December 24th, 2008
Should You Outsource Your Company Blog?
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I came across a WSJ article today in which Kelly Spors profiles search marketing and blogging services company MoreVisibility and asks if companies should outsource their blogs –
Some technology consultants are pitching “blog management” services to companies they say want the benefits of blogging but are too busy to manage a blog themselves. They do everything from writing pithy, thought-provoking posts about a company or industry to managing comments and getting a blog better play on search engines.
The company brainstorms “hot topics” to blog about with its clients and then its search-marketing-experts-slash-copywriters write “keyword rich” posts on those topics, says Danielle Leitch, executive vice president. The ghostwriter also embeds relevant links in the posts and lets clients review the posts before they’re published.
MoreVisibility charges clients about $500 a month for one weekly post to about $2,000 a month for daily posts. It also charges a one-time fee starting at $2,000 for setting up the blog. The company manages blogs for about 20 businesses, Ms. Leitch adds.
The main reason companies outsource their blog, she says, is lack of time. But also many companies like the idea of having someone handle it who understands search-engine optimization and has the technical know-how to best write and market a blog.
Lewis Green believes that the answer is: it depends.
Mary Fischer believes that the answer is “yes”, if the client stays actively involved.
Given that I evangelize social media outsourcing all the time, it might surprise you that I don’t believe that company blogs should be outsourced.
I believe that it’s possible to outsource customer support on social media in a transparent way. For instance, in response to an irate customer’s blog post, it’s possible to say –
I’m Gaurav from Agency X responding to you on behalf of Brand Y. I’m empowered to take decisions related to your problem and I’ll work with you to find a solution that works for you.
However, it’s tricky to outsource an entire corporate blog in a transparent manner and I’m not a huge fan of ghostwriting.
The solution for time-strapped companies who would like to have a blog (why?) would be to structure it as a group blog and have the agency employees write under their own names. As long as there is a good enough mix of posts by company employees and agency employees, and all affiliations are transparently declared on profile pages, such an arrangement should be acceptable to all. As for the quality of the content itself, I can’t seen how an agency can create consistently good quality content for a company, unless company employees are involved in the blog.
So, my answer is “no”, a company should not outsource its blog unless it has the confidence to do it in a transparent manner.
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In my young, hippy blogger days, I would have screamed BLASPHEMY! However - since then I’ve watched several businesses I’ve worked with hire and work with ghost bloggers and it’s working well. In fact, since some of the firms that are ghostblogging are also managing PR and events, the consistency and quality of the outsourced work may even be superior.
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these are news from the happy English language island. How do you handle a European company blog where your have never less than 5 or 6 languages, often more ?
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[...] think outsourcing your company blog is some violation of the commandments of [...]
[...] think outsourcing your company blog is some violation of the commandments of [...]
@Douglas: I’m glad that many social media thinkers and practitioners are moving beyond a narrow purist approach to social media and thinking about how to scale it while retaining its essence.
@Hans: True. That’s the same problem we face in India, with 22 official languages. But, perhaps, a diversity of languages is even more of a reason to use the help of an agency, which may have better access to people who are savvy in social media engagement and proficient in the required languages.
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