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Three Ghost Blogging Concerns We Hear From Clients

Some people have issues with ghost blogging. We’ve got clients who use it on a regular basis, and love it. Other times, we have run into some people who can’t wrap their brains around it. They’re not sure they want to do it, and they have trouble accepting our help. These people tend to fall into one of three categories.

  • They don’t think they have a high-enough position to need a ghost writer. They don’t think they’re that important to “deserve” it. They think their company needs to be bigger, or they need to have a more prestigious position. I saw this a lot when I was doing speechwriting for a Congressional candidate in 2004. It’s not a matter of prestige, it’s a matter of having the time to do it.
    • Okay, that's kind of creepy.
  • They feel they need to “earn” the words by doing the work themselves. These people have a very strong do-it-yourself ethic, and think that they should be able to and know how to do every aspect of their business. They don’t want someone to do the things they should be capable of doing themselves, and they feel like they’re slacking when they don’t. But a lot of people can’t write quickly or efficiently — they take a couple hours to write a single blog post. That’s a problem when their time is worth $250 an hour, like a defense attorney. Why spend $500 of your billable time, three times a week, when you could hire someone to do the ghost blogging for you?
  • They think writing is so easy that anyone can do it. “After all,” they reason, “I learned how to write in school, so I can just take the skills I learned 20 – 30 years ago, right?” This is like saying, “I know how to work a table saw, so I ought to be able to make my own custom cabinets. Look, we all learned how to communicate via the written word, but that doesn’t make you a writer. A professional ghost blogger has been trained on how to write tight, concise copy that will inform, entertain, or persuade. While some people are able to do this without training, those people are few and far between. Don’t risk turning off your audience with less-than-professional writing that rambles on, is filled with errors, or just plain doesn’t make sense. (Not so surprisingly, these are the same people who demand that every position in their company has experience in their industry, including the accountant, the IT person, and even human resources staff.)

Ghost blogging is one of those services that companies need to maintain an online presence, but don’t have the time or resources to do it. It’s for the people who are too busy to write on a regular basis, no matter what “level” you are in your career. It’s for the people who struggle with writing, or are basically too expensive to do anything that doesn’t directly result in bottom line revenue for their company or firm.

Photo credit: starfish325 (Flickr)

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Who Should Rule, Content or Marketing?

Over on his blog, Nashville writer Jeff Goins questions whether content is really king.

Well, actually, no he doesn’t. he said content is not king anymore. It’s a “fat, dethroned monarch, dis-empowered of his royal ability to influence.”

Janus, the two-faced Roman god, should represent content marketing.

Marketing — or as Jeff calls it, “relationships” — are the true king. Without relationships, without marketing, it doesn’t matter how awesome your writing is.

I used to be terrible at this. I thought all I had to do was be a good writer. But I was wrong.

I was scared. And lazy. I didn’t want to have to actually meet people. I just wanted to write.

But that’s not how the world works. So why would I think for one minute the Web would work that way? Yes, even in real life, it’s not just what you know that matters, but also who you know.

And even in business, the best way to promote an idea, product, or service is relationship. We all know this, because in this day of media saturation, we don’t buy what the ads tell us to buy. We buy what our friends recommend.

If I have to give an edge to either of them, I still side with content. Because hidden content can accidentally be discovered one day. I might write a post that gets picked up by search engines, and I could start being found for that topic.

But I could optimize and promote the bejeezus out of something really awful, and a lot of people could see it, but what do you think would happen if everyone showed up and saw — and said — how awful it was?

Still, it’s not a question of whether content or marketing is king.

Content Marketing Rules

This does not have to be an either/or proposition. You shouldn’t have to choose one over the other. And no, this is not one of those “why can’t everyone just get along” cop-outs that I detest. This is like arguing about whether peanut butter or jelly is more important on a PBJ.

Content and marketing have a symbiotic relationship. One cannot exist without the other. You can have great content, but if your marketing sucks, no one will see your stuff. And you can have great marketing, but if your writing sucks, no one will care.

There has to be a happy medium here. Or at the very least, we have to recognize that Content/Marketing is a two-faced king, like Janus, the Roman god of beginnings. You can’t have good marketing and lousy content, and you can’t have lousy marketing and good content. Without one, the other will die.

Content without good marketing is a private diary. Marketing without good content is spam.

I think once writers realize they need to market, we’ll see a bigger explosion in books and ebooks. And once marketers realize that content is not some throwaway afterthought, they’ll start seeing an explosion in sales and profits.

And if you want to learn how to do both, you can buy Branding Yourself or No Bullshit Social Media to see how.

(See what I did there?)

Photo credit: mscolly (Flickr)

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Should I Cover Up the Name of No Bullshit Social Media?

Update: Awesomize.me contacted me with a great response addressing this issue.

I wrote a book with a naughty word in the title.

My latest book, No Bullshit Social Media, which I wrote with my good friend Jason Falls, has generated surprisingly little controversy. It’s been placed cover out on all the shelves in all the Barnes & Noble bookstores. It was even on their New Arrivals shelf, top center, where everyone could see it.

Of course, there has been some controversy. I’ve given presentations where I had to refer to the book as “No BS.” One group asked that I not mention the book at all, and since they dealt with a lot of very conservative Christians, who would be attending the conference, I was fine with that. (I covered up most of the offending word, and kept the cover one the last slide of the slide deck though.)

I’m not ashamed of the title. I’m not sorry I did it. I understand that some people don’t like saying it, and I’m fine with that. If they want to call it No BS, they’re more than welcome to. I won’t tell someone to do something they’re not comfortable with.

But what’s bothering me today is a particular social network, awesomize.me is covering up the title of the book completely. In my bio, I included the title of my book, spelled out in all its 4 letter (8 letter?) glory.

However, the “no naughty words” algorithm covered up the word, and recast it as No @#$% Social Media.

This actually bothers me. I can’t tell you why. It’s not censorship, because awesomize.me is a private company, and they can do what they want. If they want to make a rule that says “no swear words,” then they’re free to do it.

But at the same time, I’m annoyed by the fact that on a social network made up of grownups, I can’t use a grownup word. Not in a gratuitous, shocking, let’s-make-everyone-giggle kind of a way. But in a this-is-a-real-book-title way.

The easy thing to do would be to just change the title of the book myself to “No BS Social Media,” or “No Bull***” or even “No Bullsh*t.” But I don’t want to. That’s not the name of the book.

Am I overreacting? Should I just toe the line and change the title of the book in my bio? Or should I stand firm on principle, and refuse to change it, even if it means that people are going to wonder what @#$% stands for?

What would you do?

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U.S. Court Declares Bloggers Second Class Citizens, Not Part of Media

Update: Judge Marco A. Hernandez has since clarified his ruling on this matter, and stated that his ruling was only meant to apply to Crystal Cox, and not all bloggers. Read my latest blog post for the rest of the story.

A U.S. district court just ruled that bloggers — at least bloggers in Oregon — are not part of the media, and therefore, not protected by Oregon’s media shield laws.

As a citizen journalist, this scares the bejeezus out of me. If you’re a blogger of any kind, it should worry you too.

I’ve been clamoring for years that bloggers are citizen journalists. That is, we should be entitled to the same First Amendment protections, the same access, and the same considerations that newspaper, TV, and radio reporters get. At the same time, it means that bloggers need to act like journalists: with great power comes great responsibility, etcetera, etcetera.

But a U.S. District Court judge in Portland, Oregon just set us back to pre-1990 days when he ruled against Crystal Cox, a blogger, after she was sued by Obsidian Finance Group for defamation over blog posts that criticized the firm and co-founder Kevin Padrick. The judge also awarded Padrick $2.5 million.

In his ruling, the judge wrote:

. . . although defendant is a self-proclaimed “investigative blogger” and defines herself as “media,” the record fails to show that she is affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system. Thus, she is not entitled to the protections of the law.

Seriously? Pamphlets? In other words, if she had slapped together an 8-page booklet at Fedex/Kinko’s, she would have been protected?

Whether this is a problem with the judge not understanding the Internet, or — more likely — Oregon having a media shield law that doesn’t reflect 21st century technology, this may have a chilling effect on bloggers, even in states with media shield laws.

As it stands now, Oregon’s media shield law says:

No person connected with, employed by or engaged in any medium of communication to the public shall be required by … a judicial officer … to disclose, by subpoena or otherwise … [t]he source of any published or unpublished information obtained by the person in the course of gathering, receiving or processing information for any medium of communication to the public[.]

Seems comprehensive enough: any medium of communication to the public strikes me as anything from newspapers to TV to radio to the Internet (including blogs). But when someone learned about the Internet from the Ted Stevens’ School of Technology, they may not realize that the Internet is far more evolved than pamphlets.

Compare Oregon’s law to Washington’s media shield law:

Any newspaper, magazine or other periodical, book publisher, news agency, wire service, radio or television station or network, cable or satellite station or network, or audio or audiovisual production company, or any entity that is in the regular business of news gathering and disseminating news or information to the public by any means, including, but not limited to, print, broadcast, photographic, mechanical, internet, or electronic distribution;

(Read more about Washington’s media shield law here.)

Washington at least spells out what they consider to be the media. But any state that has not included “the Internet” in their shield laws may be able to exclude bloggers from the people who should be protected.

In other words, if you are a pamphleteer, you’re protected. If you type something on a typewriter, reproduce it on a mimeograph machine, and staple everything together by hand, you’re protected by the First Amendment. But if you publish the biggest online-only newspaper, and have for the last fifteen years, tough. You’re not protected by media shield laws in Oregon, or several other states.

This will have a chilling effect on your rights as a journalist, as the government can impose sanctions on bloggers and Internet-based writers, simply by declaring they are not part of the protected media.

Photo credit: Tourettte (Flickr)

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Four Online Predictions for 2012

Okay, I’m going to jump on the trends bandwagon and offer yet another online predictions blog post where I polish my crystal ball and predict the future of social media. I think I have a decent track record going for me. In 2010, I predicted that Android sales were going to outpace iPhones, and I was only six months late on that (it finally happened earlier this year). Of course, I also said SMS would become obsolete, and that ain’t happening any time soon, so I’m batting .500.

Emboldened by my previous success — and with a promise to Allison Carter (@allisonlcarter) that this list will not mention mobile or geo-location networks — here are my four predictions for 2012.

1. An even bigger focus on quality of written content.

Thanks to Google Panda, the traditional SEO techniques of on-site optimization and backlinking is not as effective or important as it once was. Now, Panda measures things like bounce rate and time on site. In other words, if your site sucks, your rankings will drop. If your site is good, your rankings will rise.

Want to improve your rankings? Improve the quality of your content, especially your writing. The better your writing is, the longer people will stick around.

We’ll see a bigger push for web designers and bloggers to have better writing, not just a bunch of schlocky writing. So for anyone who has been in the quantity-over-quality camp of blog writing, you’re going to have a tough time of it in 2012.

2. Disruption will be the watchword, and the way to make money.

We’re already seeing how social media, broadband, and mobile phones are disrupting some middle men businesses. People are canceling their cable and satellite TV, and instead watching videos on Netflix and Hulu. We’re getting local news from local bloggers, or national news from each other, instead of TV news and newspapers. I even quit listening to local commercial radio, choosing instead to listen to an awesome public radio station out of Louisville, KY. Traditional media has been disrupted, but that’s not all.

We’ll continue to see more middle men being disrupted by fast phones and social media — look for advertising and PR agencies, publishers, banks, and credit card companies to take a big hit as people figure out how to circumvent these gatekeepers. Look for other people who figure it out to make a buttload of money being the disruptions, or taking advantage of the new disruptions.

(Case in point, Dwolla, which only charges $.25 per transaction for anything over $10 (under $10 is free), and is currently on course to move about $350 million per year.)

3. Citizen journalism will continue to grow and become more important.

Newspapers have taken a big hit in the last 10 years, thanks to online media — a disruption that’s been years in the making — but people still want local news. The newspapers that will survive and thrive will be the dailies in smaller cities, and the weeklies in small towns. In the big cities, we’ll see more citizen journalism as people report on their local stories. More Twitpics, more cell phone videos, more stories that are pieced together through people acting like their own journalists.

I would love to see some news-minded entrepreneur figure out a way to gather all of this content and monetize it. While that may not happen in 2012, look for online-only newspapers like The American Reporter to pick up the slack of the big city papers, and local news outlets like Patch to become more widespread and easier to use.

We’re going to see more news, commentary, sports, etc. covered up by real people, not professional journalists. I also think we’ll see smaller print newspapers get smarter about their online efforts, and even TV stations to continue to embrace the web. Could we also see someone start an Internet-only TV news style of website?

4. Teenagers will begin to leave Facebook in droves.

Their moms and dads are on Facebook. Their grandparents are on Facebook. The whole point behind Facebook was it was a place to go where you could be cool. And as everyone knows, it’s impossible to be cool when your parents are around. They’re moving to other networks where their parents are not. Even Ben Bajarin (@benbajarin) of Time Magazine is questioning whether it’s the beginning of the end for Facebook. (Hint: No, not yet. But don’t be surprised if it happens one day far off into the future.)

Where they’re all going is still unknown. MySpace is still popular among teenagers. YouTube is actually the second biggest network among teenagers (Facebook is still first). And the gaming console networks are seeing a big uptick. But when all the stats are showing that 1 in 5 teenagers are leaving Facebook, it’s time for marketers to stop with this “social media is for young people” nonsense and recognize that the parents and grandparents are embracing it more easily now.

Photo credit: JasonLangheine (Flickr)

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Using The Irony Mark or Sarcasm Mark

The discussion and desire for an irony/sarcasm mark is one that has been making the Twitter rounds lately, and I may have accidentally stumbled upon the answer.

It seems the backward question mark, also called the rhetorical question mark or percontation point, has been the historic favorite, having been proposed by English printer Henry Denham back in 1580.

The reverse question mark, or irony mark, is used to denote irony and sarcasm.

It’s an odd coincidence — but NOT ironic — that a 430-year-old mark may just find its usage in the 21st century, thanks to modern technology.

The problem is that twitterers and emailers have had a hard time denoting sarcasm, irony, and eye rollable statements. We’ve tried the :-| and the </sarcasm> marks, but every extra character takes up valuable space in a 140 character tweet.

So in our quest to show that we’re being snarky and sarcastic, social media people have been looking for a way to show their sarcasm in as few keystrokes as possible, which is why the irony mark can solve a lot of problems.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to get to at the moment.

If you’re a Mac user, there’s no easy way to do it. The best way to get it is to open up the Characters box (usually command-option-T). Then search for character 061f. When it comes up, insert it or copy and paste it.

If you’re a Windows user, I believe you can type the mark this way:

  1. Press and hold down the Alt key.
  2. Press the + (plus) key on the numeric keypad.
  3. Type one of these:
    • 2E2E
    • 61F
    • 061F

(Windows users, if this doesn’t work, please let me know. I haven’t done Windows for about 4 years, and I don’t remember how to enter Unicode.)

If you’re a Linux user, I didn’t think you guys got humor, so I don’t know if it’s even available to you. (Kidding! Just kidding! Some of my best friends are Linux users.)

Or you can just copy it here and save it somewhere else, like an Evernote document.

؟

I understand that the SarcMark is making its way into use, but unfortunately, as a Mac user, I can’t use it. Right now, it’s a Windows-only app that lets you use the SarcMark with a few keystrokes. The SarcMark looks sort of like the @ symbol, but with a period instead of the letter ‘a’ inside.

I also prefer Denham’s backward question mark because it’s historic. It’s over 430 years old, even though it was never widely used. Because of its longevity, it’s the one that many “we need an irony mark” proponents are already suggesting.

This may help people understand what irony truly is. It’s not an “odd coincidence” or “misfortune.” And it’s certainly not rain on my f—ing wedding day! Irony is when a statement conveys the opposite meaning of what you said.

So — according to Dictionary.com — if I say “that’s nice” when you tell me you got a flat tire, that’s irony. It’s not irony when you got a flat tire going to lunch.

And now, thanks to the irony mark, when I tweet you and say “that’s nice؟” you’ll know what I really meant.