Lately, the topic of ghostwriting has been the subject of a few posts in the little corner of the blogosphere where I hang out.<\/p>\n
It all started due to a client blog<\/a> written by staffers at Boston-area PR firm Topaz Partners and escalated from there. Investor’s Business Daily also had a story.<\/a>\u00a0 I followed the conversation on blogs and Twitter, but just haven’t had a minute to write about it until today. You can go back and read<\/a> all<\/a> the<\/a> relevant<\/a> posts,<\/a> and I urge you to — some very smart folks had some very smart comments. <\/p>\n Here’s my take. Ghostwriting, bad. Hiring people to write a blog or sponsoring a blog, ok. <\/p>\n As long as the person whose name is on the post is the person who wrote it, does it matter whether they were hired to write it? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n Which is why I am the editor of a client blog<\/a> and post there regularly under my own name. My client wants a blog, knows I understand the market and the products, and trusts me to build a good experience for the customers and readers. A good friend writes a blog<\/a> that is sponsored by a major company, but the blog content is driven by her, not the sponsor. <\/p>\n I do not believe there is anything wrong with either approach. The key is of course that the person writing has, or has developed, expertise that makes him qualified to write the blog. <\/p>\n What isn’t right is hiring professional writers to write for employees, whether the CEO or a product manager, without attribution. If your CEO doesn’t want to write, find another way to connect her with your customers. For example, Bill Marriott<\/a> records a podcast, which is then transcribed for the blog. Nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Blogs are a communications tool, not a religion.<\/em><\/strong> As long as you are honest about what you are doing and why, please, please push the envelope. Try new things. Just be relevant, be honest and don’t try to fool anybody. Do no harm and don’t hurt the humans \ud83d\ude42<\/a>\u00a0 And don’t be afraid to f*** up. Tom Peters <\/a>said it years ago, and it is still true – aim for fast failures. Rethink, retool and do it again. <\/p>\n Tags: ghostwriting<\/a>, blogs<\/a>, blogging<\/a>, sponsored blogs<\/a><\/small><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lately, the topic of ghostwriting has been the subject of a few posts in the little corner of the blogosphere where I hang out. It all started due to a client blog written by staffers at Boston-area PR firm Topaz Partners and escalated from there. Investor’s Business Daily also had a story.\u00a0 I followed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}