Should your business hire a journalist or professional blogger to write content for your website?

In an age of attention deficit, users get onto the Internet to search for information, and they want it to be good, fast, and cheap! Typically bloggers and journalists have been the two sources of content on the Internet, but in the past, bloggers have been criticised for only being fast and cheap (and not always so good), while journalists have been viewed as providing good content, but not always so quickly or economically. But are bloggers and journalists really in competition?

Let’s compare the two disciplines. Journalism is a recognized profession obtained by completing a formal qualification at a University for three years. Upon graduation, a journalist would hope to secure a good internship with a prominent company in print media, TV or radio, and of late, online media.

In contrast, the entry point for blogging is low – no formal qualifications are necessary. Bloggers come from all walks of life, and write about all sorts of topics, with varying degrees of competence and success. Darren Rowse of Pro Blogger is a great example of a person who has reached professional blogger status, and whose experience has been gained on the job rather than through a formal qualification. He now commands a popular following and is one of the key authorities on blogging because his audience is interested in what he has to say, and because he knows what he is talking about.

Print media has had to adapt to the impact of the Internet on their traditional publishing methods, and are now trying to gain a share of the lucrative digital publishing industry – an industry that is constantly and rapidly changing.

Many companies with an online presence are on the hunt for people to provide good content for their websites, and lots of it. They are interested in what the writer can do for them right here and now – they don’t care all that much about what paper qualifications their writers have or what they might have done in the past. A writer is only as good as his or her last post, and often there is no editor checking a writer’s work – it is up to the writer to make sure that his or her article is accurate and free of typos.

Some blogging jobs call for formal qualifications in Journalism, but the vast majority of jobs don’t, since what really matters is that the writer must be able to add value to a business’s bottom line in this new medium. The final judge of whether a writer can provide this value is the readers of a website, not a piece of paper from a University. True quality content will attract more visitors to your website and allow your business to build a long term relationship with your prospective customers, and there is no way a Journalism degree can guarantee that the writer can produce this type of content.

So what is required for hiring a web writer? An understanding of how to write for the web medium, knowledge of the rules of engagement with social media, a grasp of the basics of SEO, and some tech savvy when using a content management system are the minimum requirements. And while some journalists do possess all of the above, most good bloggers have them all in spades.

Bottom line: if you have an online business, the chances are good that you’ll need the services of a professional web writer at some point. Whether you hire a professional blogger or a journalist, a veteran or a relative newcomer, all that matters is whether they can produce the results you are looking for – quality content, lots of it, and more readers!