The current issue of Entrepreneur magazine has a fascinating article about “ghostbloggers”. Ghostbloggers are (usually) paid writers who ghostwrite blogs for other people or businesses. Many business owners or CEOs want to have a blog but don’t have the time to devote to writing it so they hire the services of a ghostwriter to do that for them.
There is some controversy with this practice. Some people believe that in the interests of transparency the author of a business blog should be who they claim to be. In a perfect world this would be the case. I firmly believe that every business should have a blog and ideally someone within that company should write it. But what if no one inside the company has the inclination or time to be the blog writer?
I believe that blog ghostwriting is an honorable and ethical practice. With one caveat. A ghostblogger shouldn’t write in the first person unless given exact quotes from the official author to use in a blog post. If you stick to third person informational type topics then I see nothing wrong with the practice of ghostblogging. Of course, it goes without saying, that all blog posts should be proofread and approved by someone at the company before being published.
Now, I admit I may be somewhat biased on this because one of the services offered by Renton Media is blog ghostwriting. But I only take on jobs that adhere to the standards mentioned above. If you are interested in hiring a ghostblogger, the article provides some excellent guidelines that will help you in all aspects of this process.
