Matching Bloggers With Paid Gigs
All bloggers, and all writers for that matter, can’t help but find the notion of a paid writing gig to be magical. No matter how poorly the job pays and how dull the assignment, there’s something glorious and inspiring about getting handed cash for the mere creation of words, sentences, and paragraphs powered by original constructions of thoughts and ideas.
SplashCast Media Director of Content and blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick has taken it upon himself to help connect bloggers with paid blogging gigs. Since he has been getting so many informal requests about both potential gigs and open positions, he’s put out a general call for people to get in touch with him if they’d like to be considered for future work.
This phenomenon proves out both the viability and continued maturation of the blogosphere. Many businesses, and particularly those involved with technology and media (and the two are combined more often than not these days!), are recognizing the importance of blogging as a tool to communicate and open lines of dialogue with customers, as well as simply maintaining an outpost of promotion and friendly marketing on the Internet. Paying corporate bloggers at all is a relatively new idea, and I believe that pay scales will increase for the best ones, those who can communicate ideas clearly and effectively, build relationships with readers, establish a voice for the company, and be the first line of defense during times of crisis (bad press, bad products, CEO gets caught with hand in cookie jar, etc.).
Corporate or business blogging isn’t the only place where paid online writing gigs are on the rise. Problogger.net’s Job Board sees a continuous stream of job posts for new blog networks. Terms of compensation vary, from pay per post (not to be confused with Pay Per Post!), to monthly stipends, to some method of ad revenue sharing. This post, for NFL team bloggers, fascinates me. Gather team bloggers for all NFL teams (I think there are 30 these days, man my sports knowledge has sadly dwindled of late!) and you have a ready made network looking to absorb the enormous online sports fan audience.
David Dalka points out the potential downside to corporate bloggers who are not effectively managed: “ineffective blogs, unhappy bloggers, internal corporate strife and/or worse, serious pr problems in the blogosphere.” Dalka actually uses the term “non-bloggers” for the kind of management that can help to lead to poorly produced blogs, which I think is spot on unless you find a stellar 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 space.”
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August 15th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Hi Eric,
Thanks for noticing and appreciating my discussion of this highly complex subject! We are still at the start of a long journey of change here that will require navigation of both change management and actual action based on customer listening using Peter Drucker’s principles. There are roles for many and multiple types of bloggers, the main thing is building a congruent culture throughout the organization where the actions match the stated objectives. In other words, leadership by example. The problem is many companies do not value the right attributes when bringing in new leadership. I hope to interact with you in future conversations sometime soon on the complex subjects of the day as you have alot of quality content here.
August 15th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Thanks so much Dave! Very curious to check out more about your take on leadership, particularly as it applies to new media. It’s something I’m very interested in.