1) interesting content which isn't directly relevant to your business. They write a good blog, but it's always going to be an arm's length from your real business. Either you mislead users about where the content comes from, or you're up front and people realize that he blog, while good, doesn't really reflect your business.
2) the company doesn't really have bloggers for niche enough specialties to be interesting. You end up with a broad, lookalike blog that could have been written by anybody. This stops customers from engaging with your company.
The correct answer is what New Relic does with The Daily WTF; sponsor an established or up and coming blogger. Make the relationship clear. Users will appreciate your funding interesting content, while understanding that you didn't create it. If you align the audience of the blog with your customer base, I think you could get the same effect without the middleman.
Edit: this definitely seems to fall into category two. Their example posts are overly broad and not very engaging. Lots of link-baity, list-format titles which will drive eyeballs, but ultimately have poor conversion. I'd be interested in any case studies that prove me wrong, thugh
IMO content and automation never belong in the same sentence together, unless your only goal is to fill in SEO content of which you aren't particularly concerned about the quality. If you're a startup concerned with your image, I don't think you want to be in that game.
You can't automate quality. It's impossible develop high-quality media without constant, transparent communication and editorial oversight. Especially if you're trying to do it cheaply.
If you're a big-budget brand with that wants to trade out banner ads for thoughtful content marketing, hire an editor with real journalism experience, then hire (or contract) the best journalists you can afford, with the biggest social media followings. This is why Red Bull, American Express, and Gilt Groupe kill it with content marketing, meanwhile you and I have never clicked "Like" on an auto-generated blog post from a random startup. The only way you'll compete with media companies for content-share is by beating them at their game.
That can't happen "automatically."
You're basically distilling a blog post down into a premise and high quality writing. A lot of what makes technical, corporate blogging effective is content and honesty, which are much harder to outsource.
This is the kind of crap I wish would disappear from the web. At least Google is trying to do it's part. I also think a company blog is not the place for this kind of arbitrage, I see it often on random companies websites and it shows: instead of engaging the audience, the post listing looks like a pyramid marketing scheme.
There's huge demand for great writing, that's been made clear in the comments (and we see this every day at Scripted HQ).
There are millions of underemployed professionals in this country, thousands of whom are exceptional writers.
Scripted bridges the two, allowing businesses to get great writing (not just blog posts, also white papers, landing pages, status updates, case studies, and product descriptions) by someone who actually knows the industry.
I totally understand the skepticism surrounding ghostwriting, but it's not so different than hiring a PR agency or marketing firm. We're just making these services available to any business a la carte, and using a distributed workforce of real American professionals.
Where's the scheming in that?
How is an outsourced writer going to draw on someone else's experiences?
A blog written from real experience may be valuable. A blog pretending to be written from real experience is worse that worthless for the readers.
Isn't the whole reason for reading a blog, instead of some other publication on a similar topic, to get insights from (apparent) blog author?
There is a difference between "checkout" and "check out". "checkout" is not a verb, but a thingamajig. "the checkout page". "to check out" is a verb.
The first proper word on the blog seems incorrect. That doesn't inspire confidence. There are a few more problems with the text such as (preposition) words that appear missing, for example.
"its completion" -> "it's completion" is just wrong. "It is completion" is not the intent of the sentence.
It seems really important to me, that you get these sorts of things right in all your posts, even if you yourself won't be writing your prospective clients' blog posts.
What I saw was a collection of random, poorly-formatted writing samples, disorganized testimonials, and vague pricing details. Normally I'd just keep to myself and move along, but this is a service my company would potentially use in certain areas. So I think it would be a huge improvement if the site were focused on convincing me, as the owner and someone with irrational concern for our image, how you'll make us bigger/better/faster/stronger.
Also, it is hard to see if they use ghost writers or not. Which, makes me even more skeptical.
On the Features page: "We'll take some basic information about what you field you're in and what you need written."
Don't do stuff for the wrong reasons.
Once I've specified weekly blog posts from topics I have in mind, the next form makes it pretty clear that the service will find people to write your blog for you, which sounds pretty skeevy. I don't know how you would detect a Scripted blog post, but I'd rather not see them on HN. If someone's writing is good enough to make it to HN, it should do so under the author's own brand. Just my opinion.
I am Disappoint.
