case study: eBookers or how to skip the ropes

by Urs E. Gattiker on 2008/09/11 1 views

in c blogging - case studies

    eBookers.ch has a travel blog. However, blogging – including writing and editing is outsourced to BlogWerk AG and the authors it has hired – mostly freelancers that write besides another job they might have.

    But why would you do this when you want to build a brand? In this post I show you the ropes to skip when outsourcing the blogging side of your business.

Some people blog under their own domain which I recommend as the best way to build one’s own brand.

Some companies also outsource blogging to a company that does two or three things:

a) it finds the writers for the subject the blog is supposed to deal with,

b) provides editorial control -sometimes this means each post has to be pre-approved by an editor before it can go online, AND

c) hosts the blogs or runs the technical backup

eBookers.ch tries out the blogosphere

eBookers.ch is eBookers’ Swiss branch located in Geneva. Its main travel blog can be found under blog.eBookers.ch. The page also offers you an RSS feed.

So we tried to see what kind of footprint it has. Hence, we went over to My.ComMetrics.com and got the following screenshot (we did not even log in – just to get this basic info quick we entered the URL only).

how does the blog from e-bookers measure up

As the above shows, while the Google PageRank is great, Technorati Authority is zero and the Technorati Ranking or Info does not look that great either.

As pointed out above, numerous writers post regularly if not frequently on this blog. Every day of the week the blog has at least one post.

As with other multi-author blogs, the quality of postings does, of course, differ greatly across writers. Not just the type of material they write about but also depth, seriousness and length of post.

So I clicked on one author’s name to get a list of his posts only:

Udo Habermann

After reading his posts I decided that I wanted to subscribe to his posts only – author RSS feed. This was because I simply was not interested to get the overall RSS feed from ebookers.ch – that would provide me with each single post. This meant probably 10 – 20 posts each week coming my way.

But this was not my lucky day. I found out that the site does not offer me to restrict the RSS feed to a particular author.

You either take everything or nothing. Not very customer friendly is it?

This makes the feed unattractive for some readers. As well, current clients or possible prospects may not want to subscribe either because of the limited choice. An unfortunate and costly mistake for eBookers.ch that should not happen.

What does this case tell us?

If you outsource your blog and the outsourcer gets the writers that write and post the content for you – see blog.eBookers.ch that outsourced blogging to Blogwerk AG – it is difficult to assure that your blog will have a personal voice. As a corporation you will have limited control over the focus and quality of content. The topics covered are wide, how much beef each post has varies greatly across authors.

However, if this is all not an issue for you, at least offer an RSS feed for each author’s postings only. This will allow subscribers to choose better what they want to read – namely what they are really interested in. As well, it will save them the time to have to go through many posts that might be irrelevant to them.

Too many irrelevant posts mean fewer subscribers. Unfortunately, better targeting of content (who is supposed to get this and how will it affect your bottom line) means getting the subscribers that could ring your cash register. So go ahead and improve your footprint in the blogosphere by following the tips and suggestions we made above.

Click for more case studies here

Tagged as: Blokwerk AG, eBookers.ch, editorial content outsourced, footprint in the blogosphere, outsourcing your blog, quality, your blog's personal voice

  • http://blog.ebookers.ch Peter Hogenkamp

    Hi.

    I’m the CEO of Blogwerk, the company in charge for editing the ebookers.ch travel blog. Thank you for your input.

    As with other multi-author blogs, the quality of postings does, of course, differ greatly across writers.

    That statement is repeated a few times throughout your post. I would be interested to hear which posts you particularly dislike. You could do this by email as well, if you don’t want to offend any author.

    Technorati Authority is zero

    True: more links would be nice. However, as the blogosphere is evolving from a small community of insiders to an area that many onliners participate in, we will continue to see more and mor eblogs with heavy traffic, but no links. Take http://hugostamm.kaywa.ch/ or http://moritzleuenberger.blueblog.ch/ as examples. Or take the blogcharts, as “traditionally” composed (by Technorati authority) and compare that to the readership base. The different charts are drifting away from each other fast.

    About the possibility to describe to a single author’s posts: As you will certainly know, this is not a standard WordPress feature. So there’s a few million blogs that do not offer that possibility. On our Blogwerk theme blogs, we have dozens of posts per day, 300’000+ readers per month, and we do not offer it. Would it be nice to have it? Maybe, although you need to be aware that to this very date, out of the overall reader base only very few sucscribe to the feed. So there will be even fewer who will subscribe to a modified feed. Still, will we implement it? Yes, as soon, as we get around to do it. Check back in about 3 months.

    If there’s any more input for the ebookers blog, we sure like to hear it, in public or in private.

    Peter

    PS. This comment field is reall small.

  • Urs E. Gattiker

    Dear Peter

    First, I want to thank you for taking the time to share your important facts with our readers. Second, yes you do raise some important points. My blog is about social media issues, hence, blog.ebookers.ch was a good case study to use.

    I appreciate the information you provide and the high traffic numbers your client seems to enjoy with this blog, wonderful. All we did is use some classical benchmark ratios and showed the numbers we got. We let the numbers stand as they are just to explain as you know of course:

      Technorati Authority zero means not one blog has linked to any of your blog’s many posts within the past six months. This is out of a set of more than 6 mio blogs Technorati tracks – granted, a limited set from the world’s blogosphere, of course. Raw statistics are interesting but influence and so forth should not be ignored either, you surely agree with that.

    As well, if I subscribe to your RSS feed than I have dozens of posts with different focus coming my way each day. As a result, over 90% of these “… dozens of posts per day…” will likely be of no interest to me or another subscriber (different writers have a different focus in their posts and the quality differs as well – depth and breath). Limiting the RSS feed to an author I like surely helps reduce the flood of posts each day.

    True, it is not a general feature in WordPress but it is easy to have a category for each author. Once you have done that having a feed for each author is easy.

    Finally, having different freelance writers does make it difficult for a blog to find its unique voice – branding. This is a fact that is a challenge for the e-bookers’ blog as well.

    Thank you for your time and I do hope to have you read my posts again soon. I look forward to your next insightful comment. Tak.

    PS 1. we have more about Moritz Leuenberger’s blog coming soon as mentioned already here: 12 rules for blogging politicians – thou shalt not … rules 9 – 12

    PS 2: Thanks for the tip about the window size for writing a comment, we will increase it soon…. it is difficult to use indeed.

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