Do any of you have experience with outsourcing certain aspects of your blog management.  For instance, once the vision, direction and goals of the blog are set, organizing the editorial calendar, contacting potential guest bloggers, conducting email/video interviews, and copy editing all seem like things that could be outsourced.

Thoughts? Ideas on reliable companies that do this?

@caseyvaliant I do everything on my own personally.  I’ve seen outsourcing the management of a blog go really well, but sometimes you just have to be wary of the content those managers are publishing.  Some agencies will get the cheapest writers they can find, and it shows in the quality of your posts. 

Oh no, what happened to your @mention?  Try again: @kristi-hines

Hi @caseyvaliant, my company Boxcar Marketing is frequently hired to do this type of work but I always start with “why do you want to outsource it?”

As @kristi-hines says, you are going to do a better job at this. You know your customer, you know your company. If blogging is important to your business for lead generation or sales, then why outsource that to someone else? Find the person in your organization who is passionate about what you do. Or hire that person. The person on the ground, integrated into your company culture, is going to write more meaningful content than an agency. 

Looking at your blog from your profile, I’d say there’s lots of content you might commission, but having people internally is still a better spend of marketing time and budget. 

My approach with clients is that yes we can offer help on setting up an editorial calendar, doing keyword research and figuring out where the blog fits in your overall marketing mix. The end goal is always handing this back to the client. We’re like training wheels, eventually you roll without us. 

Cheers,Monique

@kristi-hines @boxcarmarketing you have some great feedback here.

I also agree with this and think that you can outsource other parts of the business that do not have such a direct impact with your clients, such as tech, or something related.

Or you can get an assistant to take away from you small tasks that take you a good amount of time to finish.

@boxcarmarketing Great analogy with the training wheels.

@kristi-hines, @eugenoprea and @rshahbaz It’s much better to have a voice and a persona for your corporate blog than to outsource.

One of the most useful things I find as the social media person at our company is having that insider knowledge. It’s been crucial when we have to release timely information. A contract writer may not be able to provide that turnaround time you sometimes need. 

@caseyvaliant If you do decide to outsource, ask around for some referrals and interview them to find someone who you think would be a good match for your company’s public image.

Yes, Boxcar Marketing does offer all sorts of support, in particular with blogger outreach as it can so easily go awry. 

Here’s a post we wrote earlier this year about blogger outreach and press releases.http://www.boxcarmarketing.com/blog/item/social-media-for-pr-using-your-press-release-in-blogger-outreach/

Editorial calendar: We do use a spreadsheet to track progress. I’ve also tried GroupHigh for finding blogs and they have some tools related to how agencies like to track data. 

Related to outreach and press releases, here’s a guest post I wrote for PRWeb on tracking success. http://www.bloggingprweb.com/how-to-measure-pr-success

With overall marketing campaigns, our spreadsheet is related to Goals (specific, measurable goals, like increase traffic from blogs by 20%), then the metrics associated with each tactic to do so. 

The challenge is you can drown in information. As Einstein said, “not everything that counts can be measured and not everything that can be measured counts.”

I like to use the ABC metrics: Acquisition (where do we get traffic, what #s)

Behaviour (what does that traffic do on site, what desirable actions that lead to a sale or conversion)

Conversion (things that bring the most value to the business, like a sale). 

@caseyvaliant I don’t think outsourcing the editorial side of it is such a bad thing for tasks like finding new authors & managing them, quality checking the articles, organizing the calendar, publishing articles in WordPress, making sure comments are answered by authors, etc.  

Fantastic!  Along with @pamelamuldoon I like the ABC Metrics.  Thanks for the links, @boxcarmarketing .

@kristi-hines Creating a calendar of events is a powerful way to set your goals/plan into motion.  I have a Gantt Chart at the top of my white board wall for the next 12 months.  This way I have the visual of my schedule of events, blog posting, video, product/program launches etc.  This chart is a great tool to help me to see the time frame necessary to set-up/execute/follow-up my activities. Your thoughts?

This is always an interesting debate. Many immediately scream NOOO. It has to be your voice but think of it this way.

Copyblogger is a lot more voices than Brian Clark.

Social Media Examiner is a lot more voices than Michael Stelzner.

I think the smartest person in the room is always the whole room.

Of course there are acceptions where it would only require you and only you but I think collaboration is a winning strategy pre social and will be post social. 

Here’s another spin on this….
It may also depend on your industry and field.
For example, I am a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator (hobby of paper crafting). Many of my clients are Stampin’ Up! demonstrators as well and hire me to do their blog design (the look of their blog).  However, a fellow Demonstrator also has a Posting service where she literally posts for other SU Demonstrators.She posts about projects (hand made), upcoming specials, featured product, etc.  This helps the other demonstrators as well as build her own revenue. 

Anyway, I can see this type of angle working for other related fields – having someone post popular and/or generic, up to date info on a direct marketing companies new releases.

Heather

@katiecavanaugh Hi Katie, I like you gantt chart suggestion and I wonder how early are you creating material for blog posts? i.e. prep on the fly, a couple of days before, writing months in advance? 

@caseyvaliant Yes, it is possible to outsource your blog content. At the same time, what many have said is so true. You need to make sure that you are working with a company that is meticulous about their English and punctuation. You will not find them at Elance.

Proofreading is an absolute necessity when writing blog copy. But, if you do your homework, ask the right questions, and ask for samples of their work, you can outsource certain aspects of your blogging.

This is a great discussion with lots of great comments. 

If I had to look at outsourcing certain tasks for a business blog I see different concerns depending on what industry you’re in and what role your blog plays in your communication plan.  Some things might be easier to outsource than others depending on the type of business blogging you’re doing. I don’t see this as a case of one answer for everyone. 

And another thing that I haven’t seen mentioned here is the importance of the process. Some businesses might be able to outsource more content creation if they had the right process in place. (Or outsourcing content creation might not work because they don’t have the right process in place)  You can’t just throw everything out the window and expect it to all come back neatly and serve your business.  BUT there may be options with the right process and it might take some tweaking to get right. 

Plus I think the nature of real time marketing means that no matter what most businesses need to provide for flexibility or lose out on great communication opportunities if they outsource too much. 

@caseyvaliant   If your blog is based on personal contact with your readers it is always better if the blogs owner or manager personally posts 90% of content, outsource fill in posts such as researching articles that you can mention in a blog post

Great for finding blogs and keeping track of them, if you don’t have some in-house solution already:

GroupHigh is http://grouphigh.com @deairby

@boxcarmarketing thanks for the link to grouphigh, I’m trying to learn all about this, how/when/why do you use their service? Forgive my ignorance but what is a blog outreach campaign?

@caseyvaliant I don’t see any issue with allowing an out sourced person to do some of the scheduling and blogger outreach to potential guest posters, as long as you trust the person doing the outreach. We usually vet the first few outreach posts and check to make sure the “voice” fits etc.

You can certainly outsource anything you’re comfortable letting go of, just make sure it represents you appropriately.