Running Money or Running the Business – Bloggers Run the Message!

This week’s Say It For You blog posts are inspired by to concepts discussed at the most recent Financial Planning Association meeting. The PIMCO representative made a compelling statement: “At PIMCO, we have people dedicated to ‘running money’, and others dedicated to ‘running the business.’”  He went on to explain what he meant: One secret of PIMCO’s long-term success as a company lies in the fact that the people who manage the investment portfolios for clients are not expected to also “run the business” in terms of marketing, hiring, finance, advertising, etc.

Since I’m a trainer of freelance blog content writers, that statement resonated with me. Generally, I’ve found, entrepreneurs and professional practitioners don’t have a great deal of experience when it comes to writing blog posts. But, even more important is what Honkiat.com points out:”Unless you’re a writer by profession, having to write every day is unrealistic. You have a business to run.” That’s why John Jantsch of ducttapemarketing asserts that “Outsourcing content creation is an essential tactic, especially for small businesses.”

PIMCO, of course, is no small business, but a global investment giant. Unlike most of the small to midsize businesses and professional practices that make up our client list at Say It For You, PIMCO has the resources to have its own, in-house marketing and content-writing departments. The point the PIMCO rep was making is important, though. Taking care of the core functions of any business (in PIMCO’s case, “running the money”) needs to be separated from the function of customer acquisition and client communication.
 
Hearing that PIMCO presentation at the FPA meeting, I recalled the time when I was just beginning my work as a professional blogwriter in Indianapolis..Debates on the ethics of blogging for others often raged at networking meetings and seminars.  Meanwhile, of course, more and more companies were venturing into online marketing campaigns, viewing blog content writing as just another advertising and marketing function to be outsourced.

PIMCO has people dedicated to “running money” and others to “running the business”.  I like to think of our work writing blog content as “running the message”!