You don’t have time to maintain your blog | Hacker News Reader

You don’t have time to maintain your blog

blog.scripted.com

42 pointsjbkring44 comments

This seems like a disingenuous service. For any company, the goal of having a corporate blog is to demonstrate your employees' knowledge and present interesting problems you've encountered. There are two outcomes I see from outsourcing blog posts:

1) interesting content which isn't directly relevant to your business. They write a good blog, but it's always going to be an arm's length from your real business. Either you mislead users about where the content comes from, or you're up front and people realize that he blog, while good, doesn't really reflect your business.

2) the company doesn't really have bloggers for niche enough specialties to be interesting. You end up with a broad, lookalike blog that could have been written by anybody. This stops customers from engaging with your company.

The correct answer is what New Relic does with The Daily WTF; sponsor an established or up and coming blogger. Make the relationship clear. Users will appreciate your funding interesting content, while understanding that you didn't create it. If you align the audience of the blog with your customer base, I think you could get the same effect without the middleman.

Edit: this definitely seems to fall into category two. Their example posts are overly broad and not very engaging. Lots of link-baity, list-format titles which will drive eyeballs, but ultimately have poor conversion. I'd be interested in any case studies that prove me wrong, thugh

Valid points, but what Scripted does is not much different than hiring a blogger intern. To keep the content genuine, our clients have to be engaged. We simply promote them from writer to editor. Scripted helps businesses take the time spent from idea to publishing down from hours to minutes.

I can see this being useful in some circumstance, but I think the kinds of people who read HN value blog posts that aren't considered a chore. If you're offloading blog posts on someone junior, they're not going to be very interesting. At best they're meta analysis of what other, more invested writers have already said.

You're basically distilling a blog post down into a premise and high quality writing. A lot of what makes technical, corporate blogging effective is content and honesty, which are much harder to outsource.

Totally agree. Which is why I wrote this post myself. I can only hope that my approach to the pain point felt 'honest', and that the content of my post was HN-worthy. We are absolutely not saying that you should outsource your entire social media presence. What we are saying is that consistency over time matters. If I wrote a post like this every day, Scripted would never ship another feature again. So I don't. I write a post like this every couple of weeks. But if we only posted every couple of weeks, a prospective client might show up to our blog, see that we hadn't posted anything recently, and think "I wonder whether they'll be as lackadaisical about customer service as they are about their blog". So we fill the gaps in our 'technical, corporate blog' with simple but engaging outsourced content. We allow you to 'set it and forget it', so that you only have to think about your blog when some crazy new topic pops into your head, and you can't control the urge to fervently hammer away at your typewriter.

I definitely understand that blogs can be ignored in favour of shipping. But I think a service like this would make me write to my blog even less, because it wouldn't feel urgent. Someone else has got it, and even if I write something brilliant, it'll get pushed off the front page in a couple days.

What would be more interesting to me is a proofing service where the content is entirely the actual owner's, but the voice and style are tuned by a professional writer. This would smooth out some idiosyncrasies (for better or worse) and make a corporate blog more approachable for customers, without compromising on quality. I imagine most people let their blog posts ferment for a few days, maybe weeks, before releasing them. Outsourcing the polishing and reflecting period would speed things up without cheapening the whole thing.

Having a small, paid audience of writers who also have a technical background to assess posts before they go out would be another way to take it.

Regardless, I suspect you guys will still kill it because there is a need for this in places where they would normally hire an intern to write the blog. Good luck!

Respectfully, if your startup wants to be recognized as a thought leader, YOU should write and manage your own blog. Your brand is one of the only assets you have in the early days; don't water it down with a steady flow of mediocre blog posts by strangers. Your personal brand, expertise, and storytelling as a founder is the most compelling part of your company. This is why Jake wrote this blog post rather than having an automated writer from their network do it.

IMO content and automation never belong in the same sentence together, unless your only goal is to fill in SEO content of which you aren't particularly concerned about the quality. If you're a startup concerned with your image, I don't think you want to be in that game.

You can't automate quality. It's impossible develop high-quality media without constant, transparent communication and editorial oversight. Especially if you're trying to do it cheaply.

If you're a big-budget brand with that wants to trade out banner ads for thoughtful content marketing, hire an editor with real journalism experience, then hire (or contract) the best journalists you can afford, with the biggest social media followings. This is why Red Bull, American Express, and Gilt Groupe kill it with content marketing, meanwhile you and I have never clicked "Like" on an auto-generated blog post from a random startup. The only way you'll compete with media companies for content-share is by beating them at their game.

That can't happen "automatically."

Outsource your blog today! Curated top trending topics, SEO optimized, ready to go viral and customized to your audience.

This is the kind of crap I wish would disappear from the web. At least Google is trying to do it's part. I also think a company blog is not the place for this kind of arbitrage, I see it often on random companies websites and it shows: instead of engaging the audience, the post listing looks like a pyramid marketing scheme.

They could pair up with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIwH7ptHCWc (if it wasn't a joke)

Let me take the discussion up a level.

There's huge demand for great writing, that's been made clear in the comments (and we see this every day at Scripted HQ).

There are millions of underemployed professionals in this country, thousands of whom are exceptional writers.

Scripted bridges the two, allowing businesses to get great writing (not just blog posts, also white papers, landing pages, status updates, case studies, and product descriptions) by someone who actually knows the industry.

I totally understand the skepticism surrounding ghostwriting, but it's not so different than hiring a PR agency or marketing firm. We're just making these services available to any business a la carte, and using a distributed workforce of real American professionals.

Where's the scheming in that?

The problem is that "great writing", in this context, is business owners writing something that being a business owner qualifies them to write.

How is an outsourced writer going to draw on someone else's experiences?

A blog written from real experience may be valuable. A blog pretending to be written from real experience is worse that worthless for the readers.

In most cases, we'll take an outline from a business owner along with a style guide they produced or had produced by their agency, and choose a writer as close as possible to their industry. You can't fake insider knowledge, but you can transfer the details and have a great writer build in the details.

Maybe a better analogy is like a head chef and his souz-chefs. Our clients create the recipe, but our writers prepare the dish.

Authenticity is very ill-defined (just ask any hipster). What makes an authentic company blog in your mind? Does it have to written by an employee of the company? What if it the company is entirely outsourced (except for the owners, obviously)? Does that mean the owners must write it? What if the owners aren't any good at writing? Can they not hire someone to do this job for them? Let's say we're talking about a software company, and all development is outsourced. Is the product now inauthentic? If not, what's the difference between a blog and the product?

Interesting and insightful blog posts are usually written by someone with intimate knowledge of some part of the business, be it an outsourced developer, a founder or even a marketing intern. The proximity matters. That knowledge is not going to be transferred over a five input form.

One type of authenticity speaks to origin an item. Whether it be a painting, writing, or any other work, when a work's origin is in doubt, it can be said to be lacking authenticity. The inauthentic part of ghostwriting is that the name of the author on the content is not the person who created the content.

There is no requirement that the authors aren't credited. To quote another comment in this thread by someone from Scripted

  Yup. Which is why many of our clients give byline to our writers!

I agree that if the author isn't credited the setup is a bit dubious.

Whoa buddy, sounds like you're on your high horse in your ivory tower. Must be lonely up there!

Yes, my comment was a bit harsh, but that's the gist of my opinion, sometimes blunt comments make for better discussion than candy-coated ones. Plus I'm a little annoyed by promotional posts on HN...

So do I, and I can be harsh too. You are not alone my friend.

Ghost writers for blogs.

Isn't the whole reason for reading a blog, instead of some other publication on a similar topic, to get insights from (apparent) blog author?

Yup. Which is why many of our clients give byline to our writers!

Not to be down on the service, but I have to do some nitpicking.

There is a difference between "checkout" and "check out". "checkout" is not a verb, but a thingamajig. "the checkout page". "to check out" is a verb.

The first proper word on the blog seems incorrect. That doesn't inspire confidence. There are a few more problems with the text such as (preposition) words that appear missing, for example.

Thanks! Fixed the "check out" issue. I don't see the other problems, but such is the nature of copy-editing your own writing.

From the last paragraph: "a couple writers" -> "a couple of writers" "its completion" -> "it's completion"

It seems really important to me, that you get these sorts of things right in all your posts, even if you yourself won't be writing your prospective clients' blog posts.

It is really important. You are right. In my haste to get this product out the door this morning, I forgot to send the post to our copy-editors. I screwed up. Sorry :( I certainly won't be making that mistake again.

Actually, those are correct. "a couple writers" and "a couple of writers" are both grammatically correct.

"its completion" -> "it's completion" is just wrong. "It is completion" is not the intent of the sentence.

You are certainly right about the "its". I have an annoying habit of incorrectly correcting people.

I have a long long list of blog posts I haven't got around to writing. Creating the skeleton is easy, but filling in the details is time consuming. I can see a use for this service to get someone else to do that. I don't really see a big deal with this, so long as everyone involved is credited.

I'm in the same boat. I've tried using Dragon, because talking is easier than writing for me. But then, I end up with a lot of umms and uhs and unstructured posts. Copywriting is super important, very difficult for non-writers, and time-consuming (for non-writers)

I like the concept although I always hesitate to use ghost writers. If you really want my business, you have to show me the money. Demonstrate the expertise in your writers, their engagement (comments), their impact/retention (uniques/views), and their ability to write deeply interesting content.

What I saw was a collection of random, poorly-formatted writing samples, disorganized testimonials, and vague pricing details. Normally I'd just keep to myself and move along, but this is a service my company would potentially use in certain areas. So I think it would be a huge improvement if the site were focused on convincing me, as the owner and someone with irrational concern for our image, how you'll make us bigger/better/faster/stronger.

This is very good feedback. We're actually working on some Machine-Learning technology that takes all of Wikipedia's content, builds a topic model, and applies it to the 10k pieces of content that we've written over the past couple months. It will allow us to rank writers by their expertise in very granular fields (so for instance we'll be able to tell you who our best "outdoor recreational equipment" writer is). We'll provide a deeper explanation of this technology in a (hopefully less controversial) blog post in the next couple of weeks.

Hmm, it makes me think twice about corporate blogs in general if they're not written from the horse's mouth. Credibility of all corporate blogs are undermined just by this post from a service.

Also, it is hard to see if they use ghost writers or not. Which, makes me even more skeptical.

You might want to ask one of your copyeditors to have another look at your website.

On the Features page: "We'll take some basic information about what you field you're in and what you need written."

here my tl;dr: if you don't want to write a blog, but instead want to be well-known because of your blog, then don't write one.

Don't do stuff for the wrong reasons.

Hey, can you guys provide a list of your clients so I know which blogs to avoid?

From the blog post and main screen, I have no idea what this service is selling. Is it promising to aggregate blogs/tweets/FB posts of a certain topic and deliver them to you on a weekly basis? Is it promising to prompt you weekly along the lines of "you promised you'd write about ___ today!"? Is it promising to find ghost writers for the topics you specify, and have them churn out content on a weekly schedule?

Once I've specified weekly blog posts from topics I have in mind, the next form makes it pretty clear that the service will find people to write your blog for you, which sounds pretty skeevy. I don't know how you would detect a Scripted blog post, but I'd rather not see them on HN. If someone's writing is good enough to make it to HN, it should do so under the author's own brand. Just my opinion.

Hey Nate. Agreed, you definitely need a bit of context regarding what exactly Scripted does in order to understand this feature. The assumption was that if someone navigated their way to our weekly offering, they probably did so after grasping the basics of our business. But by announcing this as a standalone, I can see how we introduced tons of confusion. Sorry! For what it's worth, we have many clients that give byline to their writers, and a couple of them are HN regulars!

No BS: what's the price of the 'basic' plan?

Price isn't shown because it depends on level of account support and job customization. We try not to run package deals for less than $500/mo.

Is this solely for people that know the topics your writers are writing on thoroughly enough that they don't approve something that is potentially harmful to their brand? What happens in the event that the audience is largely put off by the post or if the author is wrong about the topic they're writing on but the client was none-the-wiser to it at approval?

I thought this was going to be about actually maintaining a blog - Upgrades etc.

I am Disappoint.

seems interesting and as though you could get a freelance writer to get to know your brand better instead of hiring a staff writer.

No list of satisfied customers?

Is this like blogmutt?

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