Hire A Blogger? - Blog Exchange

[Logan]

I'm curious on others feedback on what their initial impression is of the following. Today, Nick Wilson and the crew over at performancing.com announced that they have created a new 'exchange'. Here are the basics of what one can do -

* Bloggers for hire
* Bloggers wanted
* Blogs for sale
* Services offered
* Services wanted
* Micellaneous

Would you hire a blogger? Or provide blogging to others for a fee? I think the blogs for sale could be interesting if you were able to purchase something established and closely matching your niche/audience - but is it the same without the blogger who created it?

What do you think?

http://performancing.com/exchange

Performancing Exchange is a classifieds style marketplace for the professional blogging community. It's free for now, and you can create an exchange post here

[QiSoftware]

I think small business owners are concerned about what to write about where there business is concerned. Maybe a little guidance could go a long way. I would not hire a blogger-- but I can see why a business owner may take this route.

Q...

[orvado]

I think if the traffic is there, a blog site will always have value. It should be especially attractive to blogs which target a specific niche that others are really interested in.

[lunartcorp]

It can be considered as one of the outsourcing services that any company can contract.

Outsourcing appears when there is something that needs to be done but it is not part of your core business. Blogging may be part of the advertising plan of the company and advertising is usually contracted (outsourced) unless you have a complete team for it.

If you have budget for advertising that includes a team to handle public relations (newspapers, radio, television) you might consider one more media called Internet that includes an expert on Blogging.

We read every day that content in the website, articles, press releases and blogging are an excellent way to get traffic to our websites. Also, we see that search engines are becoming more "intelligents" to read that content so I would not be surprised if this technique is included in the curriculum of Universities for those career associated with public relations.

If you are a good writer about something and you already discovered good techniques of blogging, I would suggest you to explode that skill by offering your services.

It could be a very lucrative job because it does not only take time but it is also art as any writing.

[Matt McGee]

I'm a big Nick Wilson fan, so my reply will be obvious: I think it's a genius idea, and one that's sure to be popular.

Two things:

1) At OWT (where I work), we've actually been discussing offering blog-writing services to some of our clients -- the ones in fields/industries where we feel we have the knowledge to write authoritatively, or the interest to learn until we reach that level.

2) The focus of one of my OWT newsletters many months ago was that any small business looking to expand its staff should strongly consider and prioritize the hiring of someone who knows how to write.

We all (SEOs) keep preaching about the need for great content, linkable content, etc. - but so few small businesses have someone on board who can create that. Maybe the Performancing Exchange makes it easier to find such people? I would think so.

[EASJennifer]

There are days I'd definitely hire a blogwriter. I'm slowly working on my writing. It's so much easier for a newsletter because I have a month to prepare my articles. It gets a bit hard to write something for my blog every day. But then if I hire a blog writer, the blog sort of loses my personality. It's a double-edged sword.

[St0n3y]

I think its simply fulfillment of a particular need. My clients don't have time to blog everyday so that's something we can do for them. The downside is the "expert level" that is often required. This is where blog for hire stuff is extremely prohibitive. The person blogging must know the industry extremely well, otherwise the blog will have the opposite of the intended effect.

[Nick Wilson]

Hi everyone, thanks for taking an interest in what we're doing over at the exchange...

I think for small businesses it's a bit of a catch-22 situation regarding bloggers for hire. It could be good, but as some have pointed out you may sorely miss the expert knowlege, and on top of that there is a lot to be said for authenticity in a blog -- you'd have quite a task being both authentic and authoratitive unless you lived and breathed teh business.

That would lead you to hire a consultant maybe, to help you get on the right track with your company's efforts, but alas, few small businesses have the time or manpower to do much more than *operate*...

It's a tough one. There could be many good reasons to hire bloggers, but i would lean more toward content generation and writing rather than *representing" your businees.

[vangogh]

Nick, I think it's a great idea. Blogging has become one of those things that all businesses hope to leverage, but not all small business owners can or want to create the consistent content necessary to maintain a successful blog.

Even for those who can, being able to add a second or third voice to a blog can be very beneficial. Some of my favorite blogs have more than writer.

It's true that depending on who you hire to write or contribute to your blog you may lose out on some expert knowledge, but that's really the case whenever you hire anyone to do anything. You'd want to be just as thorough when hiring a blogger as you would hiring any other member of your organization.

But the exchange can at least help people find the right blogger and help bloggers find the right blogs.

And by the way Nick, all posts to my blog are written using the performancing extension for Firefox. Thanks.

[Nick Wilson]

Thanks vangogh, you're most welcome -- and i agree with your points re due dilligence when hiring!