Good Blogging Is Good Marketing.
Just about everyone agrees. And we see the evidence every day—the best blogs inform and inspire readers, increase site usage, build strong personal brands for the bloggers, and greatly advance the interests of the organizations they work for.
Click to Tweet ★ Believe in Ghosts: Blogging Made Easy for Busy Executives ★
That’s why executives and managers are asking more of their best and brightest employees to write regular blogs. They want these talented professionals to share their special knowledge, perspectives, and insights and, in the process, help their organizations shine online. In fact, more employers have made blogging mandatory. And many have put annual—and even quarterly—blogging goals in employee performance evaluations.
Employer-Mandated Blogging Isn’t Good
In turn, this intriguing new reality has created two really intriguing problems. First, more of an organization’s most valuable players are spending more time blogging and less time doing the work they love and excel at. Second, much of this employer-mandated blogging just isn’t very good. It’s not because these bloggers aren’t good employees. Far from it. It’s usually that they don’t have the time, training, or desire to churn out timely, riveting blogs every week or two. And, more often than not, “ineffective blog” directly translates into “wasted effort.”
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An excellent solution is to go with a ghost—yes, a ghostwriter or, more precisely, a “ghost blogger” with the talent, expertise, and ongoing commitment to make sure that the blogs you post make the impact you want.
A Good Ghost Can
- Free your employee-experts to spend more time doing what they do best
- Help identify engaging topic choices
- Employ Web writing best practices to assure that blogs are clear, captivating, and commanding
- Adopt the expert’s personal style
- Channel the expert’s genuine passion for the subject
The working process is simple. Share your ideas with the ghost. Look over the draft the ghost delivers to you. Make whatever changes you like. And you’re done. If you and the ghost get along and decide to work together regularly, you can collaborate on two or three blogs at a time, making the job even easier on yourself.
Working with a good ghost can be a good deal for all involved. And, as the Web’s appetite for content continues to grow, more busy professionals, I think, will come to believe both in ghosts and—most important—in their value.
About The Author
David Meuel is an independent corporate and marketing writer for more than 25 years, who I have worked with in the past. David is a gifted writer and has worked for more than 100 different companies and organizations, including eBay, Cisco, Apple, Visa, and Intel. In addition, David has co-authored the business book, Building Strategic Relationships, and has published two award-winning volumes of poetry I highly recommend and hundreds of freelance articles on subjects from business writing to classic films. You can learn more about him at www.davidmeuel.com. And you can contact him at: david@davidmeuel.com.
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Tiffany Woods
October 30, 2012
Good points here–especially about mandating blogging for employees. I believe writing is something you have to enjoy doing or otherwise it won’t translate well. Thanks for sharing!
Steve Farnsworth A.K.A. @Steveology
October 30, 2012
I think forcing someone to write is a bad for sure, but there are ways to make it easier for employees to create content that make them more inclined to be willing to do it. Having a writer interview them to capture their ideas is good. Even video tapping them just talking about a work project they’re are passionate about, and then transcribing that into a blog post can help create lots of great, and painless, content.
Bojan Djordjevic
October 30, 2012
Interesting point of view. Companies in Serbia discourage blogging as a tactic. I’ve been pushing for the social and content strategy, but I can’t blog about the topic that I have no knowledge about.
Steve Farnsworth A.K.A. @Steveology
October 30, 2012
It is a bad idea to blog about a topic you don’t know. The real power of blogging comes from sharing the expert knowledge you have from your company with your customers. Fundamentally, every business has lots of internal subject matter experts. They just call them employees. To be effective, blogging needs to help share that knowledge and insight with customers.
Amanda Blain
October 30, 2012
Stellar post. Forcing employees to do something outside of their comfortable bubble that is directly dealing with customers? How about no. Ghostwriter for the win.
Dave Young
November 7, 2012
I completely agree with the premise that you don’t want to have employees becoming the “voice” of the company, unless they have some level of credibility, longevity and expertise.
The biggest problem we’ve found with ghostwriting is that the time involved in getting the writer up to speed and then approving everything is almost as much as actually doing the writing yourself. We built a company out of using an interview process instead of a ghostwriting process. The “blogger” simply joins a skype interview session with a pro broadcaster once a month. We turn the spoken words into written blog posts.
Steve Farnsworth A.K.A. @Steveology
November 7, 2012
I like that method, and recommend one very similar. Putting employees in front of a camera and asking them, “Tell me what you are working on,” and then transcribing the results, editing them, can be very effective and quick way to create content great content.
Jeff Vance
November 19, 2012
@Steve, great post, and this exactly the kind of stuff that, as a writer, I tell people all the time. Once again, you’re right on the money.
@Dave, as a person who has done a ton of ghostwriting, I think the problem isn’t bringing your writer up to speed and the review process, but rather the selection process for picking a ghostwriter. There are more independent writers out there each and every day. Many of us who used to have in-house jobs for top-tier pubs now have our own small businesses that focus on copywriting.
These days, a no-name startup can access top-notch talent, people who wouldn’t have even returned their calls ten years ago.
I’ve had the experience many times of having a company balk at my project quote, which to be fair tends to fall on the high side. Then, they go with a low-cost writer who has no real track record, and they end up coming back to me after their original project has failed. Choose the writers you work with very, very carefully. If you focus too much on penny pinching, you’ll get what you pay for.
If they can’t talk to you intelligently about your market niche, it’s probably a good idea to find someone who can — because I guarantee they are out there.
Steve Farnsworth A.K.A. @Steveology
November 20, 2012
Hi Jeff, thanks for stopping by and leaving your comments.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with Jeff, he writes a great PR and communications blog. Check out http://sandstormmedia.com/home/blog/.
All so, Jeff has been interview here several times. You can check those out here:
What Must PR 2.0 Do Differently For Coverage From Journalist 2.0? https://stevefarnsworth.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/pr-coverage-journalist/
How Has Life Changed For Journalist 2.0? https://stevefarnsworth.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/how-has-life-changed-for-journalist-2-0/
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