Hiring bloggers and paying bloggers

Aug 15, 2007

Blogging is fascinating in the sense that it allows one to stretch their half-baked ideas and add to their knowledge base by linking and repurposing content. People have their own theories on what’s the best way to blog and how frequently you should do it.

Writing style drives how much effort needs to go into writing a blog post. Style varies from focused content using Think book not diary” model, to highly researched posts to event driven posts (last category is where quality varies from top notch to general techmeme pile on). I guess my own style falls in the last category with quality pointer more on the embarrassing side. There is this hope that with age (cough!) style will mature(cough!) towards either more researched content or more focused post.

That brings me to the original point why I started writing this post. What kind of blogger companies need to hire and how they should go about hiring them. Marshall has an interesting idea on doing a simple match making between companies interesting in hiring bloggers and bloggers looking for chump change. Check it out if you have time and intent.

Companies should hire bloggers who have domain expertise relevant to their space. Quality bloggers will be careful about their disclosure practice but getting them on your side will bring tremendous advantage as readers usually flock to niche expert bloggers.

If the idea is to use bloggers in a larger blog network, like the way Zdnet and Cnet started using domain experts, then giving them enough editorial independence is key. There the model is pretty much mainstream media business except the compensation model (I am not sure on this but I doubt these bloggers are getting paid on par with regular journalists). This is a recent phenomena and I am observing with interest. Disclosure of interests is key in this model.

Overall it’s a great time to get into blogging. Trick is to work on your skills, be patient and have fun. Aim for one particular blogging style and see how it goes.

Category: Emerging Technologies, Media, social computing

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Rex Dixon Says:

August 15th, 2007 at 10:18 am

You got it. Work the blogging. I’m currently working as the Director of Social Media Content at Lending Club. I’m also working Publisher Relations for Lookery. Yes, blogging has lead me to this. Without blogging none of it would be possible.

Rex

Matching Bloggers With Paid Gigs ¦ Online Media Cultist Says:

August 15th, 2007 at 12:03 pm

[...] blogger who can be a more or less self-contained and highly motivated fortress of blogitude. One More Idea points out the importance of hiring bloggers who “have domain expertise relevant to their [...]

valleyblogzine Says:

August 15th, 2007 at 2:58 pm

Putting bloggers into a corporate culture for companies is hard. People like bloggers because they are one among them and they are passionate about it. Once you start giving them a paycheck the equations change.

If you do a comparison of the commonly popular blogs you can see a huge difference in styles. One common thing among all of them is passion and this is what leads us to flock to their sites.

Scoble = light reading, not 100% researched but very genuine since it’s highly impulsive and spur of the moment.
techcrunch = well researched and fairly authoritative (geeky business style). Read this before your sand hill road trip.
Winer = geeky filled with information like Kernigan and Ritchie
Gigaom = Substance + Language