Barack Obama makes a good case study. He recently admitted that he can barely use his Blackberry and has never Twittered in his life. His famous use of SM and Twitter was ghosted. The SM community did not form a direct relationship with Barack Obama so much as with him as a symbol and with his messages. None of that takes away the authenticity of Obama as a politician – though one has to say that he came “clean” about how it was done after the election and that his preacher style is very one-way communication (rather than inline with SM dreamers. But so what?).

I don’t think there’s a neat clear dividing line at one end of the spectrum or the other. It’s a matter of balance and judgement in different cases.

The analogy does highlight another issue though. Good practice these days is to acknowledge the ghost/co-author of a memoir, rather than present the book as if it were only written by the sports star.

Should that apply to blogs too?

I agree with you that there’s nothing inherently wrong with ghosting a blog post. Your speechwriting analogy is a good one.

I’ll read a blog if it’s written in an engaging style on a subject that interests me. I don’t care if the ‘writer’ has had a little ghostly help.

But I’m still sceptical about the very idea of a corporate blog. Most of the blogs I read regularly are personal rather than corporate ones. (And most of the corporate ones I follow are media and PR ones, which tend to be well written and personal.)

Anyone thinking of starting a corporate blog should be crystal clear about its objectives and realistic about whether the target audience will be interested. It would be a shame if we were too busy obsessing about the role of the ghost to think about whether people will care enough to read it.

I’m a realist on this issue too and like to think I sit somewhere between the two extremes. I’m all for transparency and openness. But I’m also all for helping businesses and brands (and individuals) create great content and navigate their way through this new digital world, using it to build better businesses as a result…

I’m sure some view ghost writing as the practice of an agency simply writing their own copy, which subsequently leads to posts with little or no input from the client, which I think is a pointless exercise.

But, like you point out above, ghost writing doesn’t have to work like that. If those writing the blog have constant contact with the client and they have a certain degree of input, then I think it’s certainly acceptable – and over time can hopefully be something they do more and more themselves.

But as you say, it has to be a very tailored approach.

“There isn’t just one right way to write a blog. There are hundreds of different approaches that all work, there are also hundreds that don’t”

I think this really has resonance and those venturing into the space need to understand that it takes research, consultation and understanding before we can work with them to agree on a strategy.