Ghostwritten blogs: wrong or right?

Posted by Vikki Chowney
on 7th December 2009

istock_000001249504xsmallDell is holding a B2B social media conference today, which has produced a multitude of wholly appropriate tips for good practice (search Twitter using the #dellb2b hashtag), backed up with a number of case studies on brands getting it right.

One of the most interesting debates from this morning focused around the notion of ghostwriting, and whether this is an appropriate method for running a brand’s blog. A heated debate ensued, including the notion of this being illegal, and comparing ghostwriting to writing a speech for someone – which is readily seen to be acceptable.

Matt Bamford-Bowes, Head of Social at MediaCom’s Beyond Advertising, pitched in on the issue of ‘fake blogs’, saying that; “it isn’t suprising that companies pay PR teams to maintain blogs. It gives aligned tone of voice and point of view.” Whereas Jas Dhaliwal, who covers social media for Microsoft’s MVP Award Program, provided the opposing view with a warning. “Ghost written blogs (or those written by PR agencies) are dangerous. Agencies don’t know your company DNA!!”

Ben Schneider, a media professional at Dow Jones, added that ghostwriting; “backfires though, when PR teams specialise in messaging rather than generating weighty worthwile content,” and Stuart Bruce, founder of Wolfstar PR combating this by saying; “it’s more to do with having the capacity (time/skill) to do it.”

Final thoughts included a question from Danny Whatmough from Wildfire PR on whether the real issue is a PR team’s understanding of social media, asking of this meant that they might not have the ability to write for a blog. But regardless of which side people sat on, the overall feeling was that making a valuable contribution to the community must remain the core intention.

So what do you think? Is having your blog ‘ghost-written’ a good or a bad thing?

Recent comments
  • That's one of the great questions about social media.
    Ghost writing is obviously unfair, if intended as writing something faking your identity. I think that's the key, agencies can definitely run company blogs, as long as they do it transparently, but it's sure that companies must be part of the game. Agencies can help brands building a strategy, and mnaging the conversation with their customers, while companies must join the conversation actively, supporting agencies to build contents and value.
  • OMB
    Corporate blogs are there for several reasons. Firstly, to demonstrate that "we're interacting with our clients" and obviously, to generate leads and ultimately "sales," as well as supporting the reputation of the brand. A lot of businesses still don't get blogs and see them solely as a sales channel (telling the audience, rather than talking with them)and so unless they have some marketing/PR experience, they need support to guide them through this maze.

    That's not saying someone has to write it for them. But there needs to be some hand-holding for those that think it's a quick win when it could quite easily become a big loss - just look at some of the corporate blogs out there that just link back to product pages.

    If it is ghost written, then it needs complete buy in from the client so that the "speak" is relevant and topical and fits the brand. It shouldn't be just the PRs messaging speak.

    Alternatively let the company write it but let the PR edit it to ensure it hits the right notes while holding firm to the clients "DNA" (to coin another post).
  • Are people mature enough to deal with dissenting or controversial opinion? I'd say not. From that golfer who is in the news, to the pop star who makes an unpopular comment - they all get castigated by the public (or the press) for normal human transgressions.

    If you read a CEO's blog (or twitter stream) and he says something "off message" - will your first action be to twitter "OMG! CEO says his company cocked up!" and them dump all your stock? What does that do for the brand and reputation of the company?

    In a reasonable and mature environment, we'd realise that (big) businesses are controlled by individuals. That they don't all sing from the same (corporate) hymn sheet. That the idle gossip between two senior execs won't negatively affect the share price.

    For a small to medium company - it makes sense to run your own blog IF YOU'RE GOOD AT BLOGGING. You may be the best sprocket manufacturer in the country - but that's no guarantee you can write well or effectively engage online.

    If you're a big company - the stakes are too high to risk having individuals blog without going through layers of legal, regulatory, and PR teams.

    In an ideal world we'd all be skilled enough at blogging *and* skilled enough at reading blogs. Until that day, it may be best to leave it to the professionals.

    T
    (My views are most certainly my own and in no way reflect the opinions, thoughts or desires of any other person, company, legal entity, or imaginary creature)
  • I agree with Danny on this. As a PR/comms/digital person, helping clients comes in a variety of guises and yes, occasionally that might mean writing a blog post. Ghost-blogging is obviously not best practice, but the idea that it is 'wrong' to do so just doesn't make sense to me.

    And I'm not sure I agree that the ghosting of other materials - speeches, presentations, quotes etc - is wrong either. CEOs/MDs are busy running businesses and employ internal and external communications professionals to amongst other things, write copy and draft speeches.
  • Yeah - of course it's very bad. The aegument whill go that PR types ghost copy all the time, for client by-lined articles; CEO quotes for press releases; speech etc. But this isn;t an excuse - we need to stop ghosting this stuff as well. Ghosting was always wrong, but tolerated. Now, no more.

    Even more weirdly, the CIPR's social media guidelines also declared ghost-blogging illegal. IMO they've zealously interpreted the fair trading EU directive... I blogged it here: http://www.simoncollister.com/simonsays/2009/01...
  • Thanks for the mention Vikki. I'm not sure this argument is quite as black and white as good or bad. I help clients with blogging in a number of different ways. Does this include ghostwriting? Well, it depends on the definition.

    In a perfect world, all businesses, brands and CEOs that blogged would write it all themselves. In reality it's not always possible or practical. Does this mean they shouldn't blog?

    There are a lot of 'rules' that get bandied around in relation to social media, often from very high horses.
  • It will be a 50:50 split in the big wide world :- social media natives will say "bad bad bad" traditional PR/corporate folks will say "fair game".

    Lots of mature businesses are stuck with "can't blog won't blog" senior execs - the temptation for PR folks to ghost blog for them is almost irresistible. That doesn't make it right of course. The biggest down fall is when the CEO meets a customer and the customer starts to talk to them about what they said in the blog post - big #fail / embarrassment, or if a customer posts a comment and someone else responds as the CEO #biggerfail.
  • vikkichowney
    I have to say that I'm surprised myself, but we'll have to see how it unfolds over the next week!
  • How can the voting be 50/50?! RIDICULOUS! Everybody knows that Whatley is right on this: bad, indeed.
  • great blog you have thank you .
  • Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad...
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