To ghost post, or not …
John Cass recently responded to Sterling Hager’s somewhat spirited attack, called Sanctimonious 2.0, on a recent PRSA panel. (I didn’t attend the social media panel, but I did read Dan Katz’s great recap. It sounds like the panel, which featured PR 2.0 evangelists Todd Defran and Todd van Hoosear, certainly took a “purist” slant to social media – everything must be transparent, press releases must have all the latest Web 2.0 widgets, etc. They’re pushing a new, cutting edge approach to PR, and so understandably are a bit extremist in their opinions. But, they’re also encouraging PR people to experiment with these new technologies, share successes and failures, and then debate how relevant each is, which is to be commended.)
Back to Sterling’s rant. Apparently at one point during the panel discussion, someone dared to ask whether a PR person can/should ghost write a blog (I’m sure there were gasps in the room). The panelists all said no, that’s better left to corporate employees. Sterling Hager disagreed, and thus began his somewhat humorous online rant. I hate to admit it, but I agree with a lot of what he says. As he points out, we’ve always written speeches, quotes for releases, and even bylines. Given the right circumstance, a blog is no different. When I was at LP&P, I often wrote blog postings for one of my clients. I knew his hot buttons from the dozens of briefings I facilitated, I obviously knew the message we were trying to convey, and often I was more on top of industry news than he was. So while he was traveling across the country, it made sense for me to feed him content – that’s what we do.
At the same time, I think the panelists have a good point – blogs are often designed to create an online dialogue. Just as we run executive opinion pieces by the “authors” and ask them to personalize them, we can’t expect to always craft perfect blog posts for clients and executives. But, we can certainly provide a foundation to help feed that online conversation and prevent a blog being abandoned.
March 4th, 2007 at 10:21 PM
Kari, if you scouted out the news for your client, identified stories and maybe even other blog posts, I think that is an efficient use of time. However, writing a post is an entirely different matter. Blog readers expect to read the words of the writer, warts and all. I am curious would your client want his blog audience to know that you wrote his posts for him? And if not, why not?
March 5th, 2007 at 6:17 PM
Hi John -
First, let me clarify that I’m speaking about corporate-ized blogs more than personal blogs (like mine, for ex.). So yes, in the spirit of transparency, my client was clear that he did not necessarily write all the posts. As with anything ghost written by a PR person, all the posts were seen by him, and he “tweaked” them appropriately to follow his style. He even occasionally vetoed a post because he disagreed. The point here is that a good PR person should know enough to provide a foundation – whether be a blog post, an opinion piece or even a thank you note to a key reporter. The PR people who understand the value of blogs also need to ensure that foundation is appropriately vetted and stylized to maintain the blog’s integrity.
~kari
March 5th, 2007 at 11:24 PM
Did you get a byline on the posts you did write, or were the posts identified as coming from the company in general?
I agree public relations people should know enough to be able to help their clients with advice and background information.
Though I am not sure what you mean by writing, “The PR people who understand the value of blogs also need to ensure that foundation is appropriately vetted and stylized to maintain the blog’s integrity.” So that I can understand, would you explain further? Maybe with some simple examples.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:17 AM
Here’s a simple example: Say that a PR person goes on an analyst tour with a CTO, spending a lot of time hearing discussions around the future of federated identity (or insert any hot topic for a CTO). A few weeks later, that same PR person sees an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal that validates some of the CTO’s predictions. Just as we’ve ghost written executive opinion pieces in the past, that PR person can and should flag the article to the CTO, and even go so far and include a draft response to the blog based on those past conversations. I think the CTO in this example should still personalize the response, inserting his own language and more thoughts, etc., before posting it to his blog. But, I see nothing wrong with providing him something to easily react to – especially since it would be based on his original ideas. PR’s role is to facilitate conversations between executives and target audiences, and I think when done right, we can do the same with online conversations.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:25 PM
In principle I think you are right on the mark, in fact a similar type of service is what I helped build at my former company Backbone Media with Scout. Though writing a draft is a little to much directional for my taste, I think it is okay for a blogger account manager to send story ideas he or she has researched on the web along with suggestions as to how it relates to current company issues. But thinking through and writing the piece is up to the blogger.
March 7th, 2007 at 4:08 PM
[...] word Ghost in this headline is a tribute to Kari Hanson’s fine post. The word Goblin and the graphic here? That, by the definition provided, [...]
March 9th, 2007 at 4:49 AM
Very interested in this conversation because we, as a company, have a ‘Company Blog’ but all the senior management team write for it.
We sometimes identify the author as an individual and other times call it a Team authored article.
What do you think ? Is that open, tranparent and honest ? I think it is – a company is an entity and it’s not just one person (usually either the CEO or the CMO) … as such, it’s better to be clear about what you’re trying to say and who is saying it. There’s nothing wrong with companies saying things provided it’s clear that it’s a team effort is there ?
March 13th, 2007 at 11:01 PM
I think if you are setting the expectation that it is a team effort it is okay. I wonder which posts have the most impact? Comments? etc.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:22 AM
It usually seems to be more a function of the nature of the topic and the interest in that than who is specifically writing it.
I would imagine that would be different if the author were particularly well-known or famous but, for us, we can’t see any correlation with author and interest.
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:40 PM
Blackblade, I think you might actually do better if you did identify who publishes what article. Especially if there is some personalization on the part of individual bloggers. I’ve interviewed a number of bloggers who have stated that personalization helps their corporate blog. And I have also interviewed a number of corporate blog readers who have told me that the reason they read the blog is for the industry information and the way the blogger personalizes the content. The personalized content humanizes the blogger and by extension the company.
March 24th, 2007 at 9:00 AM
Glad you said that … it’s what we’ve decided to do. We’ll mostly post as individuals and only as the ‘team’ when it’s something more corporate that we want to say as a company.
Here’s hoping we get it (mostly) right :-)
March 26th, 2007 at 2:50 PM
[...] much as I’d like, there is an interesting conversation going on in the comments of my “To Ghost Post or Not” post. At this point, is re-inserting myself into that conversation rude? Maybe I’ll [...]