Elliott over at GOODPLUM asked what I thought on blog content…you know the debate – quantity vs quality content…so he asked whether a certain amount should be written by guest authors or a ghostwriter…

Ask and ye shall receive…so here goes…

When you start a blog – hopefully you determined exactly:

1 – WHAT the blog was for,

2 – WHO the blog was aimed at,

3 – HOW often you’d add content,

4 – WHAT type of content you would add

Of course, if you’re like me, you may have changed gears about a half a dozen times. Not a great thing, but it happens.

If you had the answers to these questions, you have most of your issues defeated. But there is that lovely debate-o-rama you see online of how much content you should have, how often you should post, blah blah blah.

I would say, yeah, you want to post at least once a week. Probably more often in the infancy of your blog. But let’s say you have loftier ideas and you want new content more often. Except you don’t have the time to cough it up yourself.

Yes, you can have your content written by a ghostwriter. And, if you find a GOOD ghostwriter, who can match your voice (and the good ones can do this) then obstensibly (I love that word) you can have up to 100% of your content written by a ghostwriter. This is not a cheap option, but it’s a do-able one, for sure. But the important thing here, whether you have a ghostwriter writing 5% of your content or 99% of your copy, you need to find a ghostwriter who can write with your style, in your voice. Basically, this ghostwriter is an extension of you…she (or he) is the extra arm and brain that you wish you had, and she (or he) will create content for you that you can gladly and honestly be proud of, as if it actually did come from your extra arm and brain.

So, to answer your question, Elliott – if you find the right ghostwriter who captures your voice, then you could feel comfortable with ANY percentage of the content being written by this person and posting it on your blog.

Now…a little bit about guest authors…I would say that guest authors are nifty because they bring a different voice to your blog, but are pointed out to be different than you. It’s like offering a different type of snack to your guests. You’ve been offering tacquitos in beef and chicken and now you’re offering a mini-quiche but your guests know that it’s someone else who actually cooked the mini-quiche up…and that’s perfectly fine! Because sometimes your guests can only handle so many freakin’ tacquitos, whether you dress ‘em up with salsa, guacamole or something else. So a mini-quiche here and there is a good thing!

BUT (yes, there are always “buts”) you don’t want your blog to become a guest author dominated blog. Why? Because it is no longer your blog. It just becomes a hodge-podge of whatever. Mini-quiches, cream puffs, cocktail weiners and so forth. And eventually, your voice (the most important one) will get lost. So for guest authored posts, I would say you want to keep that to about 1-2 posts per week (assuming you have daily posts). So think about 10-20% tops on the guest author posts.

What say you?