Before I get back to the business of talent coaching, a few words of wisdom for anyone blogging their heart out on blogger.com: It is still the easiest free site I have found for beginning bloggers, but you have to read their terms of service agreement carefully and realize that even if you don't violate it, you can still be blocked with no easy way to appeal.
1. If you are asked to type in word verification when posting, appeal immediately. It's possibly the first and only sign your blog has been flagged as spam and eventually will disappear. Google did not send me an email or anything else.
2. Realize that your blog can disappear at any time. Save a backup copy of all your posts.
3. Once my blog was gone, I found the appeal forms to be a complete waste of time.
4. The blogger discussion "help" groups were an even bigger waste of time. They tell you to wait four business days and then get on a "spreadsheet." Yeah, right.
5. One site was kind of helpful. http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/
6. I'm sure the people who work at Google are nice folks who mean well. But good luck getting in touch with one of them. The 'bots don't like being overruled.
7. I'm in favor of banning spam. I don't need any Viagra, thanks. But a huge company like Google must have the resources to respond to appeals on false postitives. It would have taken a real person two seconds to verify that my blog was not spam.
Which brings me to my final point. I hear that Google now wants to be the keeper of the nation's health records. Great! What if the 'bots decide I'm deceased, or mix me up with the OTHER Terry Anzur who has some horrible disease? Welcome to the brave new world where content only exists to generate revenue for corporations who could care less about the real people on the other side of the computer screen. Be very afraid.
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