Last week, I asked the question whether it was ethical to edit spam comments to get rid of the URL that is being used to generate some SEO juice for the spammers, but leave the semi-spammy comment in place.
Now THAT'S a lot of Spam
I expected some vigorous debate and discussion with people on both sides of the argument. But with a couple of exceptions, everyone said, “No, this is not okay!”
(Before I go on, let me say, we got some wonderful feedback and comments, so I want to thank everyone who took the time to read the post and respond.)
I was actually surprised by the near unanimous stance everyone took. I figured it would be more of an even split on the issue, with a large number of people saying they thought it was okay to beat the spammers by using their own energies against them, sort of a blogging jiu jitsu. But, nearly everyone was of the opinion that we, as real bloggers, should be above this, and should not resort to the same practices as the spammers.
Erik, I think deleting them is the best option. Editing them just so you can keep a “semi-generic praise-ish” comment doesn’t seem right. Is it that important to receive praise, especially if it is not “legitimate” anyway. I think the ethical debate rests more in the decision to keep known spam comments – minus the links – just to make it look like people like your blog.
That was the majority opinion, and made the most sense. And it seemed to cover most types of blog comments, although Daniel Clark of GeekDadsWeekly.com made an interesting point:
It’s interesting that not a single person here, most notably the ones who say they will strip any and all links left in their blog’s comments, has opted out of including *their* link in *these* comments.
(Touché, Daniel.)
The Other Side of the Debate: Editing for Spelling & Punctuation
However, one person, an ethics blogger, said on his blog that he did not think it was inappropriate to edit typos and grammar errors in another person’s comment. But I disagree. That’s a line I won’t cross. It’s not up to me to fix someone’s spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors. They’re their errors, not mine, and they should not be fixed because I have to have everything perfect.
A post and its comments are a historical record, to show what people were thinking and saying at that time. If they make a mistake, it’s not my place to adjust the historical record because I have a weird fixation on spelling and grammar.
(And no, I don’t think spammers deserve to be a part of the historical record.)
That’s why most bloggers will fix an error in information by striking out the error and writing the correct information next to it. They will also put an Update: note at the bottom of the post, so people can see that the information has been updated and corrected. (Note: this doesn’t extend to typos and misspellings. I think we can fix those without telling everyone “I fixed a typo.”)
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
We’ve been debating around the office whether it’s better to write for search or to write for readers.
I think it’s actually a little of both.
On the one hand, there are people who will never optimize a single blog post for search engines. They just write awesome stuff and people flock to them through word of mouth.
On the other, there are people who believe that it’s okay to churn out crap, just so long as you win search engine results. Their thought is if you win more search, you get more traffic.
The problem with the latter is that while you may get more traffic, you also get more people who see your writing is crap, and so you get more people who ignore you. The problem with the former is that you can’t rely on word of mouth. That’s why it’s important that you do both.
I call it writing for posterity.
Writing for posterity means you want to win search, but you also want people to read it. It means you optimize for search while you write as well as you can. This shouldn’t be an either/or proposition.
I had a great example of writing for posterity on my Laughing Stalk humor blog last week. For no reason that I can determine, I got a big spike of readers — 600 over 3 days — showing up at a column I wrote nearly a year ago.
My blog post/humor column, “Honey, It’s Over. Burma Shave!“, started ranking high on my Google Analytics, nearly 10 months after I first wrote it.
The source? Google.se, or Google Sweden.
The reason? I don’t even know. I don’t know if I got featured on a front page somehow. I don’t know if a news story mentioned the incident. I don’t know if there was an auditorium filled with Swedes who were all visiting my site.
What I know is that I had nearly 606 Swedes visit my site over a 3 day period, and spend some time on my site. They came because they found me on Google (Google Sweden, which I guess just makes me Swedish famous), and they stayed for an average of 40 seconds. Not huge time, but all the RSS bots seem to be screwing with my Time On Page stats.
Had I tried to just focus on search for this post, my readability would have most likely suffered. But had I just focused on readership, I may never have been found.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
As a professional blogger, I see a lot of different blogs, both small business and corporate. Some are good, some are terrible. Some are informative and engaging, some are daily commercials, some are stilted and formal. I can spot the blogs written by people who are passionate about their work, knowledgeable about their field, or exploring new knowledge.
I can also spot the ones that are written by marketing professionals, committees, and the legal department.
Blogging tends to make corporate types a little nervous
It’s not that I have anything against marketers (I’ve been one for over 16 years). And I don’t have anything against lawyers. (Committees, on the other hand. . .)
The problem is blogging has a different writing style, a different flow. In blogging, you don’t worry about being technically accurate, covering every contingency, option, variation, divergence, modification, and refinement, you just have to be right.
But the blogs I see by marketers, lawyers, and committees don’t have that spark. Everything is written like a legal brief, or it uses all the proper product/service names, instead of what customers actually call it. Or it has that lowest common denominator feel of the committee, where every phrase is scrutinized, and meetings are filled with statements like “should we say ‘rediscover’ or ‘redefine?’” and then discussed heatedly for 30 minutes. (“Why can’t we say ‘rediscover or redefine?’” “But what about people who have not discovered or defined it in the first place?”)
Marketing Copywriting and Legal Writing Are Not Good Blog Writing
Blogging is informal. It’s written like people speak. It has punch, emotion, spark, verve. Sentences start with “and.” Or appear incomplete. While grammar is (and should be) used, people are a little more loose with some of the grammar rules. That’s not to say a blogger gets to write like an illiterate scribbler. But rather, they don’t need to march in lockstep with the grammar rules our 7th grade teacher drummed into us.
A good blog has to capture the attention of the person reading it. It has to be well-written and interesting. Too often, corporate blogs are stiff, formal, and uninteresting. They’re literary yawn-fests that seem to want to drive away readers, not bring them in.
I recently read a pro athlete’s blog that was hosted on his team’s website. And I could tell right away — see how I just started that sentence with ‘and?’ — that he didn’t write it. Or at least he didn’t have the final edit. That’s because the author or editor didn’t use team nicknames, and they made sure to include sponsor names.
“We’ve been working hard at the Sheinhardt Wig Company Indianapolis Beagles Practice Facility all week, and are looking forward to facing the Cincinnati Rough Riders on Sunday at 4:00 p.m.”
BLEAH! The only people who refer to anything by their sponsors’ names are marketers and race car drivers. The only people who refer to a team by their full name in an informal setting are marketers. Given that this particular athlete is not known for his eloquence, I could only assume this had been edited heavily, and not just for grammar.
While I’m not a big fan of misspelled words, poor grammar, and text speak, I do think writers should be given their own voice, and not edited to sound like some marketer’s idea of what they think it should be.
Basically, if you want to be a successful blogger, you need to learn to write like a real person. Loosen up the tie, disband the committee, unclench, and start to write like a real person. When you have an urge to fix something to as required by the marketing copy user’s guide, kill it.
Learn to write how people talk, and you’ll start to figure out how people read. And then they’ll start reading what you have to say.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
There has been a lot of news lately on how companies are really not hiring right now. A recent report talks about how a companies are hiring temp workers, but they are not hiring them to stay. In the past, a common practice was to test drive a worker then offer them a position. Hiring them as full-time employees is not happening right now.
So, who is getting the work done?
When I joined ATA Airlines back in 1997, George Michelsons brought in Bain and Company to basically prepare the company for sale. The process was to get rid of a lot of people and put more jobs onto fewer people. While this strategy worked around the country for Bain, it usually preceded an upgrade in office automation to ensure the work could still get done.
The office automation phase did not occur at ATA Airlines.
The result was a lot of stressed out people carrying around their imaginary trays trying to figure out how they were going to fit one more item onto an already heavy load. No longer were people interested in teamwork, they were more interested in self-preservation. It created a lot of ill-tempered people in the process.
As some of my clients reveal their corporate cultures, I am finding similarities to what I experienced at ATA Airlines. No one has time to commit to anything above and beyond what their core responsibilities are. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is not projected to get much better – CEO’s are reluctant to hire.
What are the solutions?
The easiest is what is being done by some today. Hire temp workers to get things done. They may cost a little more in the short-term, but allow you to avoid the headaches of hiring employees and their costs over the long-term. There are a lot of companies providing these services.
Sometimes, just hiring a grunt worker is not enough. Sometimes you need a professional person to do the work, you don’t have time to do. There are companies being set up that can act as your Marketing Department, your Accounting Department, or your HR Department. They can do it at a cost that is far cheaper than hiring full-time employees, but are focused solely on getting work done for you.
So, look around and ask yourself, are you and your colleagues a bunch of stressed out grumpy people not really accomplishing much because there is too much to do? There is help out there that can help your company meet its strategic goals for the year.
We actually put together a white paper on the ROI of outsourcing blogging and social media. You can download it here, if you want to take a look.
About the Author: Paul Lorinczi Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.
This post was originally published on February 10, 2009 on the DeckersMarketing.com blog, which will soon be closed down.
Neal “Taffy” Taflinger, of Indy.com posted a blogging question on my Facebook page a few days ago:
Question for you, Mr. Blogger Man – is it better to blog frequently so people know there is something to read or only as often as you have something valuable to say?
Rather than saying it’s one or the other, I would say post frequently and make sure you have something valuable to say.
Business blogs should post at least once a day (once a weekday is fine, and skip the weekends). Personal blogs like Neal’s or my humor blog can be once a week. However, once a week is the bare minimum. But I wouldn’t sacrifice either or choose one over the other. You need valuable content, and you need to post it with some frequency. The more you post, the more the search engines will find you (and love you!). This makes it easier to be found in the search engines for your particular search terms.
More importantly, you need to post consistently. If you post once a week, post it on the same day. If you post it daily, post it at the same time.
Plus, if you post regularly, your readers will know when and how to find you, and your readership will build more quickly and reliably than if you were to post every 7 – 15 days, without rhyme or reason, or any regular schedule.
Bottom line is this isn’t an either/or answer. There are those who say you can sacrifice quality for quantity, but since Neal’s blog is based on readership more than it is search engines, he should focus on quality, and don’t forget the quantity.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
When I was in graduate school, I noticed that most of my fellow grad students, and our professors, loved to use big words and long sentences.
They tried to use the most complex words and sentences as possible in their scholarly works. Paragraphs were measured in linear feet, not number of words. And it was not unheard of to spend 12 – 15 hours writing a simple 10 page paper.
Not me, of course. I had cut my writing teeth at my college newspaper, so I wrote like a journalist: short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. (Something that would send my 7th grade English teacher screaming from the room.)
I constantly got easy A’s on my papers, while the other students were getting B’s and hard-won A’s, and spending a lot more time on their work than I did.
It never occurred to anyone in the department that it was how I wrote that made the difference, not the quality of my ideas or the way I expressed them. I didn’t even stumble on this little revelation myself until many years later.
What I learned was, if you want to be read, write simply. Don’t be flowery or use $50 words. Write at an 8th grade reading level, or possibly even a 6th. That’s where most newspapers are written these days. TV news copy is written at the 4th grade level.
The American Marketing Association even backs me up on this.
Basically, they wanted to see if award-winning journal articles were written more simply than the non-winners (we call them “losers” outside the academic walls). They ran the text through Microsoft Word’s Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level grader, and did a whole bunch of complicated stuff with statistics that I won’t even pretend to understand.
The Reading Level score corresponds to the grade of education of the reader it would take to understand it. If your score is 8.4, it’s suitable for an 8th grader. A 14.6 is suitable for a college sophomore. A score of 21 or higher is suitable for Stephen Hawking, although he may find it a little pedestrian.
Here’s what they found:
Of the 15 articles with the best readability scores, 13 of them were award winners. They had scores from 12.3 to 14.4. Of the 11 worst least readable articles, 9 of them were “non-winners,” and carried scores from 18.3 to 21.3.
(Their own article has a 13.98 Flesch-Kincaid score. This post has a 6.7. I guess I win.)
So why is a lower reading score so important? Are we getting dumber? Do we all have the attention span of a bunch of hyperactive 12-year-olds?
No, the reason is our mental bandwidth. Let’s face it, we’re all busy, harried, and are running eight things through our brains at once. And that’s on a good day. When we’re confronted with a piece of text, we want it to be as simple as possible.
Simple doesn’t mean we’re stupid, or that our brains are shutting down. It means we don’t have to devote as much time and energy to it. We can process the text easily, absorb the information, and move on. We can absolutely read something that’s long and complex. We’re all smart people, and we can certainly read something written at a 12th grade reading level. It’s just that people sometimes need the break from the long and complex. Simple writing gives that to them, and as a result, is more readily accepted.
Basically, if you want to win readers, stick with the writing style the newspapers use. Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. Most important information goes up front, least important goes last. Avoid needless words.
Otherwise, your readers will eventually get bored and go elsewhere.
(Note: If you’re a Mac user, and don’t have access to Word’s Flesch-Kincaid grader, you can download Flesh, the document readability calculator. I used it to grade this post.)
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Yesterday, I gave a talk about Blogging Basics for Job Seekers to our local Business & Professional Exchange organization, a networking group for people who are looking for new employment.
I tried to explain blog writing as simply as possible, but as I was talking, I realized there’s more than one way to skin that cat, so I thought I would assemble a few of my favorite blog writing techniques here. Use any of them when you’re stuck, not so much for what to write about, but how to write it.
Dear Mom: The nice thing about blogging is that it doesn’t have to be hard. It’s as easy as writing an email. And the important thing about blogging is that you make the subject matter as simple and easy as possible. “Easy enough so that your mother can understand it,” I tell people. So start your blog post like this: “Dear Mom, Let me tell you about this cool thing I learned today,” and then tell her about it. When you’re done, delete the salutation and opening line, and you’ve got your blog post.
What Can [Insert Movie/Song/Sport/Esoteric Trivia] Teach Us About [Industry/Job/Social Movement]: I very nearly wrote a post about “What Ultimate Frisbee Can Teach Us About Blogging” once (I was an avid Ultimate Frisbee player many years ago), but then I decided I hated those kinds of posts. Still, they’re very successful, and they do serve a purpose. They force you to do some lateral thinking, and find weird connections between your chosen song/sport/etc. and your subject matter. It also gives you a framework to start building the post, which makes the writing much easier.
Use the News: This one is especially important if you’re writing about your chosen industry or field. Find news articles in other blogs, trade journals, or even the mainstream news, and write a news-opinion piece about it. Talk about the basic details of the story, and then offer your opinion on how this will affect your industry, for good or bad. Spend about half your post summarizing the story (don’t forget to cite the article and link to it), and then the other half putting forth your own ideas.
Once Upon a Time: People love stories. We’ve been passing knowledge through stories since before we had a written alphabet. Storytelling is in our DNA. So rather than just put forth an idea in the most general, vague terms, tell a story about how you saw it used. Tell a true story, or make one up, as sort of a modern-day parable. If you need to, tell your story to someone out loud before you commit it to paper. You’ll find a story flows much more easily than just reciting dry facts and banging out 30,000 foot overviews.
Lists: Create a list of ideas or techniques, and give it a descriptive and persuasive title. People love lists, and they’re easily drawn to them. (Hey, it got you to read this far, didn’t it?) Plus it makes writing much easier. Rather than coming up with one really long idea, you can instead create five simple ones. A list will keep you focused and let you lightly touch on the different ideas you want to cover. Then you can expand each of them for later posts.
When you’re trying these techniques, don’t let them turn you into a word factory. Try to stick with the mantra, “one idea, one post, one day.” If you find your posts are getting too long, split them up into two different ideas, or make your post a two-parter.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
I’ve been blogging since before it was called blogging. Since before there was software to even do it. I started out by publishing my newspaper humor column once a week on a website where I hand coded the html. In the intervening years, I’ve written over 900 articles and blog posts, so I’ve been asked a lot of questions about blogging.
“Think of blogging like you’re writing an email,” I tell aspiring bloggers. “Put ‘Dear Mom, Let me tell you about this cool thing I learned today. . .’ and then write about that cool thing. Then, go back and delete the salutation, and you’re done.”
All in all, it’s pretty easy. I can do it a typical blog post (350 – 450 words) in about 20 minutes. Add another 10 – 15 for editing, and I’m done.
Of course, I’ve been a writer for nearly 23 years, so I’ve got a few secrets and techniques. I’ve written marketing copy, newspaper columns, speeches, and anything else you care to name, so I actually know how to write something well in 20 minutes.
The problem is that most new writers figure, “Hey, Erik takes 20 minutes to write a post, I can write it in 20 minutes too.”
Yes you can take 20 minutes, but it sure shows.
Listen, writing is easy, writing well is hard. Just because you know how to construct a complete sentence doesn’t mean you are actually a writer. I know where Middle C is on a piano, but that doesn’t make me a concert pianist.
A good blog post on the part of a beginning writer should take about 1 – 2 hours each. That includes reading, researching, writing, editing, re-editing, and then editing some more. Notice that the actual writing is only one small part of that list.
Yet, these noobie writers will vomit something out in a few minutes, hit ‘Publish’ and think they’re done. Or worse, they study all the SEO writing blogs and come up with little gems like “For free writing tips, download this free writing tips article about free writing tips.” (And then wonder why no one is reading their stuff.)
I’ve been seeing this a lot lately in people who profess to be professional writers and content creators. They’re the ones who are advising clients on how to create content that will set them apart in their industry, make them thought leaders, and help them win searches in the search engines.
I don’t know how to say this, except to just say it: Some of your writing just sucks.
There, I said it. I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to say it. I feel like Simon Cowell, but without the Botox.
It’s not that you’re bad people or that you’re trying to trick people. It’s just that, well, you look like you spent 20 minutes writing your post. There’s missing and misused punctuation, bad grammar, egregious misspellings, and incomplete sentences.
“But it’s blogging!” you’re saying. “It’s supposed to be more informal, and not bound by the same rules of business writing.”
True, true. But if you claim to be a writer, then for God’s sake, act like one! Writers have at least a basic grasp of language, storytelling, and sentence structure. Admittedly not all of them do (American novelist Leon Uris is famous for not being able to spell or use punctuation properly), but if you’re a product of our public schools and universities, I would hope you have some understanding of these basic concepts.
It’s especially important as blogging is starting to see some legitimacy in the business setting, and the decision makers are still concerned that their writers don’t sound like complete boobs churning out electronic doggerel for the world to see.
The problem is that I’ve seen more and more so-called “content creators” who are putting up some of their own stuff that looks like it was written by a 10th grader. I believe you should put as much care and attention into your own stuff as you do your clients. The way you react to the small things is the way you will react to everything. And if you can’t be bothered to write your own stuff well, how can you be counted on to write others’ stuff well?
As a writer and teacher in spirit, nothing warms my heart more than someone who tells me they want to learn how to be a writer. I love teaching them some of the lessons I’ve learned in the past 23 years, and showing them how to express the ideas they want to share with the world.
Just be prepared to put in the time and energy it will take to make your writing successful. Don’t just throw something up and hope no one will notice all the problems and mistakes. If you want to be able to write something in 20 minutes, it’ll take you several years.
(For the record, this took me 22 minutes.)
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Recently a potential client tried to make the case that writing their own blog made financial sense because it “was cheaper”. So we sharpened up our pencils and analyzed what it really costs to write your own blog in three different scenarios:
A corporation where technical experts (think engineers, accountants, lawyers, sales managers, marketing managers or executives) would be writing their own blog posts.
A company that uses lower level clerical help to write the company blog.
A small business where the owner is writing her own blog posts. In this case the owner is literally working for free.
Here’s how the numbers worked out:
Scenario One: Technical Experts
This is the most common situation we encounter: companies with knowledge workers who write their own blog posts. Compared to our highest-end product, the practice of using your own people may cost three times as much annually and offers little or no comparative advantage.
Knowledge Worker
Professional Blog Service Platinum
Assumptions
Assumptions
Worker Annual Salary
$85,000.00
Worker Annual Salary
n/a
18% Benefits & Tax Load
$15,300.00
18% Benefits & Tax Load
n/a
Annual Loaded Salary
$100,300.00
Annual Loaded Salary
n/a
Hourly Rate
$48.22
Hourly Rate
n/a
Company Income/Hour
$144.66
Company Income/Hour
n/a
Blog Post Costs
Blog Post Costs
2 hrs labor to write & post blog
$96.44
2 hrs labor to write & post blog
n/a
Lost income on two hours labor
$289.33
Lost income on two hours labor
n/a
Cost Per Blog Post
$385.77
Cost Per Blog Post
$135.00
Monthly Cost @ 14 Posts
$5,400.77
Monthly Cost @ 14 Posts
$1,890.00
Annual Cost of Blog
$64,809.23
Annual Cost of Blog
$22,680.00
Scenario 2: Clerical Workers
Smarter companies utilize internal resources better, so instead of having expensive knowledge workers do the writing, lower cost clerical or creative workers are used. The result: Professional Blog Service’ midrange ghost blogging offering is less than half the cost.
Midsize Company Example
Professional Blog SMB
Assumptions
Assumptions
Worker Annual Salary
$35,000.00
Worker Annual Salary
n/a
18% Benefits & Tax Load
$6,300.00
18% Benefits & Tax Load
n/a
Annual Loaded Salary
$41,300.00
Annual Loaded Salary
n/a
Hourly Rate
$19.86
Hourly Rate
n/a
Company Income/Hour
$59.57
Company Income/Hour
n/a
Blog Post Costs
Blog Post Costs
2 hrs labor to write & post blog
$39.71
2 hrs labor to write & post blog
n/a
Lost income on two hours labor
$119.13
Lost income on two hours labor
n/a
Cost Per Blog Post
$158.85
Cost Per Blog Post
$55.00
Monthly Cost @ 14 Posts
$2,223.85
Monthly Cost @ 14 Posts
$770.00
Annual Cost of Blog
$26,686.15
Annual Cost of Blog
$9,240.00
Scenario Three: Small Business Owners
When a small business owner works inside her business, often the labor is viewed as having no direct cost. It does have an opportunity cost. Even working for free, a small business owner would have made more money having outsourced blog writing to Professional Blog Service using our top of the line service:
Small Business Owner
Professional Blog Service Platinum
Assumptions
Assumptions
Worker Annual Salary
$35,000.00
Worker Annual Salary
n/a
18% Benefits & Tax Load
$6,300.00
18% Benefits & Tax Load
n/a
Annual Loaded Salary
$41,300.00
Annual Loaded Salary
n/a
Hourly Rate
$0.00
Hourly Rate
n/a
Company Income/Hour
$120.00
Company Income/Hour
n/a
Blog Post Costs
Blog Post Costs
2 hrs labor to write & post blog
$0.00
2 hrs labor to write & post blog
n/a
Lost income on two hours labor
$240.00
Lost income on two hours labor
n/a
Cost Per Blog Post
$240.00
Cost Per Blog Post
$135.00
Monthly Cost @ 14 Posts
$3,360.00
Monthly Cost @ 14 Posts
$1,890.00
Annual Cost of Blog
$40,320.00
Annual Cost of Blog
$22,680.00
Conclusion
Hiring a professional ghost writing service can save you 50-66% over having your employees write your company’s blog.
About the Author: Mike Seidle Mike Seidle is a leading Internet marketing strategist and has been helping companies with search engine optimization and developing cost effective Internet marketing strategies since 1998. Mike is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service and currently serves on Professional Blog Service's board of directors.
CEOs are more likely to let out a little sigh and agree with that last sentence rather than point out its mistakes. (There are two of them. Did you see them? If you didn’t, this article is for you.)
Writing well is difficult for many managers and directors. Often they’re experts in their field, but lack the skills to communicate that expertise to an audience that doesn’t speak their language. We decipher their emails by cracking long codes of acronyms like PHPER, R&D, SEO, PIO, EOC and struggle to translate their doctoral-thesis-as-annual-report with marketing gobbledygook like “optimization and delayering,” “transition open-source communities” and “incubate holistic mindshare.”
Then, disaster strikes! The company decides to start a blog, and who’s on deck for four posts a month? Hopefully not the guy who wants to “implement extensible schemas.”
Best case scenario, the CEO really loves writing blog posts, and cranks one out every week. Worst case scenario (i.e. reality), the CFO is contributing, and his first post reads more like a secret state department communique or one of those emails from the exiled Nigerian prince who needs an American bank account to hold his $100 million.
But the CEO is too busy leading the company, and his or her time is worth thousands of dollars per hour. If the CEO has time to write weekly blog posts, start unloading your stock. And if the CFO wants to contribute, publish his posts on Friday night when no one is looking.
Why is it so difficult for many people to write great blog posts? Because (choose one or more of the following):
1) There’s an emergency meeting with shareholders after lunch.
2) The merger isn’t final yet.
3) There hasn’t been a need to write an actual letter in four years.
4) An interior designer chose all the books in the library.
5) That MBA program only required oral presentations.
6) Kids these days don’t know anything.
But the real issue here isn’t why the screen is blank. Our challenge is how to move the blinking cursor with a set of short words and sentences that convey a valuable idea to readers. An idea that’s thoughtful, concise, and even amusing.
There’s a reason you hired a CFO with a degree in accounting and several years of experience, and not a college dropout. There’s a reason your HR director has advanced degrees in psychology, and isn’t some woman you found at a McDonald’s who’s willing to work for $7.50 an hour. And there’s a reason your IT director has a savant-like knowledge of computers, and not your nephew who’s still using Windows XP Professional.
They’re professionals. They’re good at what they do, and they know how to do it right. Your CFO knows the difference between profit versus gross margin, your HR director knows all the EEOC laws that will keep you from being sued, and your IT director knows how to keep your networks up and running.
The same reason you hired those people is the reason you need a writer who knows that “writing well is difficult.” You want someone who understands interesting writing, can avoid grammar and punctuation problems, and creates the right kind of copy to keep readers and customers returning to your blogs.
There really aren’t that many good writers out there. And if you have any working for you, chances are they’re doing something more important. So you need to go outside the company.
But you’re not going to find that person on Craig’s List for $5. The best writers are trained professionals who understand language and the written word. They can take the complex ideas your subject matter experts have, and put them into simple language your customers can understand. And they do it well.
At Professional Blog Service, we write great blog posts by interviewing clients personally. We extract the most interesting and valuable bits of information to translate a manager’s passion for the idea into a message that’s clear and understandable, complete with verb-subject agreement, and no offers from the Nigerian prince or secret foreign service codes.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
No, It’s NOT Okay To Edit Spam Comments
Last week, I asked the question whether it was ethical to edit spam comments to get rid of the URL that is being used to generate some SEO juice for the spammers, but leave the semi-spammy comment in place.
Now THAT'S a lot of Spam
I expected some vigorous debate and discussion with people on both sides of the argument. But with a couple of exceptions, everyone said, “No, this is not okay!”
(Before I go on, let me say, we got some wonderful feedback and comments, so I want to thank everyone who took the time to read the post and respond.)
I was actually surprised by the near unanimous stance everyone took. I figured it would be more of an even split on the issue, with a large number of people saying they thought it was okay to beat the spammers by using their own energies against them, sort of a blogging jiu jitsu. But, nearly everyone was of the opinion that we, as real bloggers, should be above this, and should not resort to the same practices as the spammers.
Fellow blogger Brian Shelton summed it up best.
That was the majority opinion, and made the most sense. And it seemed to cover most types of blog comments, although Daniel Clark of GeekDadsWeekly.com made an interesting point:
(Touché, Daniel.)
The Other Side of the Debate: Editing for Spelling & Punctuation
However, one person, an ethics blogger, said on his blog that he did not think it was inappropriate to edit typos and grammar errors in another person’s comment. But I disagree. That’s a line I won’t cross. It’s not up to me to fix someone’s spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors. They’re their errors, not mine, and they should not be fixed because I have to have everything perfect.
A post and its comments are a historical record, to show what people were thinking and saying at that time. If they make a mistake, it’s not my place to adjust the historical record because I have a weird fixation on spelling and grammar.
(And no, I don’t think spammers deserve to be a part of the historical record.)
That’s why most bloggers will fix an error in information by
striking outthe error and writing the correct information next to it. They will also put an Update: note at the bottom of the post, so people can see that the information has been updated and corrected. (Note: this doesn’t extend to typos and misspellings. I think we can fix those without telling everyone “I fixed a typo.”)Photo credit: Freezelight (Flickr)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog writing, blogging, comments, ethics
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Blogging for Posterity, not Search or Readership
We’ve been debating around the office whether it’s better to write for search or to write for readers.
I think it’s actually a little of both.
On the one hand, there are people who will never optimize a single blog post for search engines. They just write awesome stuff and people flock to them through word of mouth.
On the other, there are people who believe that it’s okay to churn out crap, just so long as you win search engine results. Their thought is if you win more search, you get more traffic.
The problem with the latter is that while you may get more traffic, you also get more people who see your writing is crap, and so you get more people who ignore you. The problem with the former is that you can’t rely on word of mouth. That’s why it’s important that you do both.
I call it writing for posterity.
Writing for posterity means you want to win search, but you also want people to read it. It means you optimize for search while you write as well as you can. This shouldn’t be an either/or proposition.
I had a great example of writing for posterity on my Laughing Stalk humor blog last week. For no reason that I can determine, I got a big spike of readers — 600 over 3 days — showing up at a column I wrote nearly a year ago.
My blog post/humor column, “Honey, It’s Over. Burma Shave!“, started ranking high on my Google Analytics, nearly 10 months after I first wrote it.
The source? Google.se, or Google Sweden.
The reason? I don’t even know. I don’t know if I got featured on a front page somehow. I don’t know if a news story mentioned the incident. I don’t know if there was an auditorium filled with Swedes who were all visiting my site.
What I know is that I had nearly 606 Swedes visit my site over a 3 day period, and spend some time on my site. They came because they found me on Google (Google Sweden, which I guess just makes me Swedish famous), and they stayed for an average of 40 seconds. Not huge time, but all the RSS bots seem to be screwing with my Time On Page stats.
Had I tried to just focus on search for this post, my readability would have most likely suffered. But had I just focused on readership, I may never have been found.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog analytics, blog writing, blogging, readability, search engines, writing
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The Problem With Corporate Blog Writing
As a professional blogger, I see a lot of different blogs, both small business and corporate. Some are good, some are terrible. Some are informative and engaging, some are daily commercials, some are stilted and formal. I can spot the blogs written by people who are passionate about their work, knowledgeable about their field, or exploring new knowledge.
I can also spot the ones that are written by marketing professionals, committees, and the legal department.
Blogging tends to make corporate types a little nervous
It’s not that I have anything against marketers (I’ve been one for over 16 years). And I don’t have anything against lawyers. (Committees, on the other hand. . .)
The problem is blogging has a different writing style, a different flow. In blogging, you don’t worry about being technically accurate, covering every contingency, option, variation, divergence, modification, and refinement, you just have to be right.
But the blogs I see by marketers, lawyers, and committees don’t have that spark. Everything is written like a legal brief, or it uses all the proper product/service names, instead of what customers actually call it. Or it has that lowest common denominator feel of the committee, where every phrase is scrutinized, and meetings are filled with statements like “should we say ‘rediscover’ or ‘redefine?’” and then discussed heatedly for 30 minutes. (“Why can’t we say ‘rediscover or redefine?’” “But what about people who have not discovered or defined it in the first place?”)
Marketing Copywriting and Legal Writing Are Not Good Blog Writing
Blogging is informal. It’s written like people speak. It has punch, emotion, spark, verve. Sentences start with “and.” Or appear incomplete. While grammar is (and should be) used, people are a little more loose with some of the grammar rules. That’s not to say a blogger gets to write like an illiterate scribbler. But rather, they don’t need to march in lockstep with the grammar rules our 7th grade teacher drummed into us.
A good blog has to capture the attention of the person reading it. It has to be well-written and interesting. Too often, corporate blogs are stiff, formal, and uninteresting. They’re literary yawn-fests that seem to want to drive away readers, not bring them in.
I recently read a pro athlete’s blog that was hosted on his team’s website. And I could tell right away — see how I just started that sentence with ‘and?’ — that he didn’t write it. Or at least he didn’t have the final edit. That’s because the author or editor didn’t use team nicknames, and they made sure to include sponsor names.
“We’ve been working hard at the Sheinhardt Wig Company Indianapolis Beagles Practice Facility all week, and are looking forward to facing the Cincinnati Rough Riders on Sunday at 4:00 p.m.”
BLEAH! The only people who refer to anything by their sponsors’ names are marketers and race car drivers. The only people who refer to a team by their full name in an informal setting are marketers. Given that this particular athlete is not known for his eloquence, I could only assume this had been edited heavily, and not just for grammar.
While I’m not a big fan of misspelled words, poor grammar, and text speak, I do think writers should be given their own voice, and not edited to sound like some marketer’s idea of what they think it should be.
Basically, if you want to be a successful blogger, you need to learn to write like a real person. Loosen up the tie, disband the committee, unclench, and start to write like a real person. When you have an urge to fix something to as required by the marketing copy user’s guide, kill it.
Learn to write how people talk, and you’ll start to figure out how people read. And then they’ll start reading what you have to say.
Photo: St. Stev (Flickr)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog writing, blogging, Business Blogging Content, corporate blog writing, corporate blogging
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Who has time to do the work today?
So, who is getting the work done?
When I joined ATA Airlines back in 1997, George Michelsons brought in Bain and Company to basically prepare the company for sale. The process was to get rid of a lot of people and put more jobs onto fewer people. While this strategy worked around the country for Bain, it usually preceded an upgrade in office automation to ensure the work could still get done.
The office automation phase did not occur at ATA Airlines.
The result was a lot of stressed out people carrying around their imaginary trays trying to figure out how they were going to fit one more item onto an already heavy load. No longer were people interested in teamwork, they were more interested in self-preservation. It created a lot of ill-tempered people in the process.
As some of my clients reveal their corporate cultures, I am finding similarities to what I experienced at ATA Airlines. No one has time to commit to anything above and beyond what their core responsibilities are. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is not projected to get much better – CEO’s are reluctant to hire.
What are the solutions?
The easiest is what is being done by some today. Hire temp workers to get things done. They may cost a little more in the short-term, but allow you to avoid the headaches of hiring employees and their costs over the long-term. There are a lot of companies providing these services.
Sometimes, just hiring a grunt worker is not enough. Sometimes you need a professional person to do the work, you don’t have time to do. There are companies being set up that can act as your Marketing Department, your Accounting Department, or your HR Department. They can do it at a cost that is far cheaper than hiring full-time employees, but are focused solely on getting work done for you.
So, look around and ask yourself, are you and your colleagues a bunch of stressed out grumpy people not really accomplishing much because there is too much to do? There is help out there that can help your company meet its strategic goals for the year.
We actually put together a white paper on the ROI of outsourcing blogging and social media. You can download it here, if you want to take a look.
Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.
Tags: best practices, blog writing, business blogging, Business Blogging Content, strategy
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How Often Should You Post?
This post was originally published on February 10, 2009 on the DeckersMarketing.com blog, which will soon be closed down.
Neal “Taffy” Taflinger, of Indy.com posted a blogging question on my Facebook page a few days ago:
Question for you, Mr. Blogger Man – is it better to blog frequently so people know there is something to read or only as often as you have something valuable to say?
By an incredible coincidence, my good friend Doug Karr wrote an article about the very same subject on his Compendium Blogware work blog.
Rather than saying it’s one or the other, I would say post frequently and make sure you have something valuable to say.
Business blogs should post at least once a day (once a weekday is fine, and skip the weekends). Personal blogs like Neal’s or my humor blog can be once a week. However, once a week is the bare minimum. But I wouldn’t sacrifice either or choose one over the other. You need valuable content, and you need to post it with some frequency. The more you post, the more the search engines will find you (and love you!). This makes it easier to be found in the search engines for your particular search terms.
More importantly, you need to post consistently. If you post once a week, post it on the same day. If you post it daily, post it at the same time.
Plus, if you post regularly, your readers will know when and how to find you, and your readership will build more quickly and reliably than if you were to post every 7 – 15 days, without rhyme or reason, or any regular schedule.
Bottom line is this isn’t an either/or answer. There are those who say you can sacrifice quality for quantity, but since Neal’s blog is based on readership more than it is search engines, he should focus on quality, and don’t forget the quantity.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog, blog writing, blogging, writing
Posted in Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Writing | View Comments
The Best Way to Get and Keep More Readers
When I was in graduate school, I noticed that most of my fellow grad students, and our professors, loved to use big words and long sentences.
Not me, of course. I had cut my writing teeth at my college newspaper, so I wrote like a journalist: short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. (Something that would send my 7th grade English teacher screaming from the room.)
I constantly got easy A’s on my papers, while the other students were getting B’s and hard-won A’s, and spending a lot more time on their work than I did.
It never occurred to anyone in the department that it was how I wrote that made the difference, not the quality of my ideas or the way I expressed them. I didn’t even stumble on this little revelation myself until many years later.
What I learned was, if you want to be read, write simply. Don’t be flowery or use $50 words. Write at an 8th grade reading level, or possibly even a 6th. That’s where most newspapers are written these days. TV news copy is written at the 4th grade level.
The American Marketing Association even backs me up on this.
In January 2008, authors G. Alan Sawyer, Juliano Laran, & Jun Xu published the study, The Readability of Marketing Journals: Are Award-Winning Articles Better Written?
In a word, yes.
Basically, they wanted to see if award-winning journal articles were written more simply than the non-winners (we call them “losers” outside the academic walls). They ran the text through Microsoft Word’s Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level grader, and did a whole bunch of complicated stuff with statistics that I won’t even pretend to understand.
The Reading Level score corresponds to the grade of education of the reader it would take to understand it. If your score is 8.4, it’s suitable for an 8th grader. A 14.6 is suitable for a college sophomore. A score of 21 or higher is suitable for Stephen Hawking, although he may find it a little pedestrian.
Here’s what they found:
Of the 15 articles with the best readability scores, 13 of them were award winners. They had scores from 12.3 to 14.4. Of the 11
worstleast readable articles, 9 of them were “non-winners,” and carried scores from 18.3 to 21.3.(Their own article has a 13.98 Flesch-Kincaid score. This post has a 6.7. I guess I win.)
So why is a lower reading score so important? Are we getting dumber? Do we all have the attention span of a bunch of hyperactive 12-year-olds?
No, the reason is our mental bandwidth. Let’s face it, we’re all busy, harried, and are running eight things through our brains at once. And that’s on a good day. When we’re confronted with a piece of text, we want it to be as simple as possible.
Simple doesn’t mean we’re stupid, or that our brains are shutting down. It means we don’t have to devote as much time and energy to it. We can process the text easily, absorb the information, and move on. We can absolutely read something that’s long and complex. We’re all smart people, and we can certainly read something written at a 12th grade reading level. It’s just that people sometimes need the break from the long and complex. Simple writing gives that to them, and as a result, is more readily accepted.
Basically, if you want to win readers, stick with the writing style the newspapers use. Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. Most important information goes up front, least important goes last. Avoid needless words.
Otherwise, your readers will eventually get bored and go elsewhere.
(Note: If you’re a Mac user, and don’t have access to Word’s Flesch-Kincaid grader, you can download Flesh, the document readability calculator. I used it to grade this post.)
Photo: Peyri
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: academia, blog writing, copywriting, graduate school, writing
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Five Quick and Easy Blog Writing Techniques
Yesterday, I gave a talk about Blogging Basics for Job Seekers to our local Business & Professional Exchange organization, a networking group for people who are looking for new employment.
I tried to explain blog writing as simply as possible, but as I was talking, I realized there’s more than one way to skin that cat, so I thought I would assemble a few of my favorite blog writing techniques here. Use any of them when you’re stuck, not so much for what to write about, but how to write it.
When you’re trying these techniques, don’t let them turn you into a word factory. Try to stick with the mantra, “one idea, one post, one day.” If you find your posts are getting too long, split them up into two different ideas, or make your post a two-parter.
Photo: plindberg
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog writing, business blogging, writing
Posted in All Posts, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Writing | View Comments
Blog Writing Is Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master
I’ve been blogging since before it was called blogging. Since before there was software to even do it. I started out by publishing my newspaper humor column once a week on a website where I hand coded the html. In the intervening years, I’ve written over 900 articles and blog posts, so I’ve been asked a lot of questions about blogging.
“Think of blogging like you’re writing an email,” I tell aspiring bloggers. “Put ‘Dear Mom, Let me tell you about this cool thing I learned today. . .’ and then write about that cool thing. Then, go back and delete the salutation, and you’re done.”
All in all, it’s pretty easy. I can do it a typical blog post (350 – 450 words) in about 20 minutes. Add another 10 – 15 for editing, and I’m done.
Of course, I’ve been a writer for nearly 23 years, so I’ve got a few secrets and techniques. I’ve written marketing copy, newspaper columns, speeches, and anything else you care to name, so I actually know how to write something well in 20 minutes.
The problem is that most new writers figure, “Hey, Erik takes 20 minutes to write a post, I can write it in 20 minutes too.”
Yes you can take 20 minutes, but it sure shows.
Listen, writing is easy, writing well is hard. Just because you know how to construct a complete sentence doesn’t mean you are actually a writer. I know where Middle C is on a piano, but that doesn’t make me a concert pianist.
A good blog post on the part of a beginning writer should take about 1 – 2 hours each. That includes reading, researching, writing, editing, re-editing, and then editing some more. Notice that the actual writing is only one small part of that list.
Yet, these noobie writers will vomit something out in a few minutes, hit ‘Publish’ and think they’re done. Or worse, they study all the SEO writing blogs and come up with little gems like “For free writing tips, download this free writing tips article about free writing tips.” (And then wonder why no one is reading their stuff.)
I’ve been seeing this a lot lately in people who profess to be professional writers and content creators. They’re the ones who are advising clients on how to create content that will set them apart in their industry, make them thought leaders, and help them win searches in the search engines.
I don’t know how to say this, except to just say it: Some of your writing just sucks.
There, I said it. I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to say it. I feel like Simon Cowell, but without the Botox.
It’s not that you’re bad people or that you’re trying to trick people. It’s just that, well, you look like you spent 20 minutes writing your post. There’s missing and misused punctuation, bad grammar, egregious misspellings, and incomplete sentences.
“But it’s blogging!” you’re saying. “It’s supposed to be more informal, and not bound by the same rules of business writing.”
True, true. But if you claim to be a writer, then for God’s sake, act like one! Writers have at least a basic grasp of language, storytelling, and sentence structure. Admittedly not all of them do (American novelist Leon Uris is famous for not being able to spell or use punctuation properly), but if you’re a product of our public schools and universities, I would hope you have some understanding of these basic concepts.
It’s especially important as blogging is starting to see some legitimacy in the business setting, and the decision makers are still concerned that their writers don’t sound like complete boobs churning out electronic doggerel for the world to see.
The problem is that I’ve seen more and more so-called “content creators” who are putting up some of their own stuff that looks like it was written by a 10th grader. I believe you should put as much care and attention into your own stuff as you do your clients. The way you react to the small things is the way you will react to everything. And if you can’t be bothered to write your own stuff well, how can you be counted on to write others’ stuff well?
As a writer and teacher in spirit, nothing warms my heart more than someone who tells me they want to learn how to be a writer. I love teaching them some of the lessons I’ve learned in the past 23 years, and showing them how to express the ideas they want to share with the world.
Just be prepared to put in the time and energy it will take to make your writing successful. Don’t just throw something up and hope no one will notice all the problems and mistakes. If you want to be able to write something in 20 minutes, it’ll take you several years.
(For the record, this took me 22 minutes.)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog writing, blogging, writing
Posted in Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing | View Comments
The Case Against Do It Yourself Business Blogs
Recently a potential client tried to make the case that writing their own blog made financial sense because it “was cheaper”. So we sharpened up our pencils and analyzed what it really costs to write your own blog in three different scenarios:
Here’s how the numbers worked out:
Scenario One: Technical Experts
This is the most common situation we encounter: companies with knowledge workers who write their own blog posts. Compared to our highest-end product, the practice of using your own people may cost three times as much annually and offers little or no comparative advantage.
Scenario 2: Clerical Workers
Smarter companies utilize internal resources better, so instead of having expensive knowledge workers do the writing, lower cost clerical or creative workers are used. The result: Professional Blog Service’ midrange ghost blogging offering is less than half the cost.
Scenario Three: Small Business Owners
When a small business owner works inside her business, often the labor is viewed as having no direct cost. It does have an opportunity cost. Even working for free, a small business owner would have made more money having outsourced blog writing to Professional Blog Service using our top of the line service:
Conclusion
Hiring a professional ghost writing service can save you 50-66% over having your employees write your company’s blog.
roi, ghostwriting, blogging, businessblog
Mike Seidle is a leading Internet marketing strategist and has been helping companies with search engine optimization and developing cost effective Internet marketing strategies since 1998. Mike is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service and currently serves on Professional Blog Service's board of directors.
Tags: blog writing, business blogging
Posted in Blogging, Ghost Writing, Research Desk | View Comments
Why are good blog post writers so hard to find?
Writing good is hard.
CEOs are more likely to let out a little sigh and agree with that last sentence rather than point out its mistakes. (There are two of them. Did you see them? If you didn’t, this article is for you.)
Writing well is difficult for many managers and directors. Often they’re experts in their field, but lack the skills to communicate that expertise to an audience that doesn’t speak their language. We decipher their emails by cracking long codes of acronyms like PHPER, R&D, SEO, PIO, EOC and struggle to translate their doctoral-thesis-as-annual-report with marketing gobbledygook like “optimization and delayering,” “transition open-source communities” and “incubate holistic mindshare.”
Then, disaster strikes! The company decides to start a blog, and who’s on deck for four posts a month? Hopefully not the guy who wants to “implement extensible schemas.”
Best case scenario, the CEO really loves writing blog posts, and cranks one out every week. Worst case scenario (i.e. reality), the CFO is contributing, and his first post reads more like a secret state department communique or one of those emails from the exiled Nigerian prince who needs an American bank account to hold his $100 million.
But the CEO is too busy leading the company, and his or her time is worth thousands of dollars per hour. If the CEO has time to write weekly blog posts, start unloading your stock. And if the CFO wants to contribute, publish his posts on Friday night when no one is looking.
Why is it so difficult for many people to write great blog posts? Because (choose one or more of the following):
1) There’s an emergency meeting with shareholders after lunch.
2) The merger isn’t final yet.
3) There hasn’t been a need to write an actual letter in four years.
4) An interior designer chose all the books in the library.
5) That MBA program only required oral presentations.
6) Kids these days don’t know anything.
But the real issue here isn’t why the screen is blank. Our challenge is how to move the blinking cursor with a set of short words and sentences that convey a valuable idea to readers. An idea that’s thoughtful, concise, and even amusing.
There’s a reason you hired a CFO with a degree in accounting and several years of experience, and not a college dropout. There’s a reason your HR director has advanced degrees in psychology, and isn’t some woman you found at a McDonald’s who’s willing to work for $7.50 an hour. And there’s a reason your IT director has a savant-like knowledge of computers, and not your nephew who’s still using Windows XP Professional.
They’re professionals. They’re good at what they do, and they know how to do it right. Your CFO knows the difference between profit versus gross margin, your HR director knows all the EEOC laws that will keep you from being sued, and your IT director knows how to keep your networks up and running.
The same reason you hired those people is the reason you need a writer who knows that “writing well is difficult.” You want someone who understands interesting writing, can avoid grammar and punctuation problems, and creates the right kind of copy to keep readers and customers returning to your blogs.
There really aren’t that many good writers out there. And if you have any working for you, chances are they’re doing something more important. So you need to go outside the company.
But you’re not going to find that person on Craig’s List for $5. The best writers are trained professionals who understand language and the written word. They can take the complex ideas your subject matter experts have, and put them into simple language your customers can understand. And they do it well.
At Professional Blog Service, we write great blog posts by interviewing clients personally. We extract the most interesting and valuable bits of information to translate a manager’s passion for the idea into a message that’s clear and understandable, complete with verb-subject agreement, and no offers from the Nigerian prince or secret foreign service codes.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog writing, ghostwriting, writing
Posted in Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing | View Comments
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