Authorship matters
Here’s a comment I just wrote as a response to Debbie Weil, who recently (among other things) discussed ghostblogging, i.e. the approach of having someone else write your CEO blog.
(Edit: this post, to which Weil refers, and the discussion that follows is really what this is all about.)
I believe that the debate about whether or not ghostblogging is acceptable is closely related to the importance of blog authorship in general. Let’s start by revisiting a few basic questions.
What are blogs not good for?
From the way they are used by most people, it seems blogs are not good for providing purely informative content that is largely independent of a specific context and derives its authority from an institution (in contrast to an individual). Examples for such writings would be legal texts, official documents, instruction manuals and - to a certain extent - press releases. Who the author is and in what context a piece was written (in terms of time, place and social situation) should not be reflected closely by the text, otherwise it cannot serve the purpose its users assign it (resolving a dispute, confirming your identity, figuring out how your toaster works, etc). A blog is also not independent of its individual author, which is precisely what these texts intend to be. Instruction manuals usually don’t credit the writer because they are meant to be used, not read to gain a better understand of who the author is.
Simplifying a whole lot, blogs are the direct opposite of these text types. Not only are they usually not meant to be “used” in any way, but they also tend to be more argumentative than informative and more subjective than universally objective. Just compare an entry on Wikipedia with any random blog post and check how often the personal pronoun “I” shows up - it’s usually 0 vs. a lot. The author of an encyclopedia entry will seek to stay as far “behind the scenes” as possible, because the article should not be about him, but about the topic described.
So what are blogs good for, then? From what I’ve seen, they primarily serve a social function. They allow me to meet Debbie Weil, Robert Scoble and Jonathan Schwartz in their own virtual living-room, furnished to their own individual taste, while I’m sitting right here in my office at the University of Duesseldorf. The fact that I can not only read what they have to say but actually respond and have a conversation with them is something that was unimaginable before the advent of blogging. There’s just one little catch: I have to know who I’m talking to. Because if I don’t, this miracle of communication unconstrained by time and space disappears in a big puff of smoke, as there is simply no level of trust, depth or relationship that can grow between me and an anonymous voice. Which is fine if the text in question is purely informative or instructional, but not if it’s supposed to tell me who the writer is, in his own language.
Now, you could argue that this is not the case with a ghostwritten blog - it has an author after all, just that he’s not the person under whose name things are published. True, but the problem remains that if people become aware of the disparity, they will probably find it unacceptable. Keep in mind that on the net authorship can never be validated in the same way that it is possible in person, and therefore any form of deception is likely to irreparably damage trust once it is discovered. And if that happens, you’re going to wish you’d never started a blog at all.
“But it works for ghostwritten speeches!”, you might contend. Yes, but do those really serve a social function? Do they necessarily reflect beliefs, goals and ideas which belong to the individual delivering the speech? Are they directed at individual people or crowds?
Blogs aren’t (good) megaphones, they’re fireside chats. And who you’re chatting with is at least as important as what they have to say.
(On Sep 27th, 2006 at 8:03 pm)
If authorship matters, why have you NOT displayed your name on your blog that I can easily see??
I also disagree with you that Ghost Blogs are bad. Think SEO - if your blog posts contains keywords that have been optimized for your site and if you continuoosly post content, this (according to SEO “experts”) will place you high in the search rankings which will drive traffic to your site. I agree that it’s best when the blog has a personal voice but there are other objectives to business blogging.
(On Sep 27th, 2006 at 12:37 am)
Hey Chad,
thanks for the comment. Firstly, I assumed so far that having my name on each post (it’s right under the title) as well as detailed information on the ‘about me’ page should clarify who I am, but I readily admit that it could be a little more obvious. Secondly, while the argument regarding SEO is perfectly valid, I wasn’t talking about anonymous blogs but about blogs written by people assuming a false identify, e.g. Joe Marketing writing Bob CEO’s executive blog. My focus so far has been mostly on large companies which are probably less interested in SEO than they are in improving customer relations.*
Perhaps I should have explained my conclusion a bit better: my deduction isn’t that ghost blogs are “bad” but that they are diametrical to the goal of trust-building. No trust if I don’t know who I’m talking to. Whether I can improve my search engine ranking with an anonymous blog or ghost blog is a different matter altogether (I have no doubt that it works). In the end the other interesting question is into what effect either method translates. Does my company sell more because of my wonderful CEO blog? Does more traffic translate into more sales? It’s probably easier to measure the effect of traffic on sales than the effect of blogs on a company’s image. Tough questions, but very interesting as well…
One quick question though: in you opinion, what are the objectives of business blogging? I’m very interested in different perspectives regarding this issue. Thanks again for your feedback!
* I’m also doubtful as to whether just posting keyword junk works in the long run, considering that your ranking seems to depend primarily on who links to you - but that’s another cup of tea.
(On Sep 27th, 2006 at 4:34 pm)
Great thoughts! I’ve been recently discouraged to find so many ghost-written CEO blogs as of late. We’ve begun a blogging initiative and I thought it would be easier to weed these out. Not so much I am finding. I can understand the practicality of the matter as CEO’s have little time if any to crank out a blog post, but if you are going to be the voice of the company in such an intimate forum then come forward with the authorship.
(On Sep 27th, 2006 at 5:08 pm)
Agreed. I think having other employee bloggers act as the voice of a company under their own names is preferable to a ghostwritten CEO blog. I also think it is perfectly sensible to have a staff of editors take care of things such as comment moderation. The question I’d ask myself when considering to have my blog ghostwritten is “how would I react if I found out that it’s not really John CEO writing this”? Consider you are a business partner of the company in question and you meet John CEO face to face. How would you react if, when mentioning his blog, it became clear that he’s not actually the author? I would regard that as a significant violation of trust. Who knows who answers John’s email if someone else writes his blog?
There’s another interesting effect, by the way. With a public blog you’re not just talking to one clearly delineated group of people (customers, press etc) - you’re talking to a bunch of people who you might not have had in mind at all. You’re talking to partner company executives, government officials, shareholders and to people sitting down the hall from you. The idea that what the CEO has to say could be interesting to those people doesn’t seem entirely outlandish to me…
(On Sep 27th, 2006 at 8:08 pm)
[…] Charleni Li reports that the U.S. telco company yesterday launched a blog on technology and telecommunications policy. It should be interesting to see how they fare - who knows, perhaps they’ll get into a scuffle with the folks over at Cox. One thing going for Verizon is that I can tell who actually writes their blog, which is rather unclear with DST. As I’ve ranted before, authorship matters. […]
(On Sep 27th, 2006 at 2:02 am)
Thanks for your response Cornelius - apologize for not seeing your name. I agree with you that CEO blogs should actually be written by the CEO. For a better idea of my opinion on corporate blogging, check out Top 10 Reasons for Corporate Blogging. Again, thanks again for the detailed response and I wish you the best in your research.
(On Sep 27th, 2006 at 8:37 pm)
[…] It feels a bit like a shameless plug, but in the light of the recent Wal-Mart blog scandal I can’t resist revisiting my previous post on blog authorship and trust. My older post focused on ghostblogging, i.e. the process of having someone other than the perpetrated author - often a professional writer - publish your executive blog for you. […]
(On Sep 27th, 2006 at 8:47 pm)
[…] Northeastern University and Backbone Media recently conducted a study on corporate blogging where they asked 21 company bloggers for their experiences and opinions. I think the study is interesting not only because of the responses it cites, but because the responses say something about the bloggers who were interviewed and their take on how corporate blogging works. I’ve argued before that corporate blogs - as much, perhaps even more than private blogs - serve a social function, that is, that they seek to establish a relationship between the blogger (acting as a representative of the company) and his readers. Obviously a blog benefits from being informative, but before it can inform it has to achieve the status of a trusted source. However, the only way it can become a trusted source is by making the blogger a familiar, tangible person to his readers - someone with a personality, humor, interests, quirks, etc. The trouble with brochures, CEO interviews, mission statements and normal company websites isn’t that they aren’t informative, it’s that they lack what the cluetrainers have dubbed “a human voice”*. […]