If you’ve been following my Posterous Blog, you probably figured out that I was away in the Bay Area for a quick business-slash-pleasure trip. The whole time I was a bit anxious – I had blogger anxiety. That nauseous antsy feeling a blogger develops when they know they will soon be detached for long periods of time from their blogging/tweeting/facebooking dashboard. The result from my trip – lots of photos to share on Posterous (which is why I <3 Posterous) but also – silence. Pure silence on my blog.
However, the whole week I had been meeting up with old PR friends, political campaigners who were experimenting with Social Media, and of course family and friends. I was being physically social – you know that low-tech, face-to-face, meet-up-for-coffee conversation. Yeah. That. And it was great.
One of the things I discovered after meeting with different groups is that I knew a lot more Ghost Bloggers than I thought I did.
Read this latest published Entrepreneur article which talks about the black market, hush-hush profession of ghost blogging:
The Ghost Speaks – Entrepreneur.com
The article profiles a 24 yr-old ghostblogger. Here’s an excerpt:
Schofield, 24, is a business world ghostwriter–and the online voice of some high-profile names, including Nick Cannon, Robert T. Kiyosaki and Chris Moneymaker. She is part of a growing army of outside contractors who blog and tweet unseen in the name of ego and entrepreneurship. Writing as her clients, she posts on Facebook and MySpace, or tweets pithy thoughts straight from her iPhone.
As the Internet levels the playing field for sales and services, business ghostwriters like Schofield are becoming an essential part of marketing strategy. Stephen Turcotte, president of Backbone Media Inc., a Boston-area Internet marketing company, estimates that 20 percent of American businesses now have some kind of blog, with about one in four outsourcing the writing–although few will admit to that particular kind of outsourcing. Nevertheless, on Elance.com, a website for business freelancers, demand for ghostwriters surged last year: Its category jumped to the 25th-most popular from 74th over the first nine months of last year.
After reading this, the little devil on my left shoulder whispered that I should go to Elance.com and start whipping up a profile. The angel on my right harked on what was pounded into my psyche during my time at a previous PR agencey: Thou shall not blog on behalf of thy client.
But I ask, is it unethical? I say Yes. But more importantly, is it unavoidable. Most likely, for the few companies who want an active social media presence but cannot “afford” the time, money, and strife to keep these programs up and running on their own.
Let’s be honest. Social Media is relatively new, confusing, and usually time-intensive. Most companies would rather pay a ghostblogger to at least share the load, if not run the entire program.
However, is this a viable excuse? Besides, many of these celebs and CEO’s have actual jobs and lives to run right? Is having an active online presence too much to ask from them?
I wouldn’t be too surprised if some of the Social Media bloggers out there had their own team of writer elves to help with the slack. I have to wonder how many of them create such great content and tweet 40 times a day aaand still find time to send me a newsletter. Should bloggers be honest about who is blogging for them? Or are these “helpers” essentially speech writers?
Ah–so many questions. This is the big elephant in the Social Media space, and I think that as long as everyone’s happy, and while we wait for some ghost blogging scandal to break and convince us otherwise, ghost blogging will persist like sweet black market candy.
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