5 Alternatives to Ghost Blogging
Ghost
I know ghost blogging is a polarizing topic. I saw the question pop up again last week on #BlogChat. I personally abhor the practice. Now I’m not a total purest. I don’t think the author has to do every step and I have no problem with someone editing their posts. But I think straight ghost blogging is unimaginative and lazy. But instead of getting on my soap box and preaching why I think it’s bad I thought I’d take a more constructive approach and give you some alternatives.
Edit an Email
The main argument people use to make a case for ghost blogging is that people are far to busy to blog. In fact they’ll write very lengthy emails detailing just how “too busy” they are to blog.
One of my favorite approaches from my days at HP was to shoot executives an email asking them for a couple short paragraphs on the topic. I’d take that, edit it, add appropriate links, a photo or two and shoot that back to them for approaval. All their own words. Usually after doing this a few times they would realize how easy it was to blog and often started doing more of it on their own. I still usually handled final editing and posting.
Do an Interview
Usually in order to ghost blog for someone I imagine you probably have to first interview them. Why not just make that interview the post? You may dictate from a phone interview or do an email Q&A style interview. Just post that. Seems easy enough to me.
Audio or Video posts
Some people just aren’t word smiths. They don’t feel comfortable writing. Doing audio or video posts may be a much easier option for them. Keeping in mind these aren’t broadcast quality productions this can still be a relatively easy and low cost option. And you get bonus points for rich content.
The Edited Email Interview
This is a combo of the first two and probably as close to ghost blogging as I think anyone should do. Some people may need more prodding than the first option but for whatever reason may not like a Q&A format for the final post. Start with a Q&A email and then cut and paste their answers into a blog post. This will likely take a little more editing than the above options but if done carefully still stays in the lighter shades of gray.
Hire a Blogger
You can always just hire a blogger to blog about your company. This is transparent and often times better content than any of the above options. Hiring a blogger who knows the medium and can provide an outsiders view into your company is an underutilized option in my opinion. And often times if you look around your companies geekier corners there are probably several people who blog on thier own time that would love to make it a full time gig.
These are just 5 possible options. There are probably many more I didn’t mention. What am I missing?
Continue reading here: Social Media Should Not be Housed. No One Owns it.
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