This headline, sent to me by a colleague, appeared in a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Should You Outsource Your Company Blog?" Like most questions addressed in communications, marketing and other similar fields, the answer is -- Maybe. It depends.


1. If the company doesn't have a communications or a marketing department, maybe you should.
2. If the company doesn't have an executive spokesperson with the time, maybe you should.
3. If the company's Legal and/or HR departments need to approve outgoing comments, maybe you should, but only if those departments get out of the way. Otherwise, don't do a blog.
Or maybe not. And here are the arguments, as I understand them, against outsourcing the company blog. The point of blogging is:
1. Having an authentic voice.
2. Giving customers a personal connection to the company.
3. Ghostwriters do neither.
Well, pardon me, but who do you think writes executive speeches, letters from the CEO, and all those personal words to shareholders one finds in the Annual Report, and web site content, and most of the pithy executive quotes found in newspapers? Guys and gals such as me. I also write and manage several company blogs, who are my clients. As the period on the sentence, none of those things are done without interviewing executives and employees, studying the company and its customers, and, finally, getting approval from the company spokesperson for everything I write.
Would it be better if someone from the company wrote the blog? Maybe, maybe not. When work is outsourced, the consultants often have more influence over the executives and more freedom from message management. And if we're fired, we haven't lost our jobs, just a job. We don't have the pressure of saying what we think the company wants to hear, at least many of us don't. More important, key inhouse staff are focusing on their other jobs and responsibilities, while gaining the outsider points of view and expertise, which are then translated into blog posts.
So, there you have it. One consultant's take on outsourcing blogging. Not right. Not wrong. It just depends.