Do you keep old employees as authors on blogs?

[ESc]

We have quite a number of blog posts on our blog with previous employees as author - some were written by them & some were not (written by agency). Can anyone recommend a course of action here - do I change the authorship or keep it as is? What would be best? 

[Liz1]

As long as there won't be issues from clients or ex staff it should be fine. They will date and have to be removed naturally anyway, which seems the most graceful way to manage 

[edjusten]

Hi @ESc  I would say you should judge this on a case-by-case basis. Are the authors still in your good graces? Is the content still valuable to your customers and prospects? Is the content still relative? Are the posts still producing good SEO value? 

Tagging a few partners here for more context. What say you @coreysmith , @HelenRoss , @SeanHenri ????

Thank you,

Ed Justen

[coreysmith]

Here's how we handle it at our agency and recommend for our clients. Of course, they can make their own decisions.

1. We assume that when someone writes a blog and has their name on it, they should get credit for that content. Even if they are no longer with the company. Just because someone might leave on bad terms doesn't mean they didn't do the work or don't deserve the credit (it's an ethics thing for me).

2. Sometimes content needs to be lightly refreshed due to changing times. If the refresh is light enough that it would be considered plagerism to change the author, we keep the author name the same.

3. Sometimes content needs to be overhauled because of changing times. If this is the case, it's changed enough to no longer be considered plagerism and the author name is changed to the person who does the overhaul.

Corey Smith

Founder - Tribute Media

Hubspot Gold Partner / Hubspot Certified Trainer

smith@tributemedia.com

[SeanHenri · Accepted solution]

Hi @ESc! I think @edjusten gave good guidance. It's different from situation to situation, but we'll typically recommend that they keep the original author of the content as-is, provided that person is still in good graces as Ed had suggested. 

If we do  need to change authors, we'll typically refresh the content prior to republishing so we're not giving credit for someone else's work to a new author. In other cases we might remove the original author's name and publish under the brand. Neither are preferable.

If you do keep the original author, you might consider changing the email address, URL and description listed in their bio section.