Blog Ghost Writing, Good or Bad?

[Mike Seidle]

Tom Deeter recently posted an article on ghost writing. His premise is that if President Obama's doesn't write his own speeches, why should you write your own blog?

"There’s a bit of debate about whether or not to hire ghost writers for a business blog or, as I like to call them, “phost writers“. And while I understand the arguments against it, especially those focusing on transparency and sincerity, I think the people making them don’t have a firm understanding of the amount of time that goes into writing a good blog post.

They also don’t have a firm grasp on a simple economic concept: Some people’s time is worth lots of money. If you or your potential blogger bills or earns over about $50 per hour, you are probably not making a wise decision to strictly blog in house." -- READ MORE

As the owner of a professional blog ghost writing service I get tired of debunking the meme that says somehow ghost writing isn't a valid blogging strategy because it isn't genuine. I guess it gets old being the guy who has to tell the emperor he is naked. What do you think? Is ghost writing a good thing or should it be avoided?

(photo credit: jdebner)

[Mike Seidle]

Robby - I think at the end of the day that black and white are also shades of gray. There are competing motivations for writing a blog, and the ethics of ghost writing change with the reasons a blog is written. A site written for marketing purposes has a very different set of ethics than a blogger/journalist's blog. You are right that a business should consider carefully ghost writing, and I'll add to that: they should be very picky on who they hire to help manage and write their blog.

[Robby Slaughter]

I'm no idealist; I'm just being practical. The practical matter is that public reactions are difficult to predict, and many businesses succeed or fail on the tide of public opinion. My own opinion is that there's nothing wrong with using the Internet to make money, and if you are careful, it's perfectly fine to outsource the creation of content for your website to other people.

However, the point of this forum, as asked by your original question, is not "should the Internet be used for commerce?" or "must blogging be strictly non-commercial?" but "is ghost writing [for the web] a good thing or should it be avoided?"

The answer is: it's complicated. If you're ghostwriting copy for an ad, sure, no problem. If you're ghostwriting blog content which isn't attributed to anybody, most people would probably agree that this is okay. If you're ghostwriting blog content but changing the byline to be somebody else, well, it starts to get icky. If you invent fake people (a la Carolyn Keene) some customers may be outraged and others won't care. If you post fake postive reviews, create fake fan websites or whitewash your Wikipedia entries you are probably going to offend people and lose business. These are all forms of ghostwriting, but I personally think some of them are dishonest. I know I am not alone, and before a business hires a ghostwriting firm, they should determine if their ethics are in alignment.

Ultimately, ghostwriting poses a very personal moral question: is it right to take credit for someone else's work? Certainly ghostwriting is commonplace and ancient, but just because something is popular does not mean it is right. Certainly ghostwriters are professional writers, so it's less expensive to pay them then to spend long hours trying to write the work yourself. Certainly, ghostwriters are paid for their work, so ghostwriting is not stealing, but is a ghostwriter also being paid to keep a secret---or even to lie when asked a direct question about their role? Why is paying someone to write your term paper dishonest, but paying someone to write your book widely accepted? This moral question doesn't sound simple to me.

I'm not trying to sound smart, nor am I an idealist, nor am I opposed to people making an honest living. I'm just trying to help answer the question you asked originally: "is ghostwriting a good thing or should it be avoided?" The answer is: it depends. This may be a frustrating answer for businesses who are looking to get into blogging quickly, but few things worth doing are easy. You don't need to be a social media expert to talk about honesty and integrity or to make judgement calls. You just need to be willing to have the conversation.

[Mike Seidle]

Robby - I appreciate and admire your idealism. It reminds me of how things changed in the early '90s as business and private citizens began using the internet. The purists (at the time I was one having grown up with access to the internet via programs at Ball State) all objected to anything commercial. Everyone else wanted to do what they did (sell stuff, buy stuff, meet people, talk about pointless pop-culture issues, access pornography and so on) in real life.

Blogging already has been through this - and it's going through it again. Social media is going through this process now (well, if we talk MySpace and forums it's been there already). Reality is that a blog is just a format for a website. It's success or failure has to do with it's ability to generate an audience who takes actions to blog owner want them to (i.e. click on ads, write their congressman, argue about pointless issues of minutiae, laugh, cry, buy something, protest something). I don't think the issues are as complicated as you are making them unless you are writing for an audience of social media experts. Then, of course, it's about being the guy that sounds the smartest...

[Robby Slaughter]

Blogging is defintely new. Although there have been examples of blogs for ten years, the mainstream has only begun to connect with blogging only recently. More importantly, blogging is brand new compared when compared with modern journalism (300 years old), widespread printing (600 years old), political speeches (3,000+ years) and writing in general (6,000 years old.) Society has had a long time to work out the ethics of attribution in those other areas, but with blogging the field is still very gray.

There absolutely are not norms and standards in the blogging world. This controversy is apparent thorugh a quick web search. Some people think ghostblogging is never acceptable, others think that as long as there is no byline, it's fine. Some feel that celebrities and executives are "obviously" not doing the writing themselves, so ghostblogging is reasonable. Others think ghostblogging is perfectly fine except when the story is personal or the purported blogger is independent of any corporate, government or non-profit entitiy. You simply can't make the "everybody knows it's ghostwritten" argument, because there is violent disagreement happening right now. Indeed, this very forum and the opening question about "right" versus "wrong" demonstrates that the ethics of ghostblogging is an open question.

It is this lack of clear standards which creates tremendous risk for outsourced business blogging. No matter how expert the writers or upstanding the blogging service, there is still the risk that the rapidly growing and changing online community will react negatively to any obfuscation of attribution. Of course, there is still a risk in blogging yourself, because you might be a terrible writer or waste valuable billable hours. But those risks represent opportunity costs: at worst your self-written, totally transparent blog will be worthless. At worst, even an well-written outsourced blog could be interpreted as false or misleading. The problem is that there isn't enough data to analyze the risk. How far back over the line is ghostblogging from fake blogs and fake reviews? Nobody knows.

Ghostblogging is not fundamentally about attribution, transparency, authenticity or content, but a nuanced amalgam of these factors. I believe that companies can outsource their work without sacrificing in these areas, but it is difficult. Of course, there is an easy way out, which is to be completely transparent. Politicians don't hide that they have speechwriters, and books by athletes almost always say "as told to Supporting Writer" in the subtitle. I would advise any company to start with total transparency, and decide if they think that any degree of non-transparency is appropriate. This is something that only the company can decide through conferring with it's current and potential customers. The ethical issues remain complex and there is no simple answer.

[Tom Deeter]

Hi guys, great points being made here. To me the bottom line is some companies realize the tremendous communication value of a blog but need help getting their ideas "on paper". Do they sacrifice transparency when they enlist our services? That is a good question...

The fact remains, most would-be bloggers, especially new business bloggers have trouble getting started and being consistent. Not because they have nothing to say... each client I interview is full of amazing stories and experience, most of which they usually dismiss as trivial or uninteresting. All I do is spark up a conversation, identify the compelling content that streams out and have them elaborate on it... ask a few questions and listen. It's really quite a fascinating process because in those few minutes of purposeful conversation I never fail to learn something from the client that is totally unexpected. In 30 minutes I usually have 4-5 "unpolished gems" that, with a talented writer, become beautiful, shiny blog posts.

So based on what's been said already, a question I have is... How transparent does a company need to be to measure up to everyone's definition of transparent?

[Mike Seidle]

Robby thanks for the great thoughts. Blogging is not new. It's been around since at least 1996 when we called "blogs" weblogs (sites like Slashdot, Drudgereport, and so on) and journaling (what really has emerged as the modern blog -- hence blogging service LiveJournal.com's name). Ethics are established, there are norms and standards in the blogging world. There have been for years. Here is a pretty good history of blogging from wikipedia (it's crowdsourced, but it's pretty good) and there are many others you can read.

There is little to no risk in hiring a service with a good track record, so long as the message is authentically yours and the writer is simply putting your ideas, concepts, perspective and message to paper. One could argue there's more risk in do-it-yourself blogging for a corporation -- your people may not have the writing skills, communications experience, knowledge and time to do the job right. The most important part is that you stay involved in the conversation. Probably the biggest risk for business owners is missing the social media boat because you are paralyzed by fear of backlash and artificial rules.

[Robby Slaughter]

Yes, you must talk with the person who writes your blog.

But also, you must work to understand the unique landscape of the web. Outsourcing the writing of your blog by talking over general ideas with a ghostwriter and having them publish can certainly improve efficiency. Depending on the type of blog and the degree of conversation you had with the writer, the community may deem this action ethical or unethical. Hiring people to go on other sites and promote your organization or write positive reviews will be considered wrong, as many examples have shown.

I believe the meat of the issue is that online social media is new, and the ethics of attribution are not yet clear. Offline, ghost writing is a common practice and accepted in many areas (but shunned in others, like journalism and academia.) Anyone considering outsourcing their online content should review these issues carefully, because the potential for backlash is tremendous. If you write your own blog, the only risk you take is potentially wasting time and money. If you hire a ghostblogger---even one who is an exceptional writer---you take the risk that the community may decide that the output is inauthentic and lash out against you, your company or your products.

[Mike Seidle]

Robby - I think you locked into what the meat of the issue is: talking with your blog writer is critical. In our business it's what differentiates the bottom of the barrel from reputable, professional blog services.

The bottom of the barrel is all about cheap keyword rich copy, accuracy is optional, and often the selling price is so low that the writer is driven to steal content. The real tragedy is hiring a low end ghostwriter is that Google does take content quality into account, and generally bad, spammy blogs are punished with low search rankings. A quality blog will perform better in search, but that's a side effect of having other websites, bloggers and social media users share your post with others. It's not a benefit of simply having a blog.

[Robby Slaughter]

Yes, writers deserve credit for their work, but the issues are much more nuanced. It's true that in other areas outside of the Internet, we've grown accustomed to the idea that attribution can be falsely assigned, but on the web it's not clear if that's going to fly. Again, I'm not attempting to imply or assert that you are producing content under false pretenses, just that the difference between ghostwriting (ethical) and outright deception (unethical) is a line of almost zero width.

Here's the reality: writing is a difficult, time-consuming and fundamental skill. Obviously it is a smart financial decision for highly-compensated individuals to generate the ideas aloud and then delegate the work of editing to an expert. However, there is tremendous incentive to skip the first step. If someone writes a blog under my byline without talking to me first, then I am not the one with the ideas and insight and the use of my name is potentially fraud.

Again, I am not attempting to imply that you do this. I am simply trying to provide a warning to anyone considering outsourcing their blog, that you must decide if that 10 minute conversation before each post is important. If it's not, then your blog may still be wonderful useful, insightful or hilarious, it's just not authentically your blog.

The question remains as to whether or not authenticity is important online. Offline, clearly, nobody cares about authenticity from corporations. Online, the rules may be different. The astroturfing story PK offered demonstrates the issue perfectly. Ghostwriting blogs is not over the ethical line, but ghostwriting on other blogs to pump up your brand is widely considered unacceptable. The line is thin and you are right next to the edge. Again, there is nothing wrong with living on the edge, but anyone who chooses this route should be aware that ghostblogging (unlike outsourcing press releases) is a highly controversial practice.

[Mike Seidle]

Robby - So all of what you are saying comes down to credit the writer? Wow, why not just say it that way and left out your analysis of my company's intent. That said, I get what you are saying, and I it's not even remotely an issue outside the holy church of social media purity. Reality is asking a $3,500/hour CEO to write a 450 word blog post in the 10 minutes they have isn't going to happen. Reality is that even someone billing hours at $150/hour has much more profitable things to do than spend four hours on a blog posts they can communicate to us in 10 minutes.

Oh, and by the way, who is the authentic source of a blog post? The person who's ideas and insights are being put to paper or the person operating the keyboard? Hmm. The person who should be credited is the one with the ideas and insights. That is why Obama delivering a speech written for him is OK. It's also why hiring a service like ours in not just OK, it's a good idea: you can get your story to your market and get your real work done.