Mary McKnight of RSS Pieces has advocated ghost writing your blogs. I have always believed it is better to do something crappy than not at all. So I guess you can gather that I do not recommend ghost writing, but it certainly is better than nothing. However, I believe this issue strikes at the heart of a blogs real value.
Time V Quality
A blog is at its foundation an opportunity to paint a company's core values and throw a transparent window into your brand and it's inherent personality. It is your company's story and value statement. It is a chance for a company to actually prove to the market place that it is relevant.
The words emboldened above are today's blogspeak. However, instead of falling in love with the culture of the blog and today's Web 2.0 thinking. Take the words for what they are and not in context as to how we so often see them demonstrated across the web.
Additionally, let's trash something right now. Getting excited over a Blog is like getting excited over Word. They are both only software.
Just Semantics?
I am more interested in the Verb than I am the noun. Meaning that "to blog" is to write content. A blog is software.
And if to blog means to write, then we should be talking about writing, not blogging. Am I just playing with semantics? I think not as we learn to write, we are actually learning to become a publisher.
When we are content creators, we are going beyond one platform and we are expanding into many mediums and platforms. It is strategy over just one singular tactic. Blogs, websites, social sites, articles syndicates, press releases, online and offline sequencing. These are the platforms that you can repurpose your content into, thus increasing your marketing reach exponentially.
Tactics are typically acted upon by chasing the next new big thing. While strategy encompasses an overriding objective and plan.
I fear most blog (verb) as a way to get quick bumps from search engines, or because it is the latest buzz. The latter is so 2004 (meaning it ain't that big of a search engine deal anymore). And so if we are going to be doing this web thing shouldn't we have a plan?
Ghost Writing With Strategy
Ghost writing (at the cheap prices advocated in Mary's piece) can easily fall into just a tactical expression. The common phrase heard 'round the web is, "I do not have the time to deal with this crap (a word used by a client of mine), so I will have someone else write it."
I fear the quality suffers as one drives down this street. Seriously, do you think I could create this article you are reading for Twenty bucks?
Now having said that, I do know people who have blogs ghost written and are very successful. However, they typically sell very low end products, or they pay huge dollar for the copywriting. I also think that although ghost writing can work for a Realtor, it will most likely miss the richer texture that home grown writing should produce.
Bad Plans Equal Poor Results
I think the biggest reason that ghosting is a recipe for disaster is that most blog owners do not have a strategy in the first place. How do you outsource a bad plan? A bad plan is a bad plan. It will give poor results by you, or by the ghost writer.
I think developing a voice and a style can only come from practice. And outsourcing is easier down the road than from the get go. It would be much easier for me to hand this blog off to a writer today, than if it would have been when I started HouseBlogger in 2004.
Your Textual Brand
Your content that you create is your brand told thru words. This is the information age and your words (including audio and video) matter.
Because of technology your words can expand twenty fold across platforms and mediums, on the web and off. Thus, expanding your reach further than you could have possibly imagined.
Your content can serve you as your proof that your business matters. Relevant as I mentioned above. If you ghost, I wonder if you really have anything worth a s**t to say? Or wouldn't you be saying it?
Will you create something that has already been said 50 times that day, or will you illuminate your local prospect with a new way of thinking? Such that you literally have etched into their head your brand? In the past I have said it this way. "Give someone an aha moment and they will always carry a piece of you with them".
Whether you decide to create your own content or outsource to a ghost writer. Make sure you become a content creator and publisher, not merely a blogger.
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