience may not be able to know. Don’t coin your own words as you may not know what the reactions of your readers will be.

Do Not Be Defensive

Don’t defend something openly. Understand that you are writing for people who have different views, experiences and knowledge on that same topic and may stand to defend their own believes at all cost.

While the problems of this challenging factor might be killing your online presence silently, you can as well think to do something about it. The key to writing is to write in such a way that you are not misunderstood. But this seems very difficult to actualized when you expect visitors and users from different cultural backgrounds all over the world. This is not a reason to stop writing. It all calls for carefulness. Being careful enough to watch what you write and then stand to correct the misconception when it suddenly springs up.

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