Every so often, the question comes up again: If a business uses a ghost blogger, is that business playing fair?

When I first introduced my Say It For You blog, I traced the long, proud history of ghostwriting.  I explained that celebrities and public figures have always used ghost writers to help them create books, write speeches, produce autobiographies, compose articles, or even format important letters. The reason?  They lacked the time, the discipline, or the writing skills to do it themselves!  In fact, as I pointed out in one of my earliest blog posts, Ghost Blogging In The Tradition Of The Founding Fathers, George Washington used several very famous ghostwriters. Over the generations, world leaders, corporate moguls, and even famous performers  considered the urgency and importance of their message justification enough for hiring talent to get the job done.

I was very interested to read comments in the Journal of Financial Planning about  outsourcing professional services.  Many financial planners around the country work with their clients to create an overall financial plan, but then hire outside money managers to implement that plan by choosing and monitoring the specific stocks and bonds for the clients’ portfolios.  One Certified Financial Planner®  explained why: “If I were spending a lot of time on investment selection, I couldn’t do the premier job that I want to do for my clients,” she said. “There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”

Another planner added, “You’re doing your clients more of a service by hiring expertise for them.,” he remarked, comparing the situation to an internist who wouldn’t perform surgery himself, but brings in specialists as appropriate.

With blogging fast becoming an indispensable customer acquisition tool in our web-based world, ghost blogging becomes an outsourcing solution for busy business owners who dearly want to” win search”, but can’t find time to play in the blogging arena!

Back in August, I used an advertising supplement to the Indianapolis Star named “Why 2 Buy Now” to illustrate the point that blogs are not advertisements, but more akin to “advertorials” (see “Why To Buy A Piano” Is Good Advice For Blogs).  I had cut out and saved another page from that Star supplement, this one about Segways.  These lawnmower-looking, two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transportation devices seem to be the all-the-rage way for getting around Indianapolis these days.

The article about Segways begins “Getting around more efficiently seems to be on everyone’s mind these days,” and concludes by pointing out that  “A Segway is more than a travel alternative.  It’s a new way of thinking.”

The same kind of innovative technology that produced the Segway has also revolutionized the way in which businesses market themselves.  And, just as with Segways, whose “early adopters” you can see touring White River State Park on wheels or speeding through the mall, early adopters of business blogging are each staking out their own little corners on the Web, helping customers navigate with ease to their blogs and on to their company websites.

The Segway/Blog parallel is less labored than might at first appear.  A Segway takes one rider at a time, taking her exactly where she wants to go. In Won’t You Please Come Into My Blog? I likened the Internet to a big trade show.  (Now, imagine each person at the show is not walking around, but driving around on a Segway!)  These potential customers are navigating around the Web, looking for information, a product, or a service.  If you have a “booth” at the show (your blog), customers stop their Segways there. It’s not by accident they’ve found your blog, but precisely because they are seeking information about something you know about, a product you sell, or a service you provide! As Yentl said in Fiddler on the Roof, “It’s a perfect match!”

Segways are still a novelty in the Circle City, and, although more and more people are catching on to the Segway advantage every day, the jury is still out on whether they will turn out to have been a passing fad.  Blogging, on the other hand, is no fad.  Bloggers post millions of items per day, a dozen every second.  Business owners that can “hop on board”, providing relevant, recent, and frequently updated blog content, will be positioned to “win search”, and, even more important, win business!