Blogs and Ghostwriting
Back in August I complained about a number of blog marketing-related issues, including the notion that it's OK to hire someone to write your blog for you. I hoped this wrongheaded idea would fade away pretty quickly, but it's been reintroduced in an article by Edward Poll (here) in this month's Law Practice Today. Mr. Poll states the following (the emphasis is mine):
If you do decide to become a blogger, it's important to remember that you shouldn't work for your blog. Making frequent posts and answering dozens, or hundreds, of email comments, can take time. Let's say it's just two hours per workweek....
This is hugely expensive! The logical way to control the expense is hire someone to manage your blog. The expense is far less than the time spent updating (no matter how easy with TypePad or other blogging tools), which will take you away from other marketing activities or even from your practice. Delegation is a principle by which I live. I want to do those things that only I can do, like coaching, consulting and marketing for more work.
Mr. Poll doesn't come right out and say it, but isn't he encouraging attorneys to hire someone to write the posts that appear on their blogs? After all, I would estimate that the large majority of the time I devote to my blog is spent writing posts -- answering e-mails and comments takes very little time. But how does this idea fit with what Mr. Poll (or whoever he hired to write this column) wrote earlier?
Ultimately, blogs are a means of face-to-face conversation with a client or prospect when you can't meet them face-to-face. Blogs are informal, conversational, and show that you have something meaningful to say. They epitomize my own definition of marketing. I see it as the process by which we seek to persuade others of the merits of our beliefs.
If I don't write my posts, then a face-to-face conversation may be taking place, but it's between my client or prospective client and my ghostblogger -- that conversation doesn't involve me at all. I think blogs make for good marketing because they show prospective clients who I am (in terms of both legal knowledge and personality). If you use a ghostblogger, then prospective clients aren't learning anything about your legal knowledge or your personality. And if you use a ghostblogger and don't disclose this fact to your blog's visitors, then you are also a liar.
