There’s a trend of legal blogs going up with nothing but ghostwritten articles. Is this a shortcut to the top of the search engines or a valuable means of getting information to your prospective clients?
Part of what I do each morning is flip open my Google Reader and check out the other legal blogs to which I subscribe. Not only do I read what the members of the Legal Practice Pro listserv are writing, but also bankruptcy and consumer protection blogs in general.
Lately I’ve seen a number of blogs experience an explosive growth in their content. One, run by one of the largest consumer bankruptcy law firms in the United States, will often pump out 3-4 new pieces in a single day. This isn’t low-quality crap, either – it’s pretty good.
In spite of the fact that this blog is nominally penned by the attorney whose name appears on the door, there’s no doubt that this lawyer has outsourced his blog duties. The pieces are well-written, contain captivating (if not stock) photos, and read like they were written by a seasoned personal finance writer.
This isn’t the only lawyer who’s jumped on the ghostblogging bandwagon. In fact, I have two friends who are using the same ghostblogger for their bankruptcy blogs. They didn’t tell me, but I confronted each of them and they copped to it.
I’ve tried hiring ghostbloggers in the early days of my blogging career, but it never worked out. I end up spending double the amount of time editing the pieces and giving them my voice. By the time I published the pieces they were completely re-written and there was no trace of the hired gun to be found.
Finding a freelancer isn’t too difficult, and I’m not opposed to hiring outsiders to add valuable content to your blog. It’s not up my alley but I get that some people aren’t interested in pouring their thoughts onto the screen day in and day out. Still, isn’t there something disingenuous about claiming ownership of a piece that isn’t yours?
If I worked with my law school professor as a research assistant on a law review article and wasn’t given at least a footnote of credit, I would have been offended. When I was interviewed by a major national magazine in connection with a story some years ago about the debt buying industry, I was enraged that my name wasn’t in the article.
Sure, a ghostblogger willingly surrenders ownership when he or she takes the job, but does that make it right?
In the world of unbundled legal services, lawyers in some states who assist in the drafting of court documents need to disclose their involvement. It’s designed to put the court on alert about the quality and nature of the pleading, and that makes sense.
Some other noted bloggers have put ghostblogging to task. Give them a read:
- Ghostblogging will be the death of social media in the law by Kevin O’Keefe
- Are Ghostwritten Legal Blogs Unethical? in the ABA Journal
- Why It’s Ridiculous To Argue About Ghost Blogging by Mark Schaefer
- The Death of Social Media by Mitch Joel
By putting your name on a piece of content over which you did not have sole control, are you lying to your readers and prospective clients? Are you using ghostbloggers on your blog? Share your thoughts – I’m curious to hear what you think.
Image credit: NRK P3
Ghostblogging is a tricky issue.
First, is it effective? You might be generating content to get indexed, to get traffic, but in the post-panda world, it will work less and less. Also, if you get someone to your site, what will they think about what they find? You’re better off posting higher quality stuff as yourself, even if it means you post much less often. This is especially true as authorship becomes increasingly important. Develop the best content you can, get it in front of the audiences that are interested, ready, willing, and able to further publicize it (i.e. link to it, share it, talk about it, subscribe, etc).
Second, is it ethical? Depending on what your blog/site says, it might be misleading that the post was authored by the lawyer when in fact it was not. While I can imagine ways to avoid ethical pitfalls (disclaimers, etc), I would suspect that most folks using guestbloggers aren’t paying attention to this issue.
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True, Gyi. Rather post less frequently than to post garbage in your own name or use something that’s yours in name only. Thanks for adding your thoughts.
I write all the articles on my blog. I have had countless clients tell me that they called my office above others solely because of the “tone” of the content I have on my website. Not that there is anything particularly special about what I write, but there are people out there who will connect with the way you write and then call you. It makes for a better relationship because there was some sort of connection before they even call the office. And in a way, ghost bogging seems like cheating. It is very satisfying to have a client come into your office and tell you about something they read in an article you wrote.
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Amen John. The writing forms the basis for a personal connection; failure to disclose when someone else is using your name for blogging purposes makes the relationship founded on a lie.
As one of the “hired guns” mentioned above, I have found that lawyers tend to write for lawyers, not for the public/business leaders that hire them. I have to edit legalese and Latin terms out of many documents that are for public consumption because the average person doesn’t own Black’s Law Dictionary. Hired Guns, as attorneys also are called, keep their client real. Legal theory and case law precedents do not interest your client as much as they may interest a peer in the practice.
In addition, the news media will trash any news release with legal jargon in it simply because they do not have time to research it, understand it, and rewrite it for their readers, viewers, or listeners.
While we all are enticed by the ability to let the world know our thoughts in cyberspace, the main source of information people get and use comes from mainstream media. I would encourage you to consider hiring a gun to get some ink in the local business newspaper, the business section of the local daily or, if appropriate, radio talk shows and television local programming. The news industry’s death is greatly exaggerated and the top percentiles on business leaders still read newspapers.
Free advice,; don’t write for your peers’ consumption. Write for your prospective clients’ edification. You will get more new business that way.
Jim, thanks for jumping into the fray. I’m not debating the writing skills of some lawyers – in fact, of people in general. My question is one of whether it is proper and transparent for me to put my name to a piece that I have not written. A news release is not under the lawyer’s byline as author, nor is a newspaper article about that lawyer. If Seth Godin came forward one day and said that he had hired out much of his blogging and book writing to uncredited freelancers, what would that do to his credibility and authority? Freelancers are used in many writing projects, online and offline. They are useful and valuable. But the lawyer who puts his or her name to someone else’s words is being less than truthful with his or her clients, no?
Jay,
As you discussed in your recent post on Panda, quality and frequency are the new mandatories for Google SEO effectiveness. High-quality content commissioned or otherwise acquired from trustworthy third parties certainly addresses that marketing requirement, and I believe that in general there’s nothing wrong with that practice as long as there’s transparency.
My biggest quibble is that misleading and/or missing attribution has no clear benefit.
1) Even full-time professional bloggers are hard-pressed to produce a single daily post, so three or four daily posts attributed to the same author is entirely implausible and has a deceptive tang. Further, if you’re putatively writing that much, when is there time for legal work? In other words, you’re not fooling anyone, and could actually end up looking foolish yourself.
2) Readers care more about the quality and consistency of the content, not who wrote it. Being a genuinely discerning curator is much better for your brand than being a dubiously prolific author.
3) Guest posts are standard fare in blogging — in fact, contributed content is considered a best practice. No one will know if your “contributors” are paid or not, so why not give them a byline?
And the bigger issue is, of course, whether a torrent of content actually produces proportionate or superior results in terms of leads and revenue (the ROI thing).
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The transparency issue is what troubles me most, Jay. It seems as if some SEO companies are selling their clients on frequency and quality, yet the lawyers aren’t considering the impact of the misleading and/or missing attribution on their credibility and authority in the eyes of the reader. Good to know we’re on the same side of this issue.
I meant to ask, how did you figure out that your friends were using the same ghostwriter? Verbatim/substantially similar posts, or did someone tattle?
Jay Pinkert recently posted..Endeavor to Be Useful: Legal Marketing Tips 12.21.11
I subscribe to both of their blogs, and noticed that neither of them bothered to change the username in WordPress for the ghostblogger. It published as their name, but the username was still the same person.
Last Summer I hired a ghost writer to draft blog posts for me. I didn’t have a lot of time to devote to preparing them from scratch and the price was right – $197.00/month for 3 posts per week. They were pretty good, but didn’t sound at all like me. I spent a lot of time re-writing everything – dumbing it down and inserting contractions so that they were in my voice.
As you know, Jay, I got an email from a “friend” who suggested that my ghost writer needed to optimize the blog posts for my locality – something I had not even considered. Since then, I’ve gotten rid of the ghost writer and have been doing it on my own. I found that when I dictate the posts using Dragon Naturally Speaking, they sound like me and they actually take less time than when I was re-writing the ghost writer’s posts – which he always called “blogs” – which drove me crazy.
Funny thing – since I’ve been regularly posting on my own, my site has been climbing up the Google ladder and I’ve been getting calls from people who are pre-sold on me when they show up for the initial consultation. That’s pretty cool.
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I don’t see this as a problem. Ghostwriting has been around as long as the publishing industry has. I see no ethical dilemma at all. Is it any different than having your associate do the bulk of the work on a brief and the partner takes the credit? the associate is getting paid to do this.
As far as effectiveness, there’s no doubt it work. None. The blog who posts 3-5 times per week will ALWAYS beat the blog who posts once a week, with content being equal. And that is what Jay said, the content WAS good. If it’s crap, then it’s crap and won’t matter.
What I took away from this is the time it takes to edit the posts and may not be worth it. I’ve been using a Ghost blogger for about 3 months and my traffic has increased from 20-30 views a day to about 60-69 day. The only change? frequency. The blog length (350 minimum up to 650 words) and topics are all very similiar. So, if you are a lawyer who is busy and charges a few hundred an hour, it’s a no-brainer to pay a out of work lawyer 35$ per piece to get 2-3 updates per week.
Walter, you don’t have any problem with the fact that a reader of your blog will walk away from it thinking you wrote a particular piece, yet that’s not the case? What do you think the client thinks when he or she says, “Hey, I read your piece on X last week,” and you say, “I didn’t write that”? Or are you not disabusing people of that inaccurate notion?
I’m curious – what about Walter’s main point — that ghostwriting has been around forever in the publishing industry? I see no difference between a writer ghosting for a celebrity who can’t string two sentences together coherently and a blogger ghosting for a lawyer who doesn’t have time to string, etc… If one is somehow “unethical” the other must be too. Unless it’s the “the legal profession is just different” thing … and maybe it is in this context, I don’t know. Certainly there’s an additional stringent layer of regulation there that shouldn’t be ignored. In my work, I usually work with lawyers (and other professionals) to show them *how* to do it themselves, but I have ghosted for sites in other industries. I’m just curious what the distinction is, in your viewpoint, between the tradition of ghostwriting and ghost-blogging.
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I’m not a fan. I do believe that there are ethical considerations here which have to do with a state’s advertising and solicitation rules. You are listing yourself as the author, when someone else is. To me, that is misleading.
This isn’t a generic marketing brochure not attributed to any one person, but to the firm. In a blog post, you are putting content out, under your name, that you didn’t write. That doesn’t sit well with me (not talking about content that comes to you in a rough draft and you heavily edit).
I wrote my thoughts down here: http://legalwatercoolerblog.com/2010/02/02/ghost-blogging-for-attorneys-ethical-or-just-lacking-in-transparency/
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