Ways to Collaborate with Your Professional Blogger

Here's one way to collaborate with your professional blogger: meet on the balcony with a nice bottle of wine and a couple of notebooks.

This is so rare, you wouldn't believe it. However, there are lots of practical methods for having a writer keep your company blog up to date:

• Give your blogger access to your blog and leave it to the pro. This method works best when your blogger already knows something about your field, or has worked with you for a while. Settle on a posting schedule (three times a week, for example), let your blogger know any special preferences you have (time of day to post, word counts, etc.), and relax.
• One client, when I told him we could do it that way, said, "I'm not that relaxed." I assured him that he didn't have to relax if he didn't want to. He has his staff post all the interesting things they hear during their workdays at Basecamp, and I pull stuff from that for his blog, Twitter, and newsletter. This works very well when your blogger doesn't have direct experience with the industry.
• Give your blogger topics as assignments, and have posts either sent to you or posted as drafts for your approval before they're published. Frankly, this tends to result in a blog that isn't posted regularly. Let's face it, if you had the time and inclination to come up with topics and edit the posts, you wouldn't need to hire a blogger. However, I sometimes begin with this set-up and then shift to the first style once the client feels completely confident.
  
• Have posts done in bulk and sent to you. I have a couple of clients who prefer to work this way. I'll send ten or twenty posts, and they can post them on their preferred schedule. In some cases, they save these for days when they don't have time to do their own posts. Not only does this allow you a high level of control without excessive time commitment, but it can be a very economical approach, too. I charge by the hour, but bulk blogging is so efficient that the cost-per-word can be half as much as for weekly posts.
• Have your staff write blog posts and let your blogger edit them. This is a good method when you want full control over the content, but still want a professional quality blog. This method can result in your paying far less to your blogger -- I can edit a post, even a really badly written one, in five or ten minutes. However, you still have to pay whoever's doing that bad post in the first place, and they probably can't do it as fast as a pro. This works best when you have staff with special knowledge and free time you're already paying for. Put your blogger on retainer, too, if you take this approach. No one is going to be willing to bill you in five or ten minute chunks.

The marketing value of a blog is incontestable at this point, but blogging regularly is rarely the best use of your time.Collaboration with a professional writer is the solution. Any of these approaches can make it a simple and stress-free process.
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