Ghost blogging backs up a recognized person with professional writing experience. Content marketing writers may also need to tune the person’s voice. So, is it blogging?
“By the way,” the vice president of product development told me. “I want the posts to have a certain personality. They should sound as if Alec Baldwin wrote them.”
Alec Baldwin? Which Alec Baldwin? Alec Baldwin in “It’s Complicated,” or in “30 Rock,” or in “The Departed,” or in “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends?”
“More or less like ’30 Rock,'” he continued. “Don’t be afraid to use a little bit of irony, a bit of dry humor in the posts.”
Ghost blogging – Pros and cons
As the term suggests, ghost blogging is like ghostwriting, except it’s on a blog. The rich and famous are well known for hiring ghostwriters to pen their autobiographies, sometimes for partial credit, sometimes for no credit, as in Theodore Sorenson’s work for John F. Kennedy in Profiles in Courage. (Even Mozart is said to have ghostwritten music for wealthy patrons.) Ghost blogging takes that model to the blogosphere.
The VP in question wants to build a stream of content and comments around a newly launched product. Someday, experts on his team may contribute posts to the blog. Meanwhile, the VP wants to get the ball rolling, and the ghost blogging of content marketing writers will suffice for the time being.
It’s easy to find opposing views on ghost blogging. Proponents believe that it allows impossibly busy people to provide content to a waiting audience. Opponents, however, consider it a treacherous breach of online trust.
But hey, we all know that Barack Obama has people who write his speeches. And, when it boils down to the choice between ghost blogging valuable content and imprisoning it in the head of somebody with no time to write it down, isn’t your brand better served by the former?
“Bring me the voice of Alec Baldwin.”
So with that ethical speed bump behind us, we turn to the issue of voice.
The VP of product development does not look like Alec Baldwin, let alone sound like him. If we study enough video on YouTube, we can come up with a way of drizzling his brand of on-screen wit and personality over the business and technical problems that underpin the blog. I’m not worried about that, because it’s just another dimension of persuasion, which is the heart and soul of the web.
However, even if we can assemble valuable content and season it with the actor’s tone, isn’t the result a web-based double chicane? Isn’t it bogus? Will the blog get flamed? Will it get panned on reddit? Regardless of our desire to pump out valuable content, vox populi vox Dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God), and we shall have to live with the consequences.
Frankly, however it pans out, it’s a pretty interesting project. Potentially inflammatory, but interesting nonetheless.
Back to the VP of product development: “One more thing: Not the voice of Alec Baldwin on his podcast. I can’t stand the guy’s writing.”
How would you handle this?
photo credit: El Hormiguero (CC BY-ND 2.0)
