Blogging these days isn’t just for young millennials with nothing to do. We now have corporate blogs, small business blogs, and even professional blogs. Lawyers blog, financial planners blog, and even real estate people blog. The amount of content being uploaded online is absolutely unbelievable, it’s amazing, really unbelievable the amount of human knowledge, observations, education, and experience that’s out there. Some of it is pure genius, some of it is rubbish, and a good part of it shows that people, yes, humans are quite talented.
Unfortunately, not everyone has a talent for writing, even if they are just about the best in their field, industry sector, or area of work. But just because you’re good at something like selling real estate, for example, doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be good at writing about it. Perhaps, this is the reason why so many real estate professionals have started hiring ghostwriters to create blog posts for them. However, this is a difficult situation because someone else is writing the blog post, and yet the real estate professional is presenting himself as the expert.
But what if they’re not writing the information on their blog, claiming it’s from themselves? Isn’t there a problem with ethics and integrity there? Don’t the real estate board, state licensing authorities, and major real estate industry groups care? Some think it’s just a matter of marketing, and it doesn’t matter, but I say yes. In fact, I really think it’s a deceptive marketing practice, regardless of industry, if you’re presenting yourself as an expert and selling your expertise, and pretending you wrote something you didn’t write to the same client who’s hiring you.
Therefore, the author of this article is absolutely correct in his assessment that this type of activity is deceptive.
Now, whether the industry group finds this acceptable or ethical is up to them, but it still wouldn’t be right. It’s unethical behavior and it’s not okay. There are serious problems here. If this industry doesn’t police their activities in this regard, I GUARANTEE YOU the regulators will eventually. They have it with other professionals from other sectors, it’s just a matter of time. Be discreet if you use a ghostwriter and reveal early and often.
If you are a real estate blogger, I hope you will consider all of this and do the right thing. Although no one is monitoring this, it’s something I think you should think about.
