I have heard a number of companies that start blogs and they go very well the first few weeks of the life of the blog.  You can see the passion and you can see the excitement behind those early posts, and then it starts to wane and they start to fall off in number and even the posts that come out on the published side are not much more than going through the motions.  The problem is the honeymoon is over the the real meat of why they began the blog has left.  So in the immortal words of the Wendy’s lady, “Where’s the beef?”

Mark Thompson has a post over at Search Engine Journal on “10 tips to Supercharge Your Blog’s Content“.  It has some really good points in it especially the one about hiring a blogger.  A blogger can be a great asset to your company when if comes time when the honeymoon is over and the blog begins to lack real content or staying with the analogy, the meat.

The Bloggers For Hire portion of his post states:

For some blogs this may be out of the question. If you simply do not have the funds to pay for professional bloggers, you can probably skip this section. Many of the best bloggers out there are the best for a reason and in return, require you to pay them for their services. However professional bloggers typically have a lot of experience in the industry, so they can add valuable content to your blog that will many times gain a lot of industry recognition.

My advice would be to maybe not find the most influential blogger in the industry, but to find someone with a few years experience that has written for a number of other blogs. You can probably hire these bloggers for $25-$50/post and it can be of very good quality. Also keep in mind the reach they may have socially. Usually these bloggers will promote their content on other sites as well, in turn getting you lots of additional traffic.

SEO firms know that with good quality content comes better SEO results.

Mark is right on the money with the idea behind hiring a blogger.  He has a pretty good handle on the budget and the concepts.  Mark is in the SEO world and those are the companies that understand beefy content most.  SEO firms know that with good quality content comes better SEO results.

Hiring a quality blogger that can take your blog over and give it the attention it needs is crucial.  If you want to talk to us about getting a blogger to take the mundane out of your social media marketing plan, contacts us.  We can help and we know the process and the importance of good quality content.  Consider us your blogging butcher!  We can show you the meat.

I wish I had found this while single and without responsibilities, I would be the first in line to try to get the job. How about a blogging job in paradise and get paid a decent wage to do it? That is what the folks at the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef are doing. The job appears to be closing in February so now is the time to get your resume into them and application. So blogging about what is happening sounds like the job for me when they describe it:

The Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef is a newly created position. There are a few minor tasks that need to be taken care of, but the most important duty is to report back to Tourism Queensland (and the world) and let us know what’s taking place on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

That is a classic blog job it sounds like to me.

[HT: Welikely]

I was reading a blog post by Seth Godin this morning and he asks the question: What would a professional do? I can see the campaign now behind WWPD. All kidding aside Seth raises some good points in the blog post. In our everyday lives we are up against professionals. I consider myself a jack of all trades master of none, and I grasp his point with clarity. How do we as business owners compete with that? He suggests a list of how we can look at it:

When you compete with professionals, you have a problem, because generally speaking, they’re better at what they do than you are.

I think there are four valid ways the think your way out of this situation:

1. Hire a professional.

2. Be as good as a professional.

3. Realize that professional-quality work is not required or available and merely come close.

4. Do work that a professional wouldn’t dare do, and use this as an advantage.

I like the first option as someone that helps businesses by outsourcing talent like professional bloggers. He is correct in stating that this option requires time and money and these may not be the best options given your situation. I would argue that it is the best investment however, and your time and energy can be used in other areas for a small investment of money. The second option is a good if you can afford a little time and effort. The third option is for those that just want to get into the blogosphere and participate. This is still a good option for your business. There are benefits of being in the game that you will have over your competition. I really like that he put in the fourth option as this is what makes you stand out in the crowd. So what if you are not a professional blogger. You still have an edge because its your business and you can be flexible and passionate. Do something fun with it, and know that you are the one that is to blame if it goes wrong. This is a powerful way of blogging. Seth is right, you are the Captain of your own ship, and there is no way a professional blogger can compete with that way of doing business.

No, I am not hiring this person but I am seeing this as a new classified advertisement all over the web. I am seeing it on many new marketing company pages in their “We Are Hiring” page and I am seeing it come up in RSS feeds in my aggregator for hiring bloggers. Hiring of this position is the new black and a very sought after position in many companies. Personally I love it and want to tell all of the naysayers that “I told you so!”

There is a very large demand for this new position because it is a new commodity to know how to handle all of the media platforms, all of the applications and the many networks out there as well we being a “blogger”. I have said it many times before, as a professional blogger I have to wear many hats. These hats include all of the job descriptions as described in these jobs. The fine folks over at 6s Marketing have listed just this position and describe the duties as:

Responsibilities May Include:

* develop social media marketing strategies

* develop corporate blog strategies

* work on website content

* write blog posts

* develop legitimate inbound links

* social bookmarking with DIGG, del.icio.us, stumpleupon etc.

* Twitter for business including creating daily Twitter posts aka “tweets”

* maintain Facebook business pages

* locate and become active in social media groups

* stay current with new social media sites and platforms

* constant mindset of leveraging and branding in social networks

* Youtube channel setup

* social Bookmarking

* flickr account creation, description optimization, tagging, geotagging

* outsource and manage custom application development

* blog post moderation

* forum moderation

* attending Vancouver social media events

Requirements

* a passion for social media marketing and other inbound marketing strategies

* excellent written and communication skills

Desired Experience

* experience with social media, SEM and SEO

* maintaining a blog

* familiarity with WordPress or other blog tools

* developing web site and/or press release content

* minor graphic design and Photoshop experience

* 2 years experience in; marketing, communications, public relations, journalism or related field

* participation in the Vancouver social media scene

Now that I think about it I may put in for the position as I appeared to be qualified. Many bloggers a=out there are the perfect fit for this job. If interested contact the company at 6s Marketing.
Obviously, all of the above are things that we as bloggers do on a daily basis. This is typical of what companies are looking for as they call me when they want this person in their seat of their office computer. I spoke about blogging for a living in Vegas, I am speaking about it in Miami next month and in Denver the week after. Many bloggers want to do it and many companies need the help. My business is doing well!!

I was out in Vegas recently speaking at the Wordcamp Las Vegas conference. The folks there recorded the presentation I did via Ustream and now you can see it on the newly released WordPress.tv. WordPress.tv was announced at the Wordcamp Las Vegas and it is an exciting new site. I encourage you to check it out and of course also check out my presentation.

Live TV by Ustream

I will be doing a similar presentation coming up on February 28, 2009 at Wordcamp Denver.

If you are going to be in Denver in or around that time, please get registered and check out the speakers and the fun that will be had there.

I was reading through my feeds and ran across a piece by John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing on companies needing to hire Chief Conversation Officers. Jantsch says:

“This year’s next position for many small business should be a conversation officer – someone in charge of the story.

That officer could be employed to create, curate and sometimes manipulate the conversations that must be coming from your company.”

This is exactly what I have in mind when I talk to companies that are looking to hire a blogger. A blogger has to have all of the tools and traits John mention in the post there. Thanks John for discussing this issue. i am a proponent of this position for all companies just as you are stating that this is a position that companies should look to fill as we head into the new year and beyond. I agree this is soon becoming a must have in your organizational chart.

We have heard the idea behind “Blogging Is Dead…” We have also heard about the death of newspapers and the traditional media journalists that are losing their careers to the “citizen journalists” and those that are doing it as hobbyists. We have seen this in play for 2008, but what does this mean for the future of blogging and the future of journalism? I was reading recently about Ann Handley discussing the fact that companies should be hiring journalists if they want to leverage content in the future on their sites. Here is Ann’s prediction and advice:

“If you are thinking of increasing your content play in 2009, hire a journalist.” ~ Ann Handley

“In 2009, an increasing number of journalists find themselves out of work at traditional newspapers, which continue to struggle with sustaining their business. Good news: the writers find a home as “content producers” and “content managers” on the corporate side, in companies of all shapes and sizes.

People who are trained as journalists are specifically geared to helping companies execute on their 2009 marketing strategy, which is to become trusted sources of information within their specific industries. They can help companies see the wisdom of talking less about the company itself, and more about solutions they can help their customers with. They are wonderfully creative in developing interesting and compelling content.

Advice: If you are thinking of increasing your content play in 2009, hire a journalist.”

This is going to be what I see as 2009 unfolds. I have been gettting many inquiries about our service. Companies are seeing the benefits of outsourcing their content needs. I am not going to address the “Bloggers vs. Journalists” debate that many have bantered about over the past, that is for another post. Suffice it to say, journalists will need to learn the blogging trade, and you bloggers should probably begin to take some of the wisdom we see in journalism and make it part of your arsenal. I myself could use some lessons in journalistic writing.

This is going to be the new look of professional blogging and it really began when the demise of newspapers and other traditional media began to lose readers to the dreaded Internet. Just as the scribes lost their monopoly when the printing press became prolific, so to are traditional media outlets losing their grip on what they held as a monopoly. This is really a career and position that is in its infancy. I am looking to leverage the future of professional blogging and how companies are looking to a better blogger. Journalists are far ahead in the professional blogging game. They already have the tools necessary. When they learn the blogging game, the ability to network, market and build community as bloggers, they will dominate this space.

[Photo via aloshbennett]

As you can imagine I try to keep my finger on the pulse of hiring practices for hiring the best of the best bloggers, and seeing how others view this process makes me even sharper at the practice. I was reading over at WInning The Web about their thoughts on how to hire a blogger for your website. They come up with 9 areas that work for them:

1. Use the Problogger job board

2. Write a clear description to pique interest

3. Make them prove themselves

4. Promote on other sites as well

5. Followup to gauge interest

6. Hire writers to try them out

7. Lay out specific terms and instructions

8. Provide ongoing training

9. Assessment time

I’ll let you read through their descriptions. These are good points and its a post that does lay out the process by which you as a business owner could go about hiring a blogger for your site or company. In this particular instance, I think this relates more to the idea of hiring bloggers for the business model of the blog being the “company” instead of the company having a blog that needs a blogger. Nonetheless, the advice is still pretty good to follow, and something that we do here at Bloggers For Hire as part of our vetting process. You can eliminate the worry behind these 9 steps and just give us a call. We offer a different approach, we do all the work for you.

That is me over there on the left. I’m the one grinning about being in a room full of my peers.

I have been following Hugh MacLeod for quite some time and he continues to come up with gems like this one above. I am pretty sure I need to make this a business card.

If you don’t want to hire a blogger here, make sure to look up one of the other people pictured in the strip above. I know they can help you with your needs.