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Ghost Blogging Still Isn't Cool, and It's Not Blogging
I differentiate writing from blogging, and one of the reasons corporations aren't trusted to blog is because they're simply pumping out information, and not actively engaging with the community. There is no way to effectively engage with a community if you're ghosting an account.
What happens when someone who thinks they are corresponding with an executive cites them on another blog? Calls into the company (which you do if you form a friendship with someone)? References a study and carries on a long conversation, and then meets the executive in public, or discusses the issue at a conference?
If you plan to ghostwrite, you better plan to be hired for the length of the executive's career. If you're just a part-timer, or hired by an agency and billed out to pretend to write in another person's name, you're doing a disservice to your client. You aren't bring the value of blogging to the corporation, you're shoveling written content onto a blog and calling it community.
And if you are good at it, if you actually blog, you'll eventually get caught, or the executive or the company will, and then you'll be exposed as a liar, which is what ghost blogging boils down to. Write all you want, but if you plan to blog, which is to say, engage in a community to secure contacts, improve networking, monitor the company's online reputation, and serve as a voice of the company, then you have to use real names (and real faces).
Those who say that ghost blogging is okay should stop pretending to bring value to your clients just because they can hit publish on a Typepad Account. What value has any ghost blogger brought a company that couldn't have been done as an outside contractor assigned to the company?
For other voices: The Caffeinated Blog, Sean Bohan, and David Mullen
What happens when someone who thinks they are corresponding with an executive cites them on another blog? Calls into the company (which you do if you form a friendship with someone)? References a study and carries on a long conversation, and then meets the executive in public, or discusses the issue at a conference?
If you plan to ghostwrite, you better plan to be hired for the length of the executive's career. If you're just a part-timer, or hired by an agency and billed out to pretend to write in another person's name, you're doing a disservice to your client. You aren't bring the value of blogging to the corporation, you're shoveling written content onto a blog and calling it community.
And if you are good at it, if you actually blog, you'll eventually get caught, or the executive or the company will, and then you'll be exposed as a liar, which is what ghost blogging boils down to. Write all you want, but if you plan to blog, which is to say, engage in a community to secure contacts, improve networking, monitor the company's online reputation, and serve as a voice of the company, then you have to use real names (and real faces).
Those who say that ghost blogging is okay should stop pretending to bring value to your clients just because they can hit publish on a Typepad Account. What value has any ghost blogger brought a company that couldn't have been done as an outside contractor assigned to the company?
For other voices: The Caffeinated Blog, Sean Bohan, and David Mullen
Comment
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Comment by John Palmer on January 26, 2009 at 5:15pm -
Outsourcing your blogging to a "consultant" can be done, but it's easy to do it wrong. You have to be a real person, not pretending to be one. And like any new employee, you have to quickly familiarize yourself with your new company. You also have to intimately 'feel' what's going on around you. A degree of autonomy to communicate with stakeholders is required in order not to defeat the immediacy that Social Media provides. Writing and communication skills have to be at a superior level - generally above the pay grade of most so-called writers. Jim's analogy of the similarities of being a funny guy at a family party and a stand up comic is right on the money.
Frankly, most companies aren't willing to go to these lengths, and their SM endeavors leave much to be desired. We'll see if the economy changes any minds in the boardrooms...
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Comment by Michael Daehn on January 9, 2009 at 10:22pm - I think it comes from the old school notion of "corporation". The idea of a corporation is a fake person. That worked in the past- especially with mass communication, but it does not translate well to social media.
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