One of the most fascinating elements of today’s digital media online is the people who blog. Washington, DC is a city of secrets. You know that. So, it should not surprise you to know that within the world of secrecy that is Washington, DC, there are people who blog in secret.

I am someone who can now admit to being a professional ghost blogger. It’s true. In February 2006, Lawrence Ragan Communications of Chicago published an online profile of me because of my ghost blogging work in Washington, DC. Since the need for secrecy no longer exists, I am happy to share with you the fact that I was a ghost blogger in Washington, DC for AARP, the well-known nonprofit organization for older Americans.

Being a ghost blogger is very similar to being a speechwriter who functions as a ghost writer for someone else. Since I started as a Washington, DC ghostwriter of executive speeches at AARP in 1995, I am someone with significant experience in writing for someone else while concealing my own identity. I can tell you from experience that in Washington, DC, concealing your own identity while writing blog entries on behalf of someone else is an extension of concealing your own identity while writing speeches on behalf of executives.

But, let me warn you from my own experience: Only if you can set aside your own ego and submerge your natural need for recognition from others will you be successful at the craft of ghostblogging.

Is ghost blogging better or worse than bylined blogging? I don’t think one form of blogging is better or worse than the other. Writing for a blog is what it is–writing for a blog. Whether you conceal your true identity or you put your real name right there online for the world to see, you need to know how to write for a blog and how to adapt what you write to your blog’s intended audience. While there may be business reasons or even political reasons for concealing your true identity when you write for a blog, knowing how to write and knowing how to adapt what you write will always remain more important to your blog’s success or failure. When I worked as AARP’s unnamed blogger, I understood the reality that what was important was the messages conveyed in AARP’s blog. My identity as the blogger was completely irrelevant and secondary to the primary importance of the messages that AARP wanted to transmit in its blog.

If you write for a blog, you must know how others are writing for blogs. You must read other people’s blogs so that you can learn what works and what doesn’t work.

Let’s look at the most engaging, unique and fascinating blogging that happens when the blogger writes his or her own posts and is not afraid to post a real name. A shining example is the Huffington Post blog in which people whose names you know post their opinions in one blog.

In truth, it turns out that you don’t actually need to be famous to write your own posts and post your real name in a blog. Sometimes, the infamous can be compelling bloggers, even when everyone knows you’re real name but you insist on using a fake one. See JeffGannon.com, for example.

Some people from the mainstream media have blogs and they write their own posts under their own names. Excellent examples are the MSNBC.com blogs.

John Aravosis and friends on AmericaBlog.org are worth reading for their clean, clear, direct bylined blog posts.

What’s Important: By reading bylined blog posts, you can quickly get a real-world sense of how bloggers write successfully. Don’t copy how they write, though. Develop your own voice and your own style by absorbing what bloggers are doing. But, you want to be as original and distinctive as you can. You want to be you, not somebody else.

(Web Guru Woody Goulart wrote this commentary & analysis and originally posted it on AmericanBlogging.com not long ago.)