You and your staff may want to deliver appealing content for your target audience, but prefer to devote your energy to running your company. Or, you may be committed to regularly providing engaging and interesting content, but your team lacks the time or the advanced writing skills to rapidly generate material for publication.
Hiring a ghostwriter may be a good strategy if you want to produce content that can help grow your business. Here are some topics you may want to consider before making this decision.
Content Needs
A good ghostwriter can create a variety of high-quality content, including:
- Blog posts
- Articles
- White Papers
- Videos
- Other digital content
- Public speeches
- Press Releases
- Books
- Movie scripts
SEO Optimization
Employing a ghostwriter with knowledge of SEO strategies is essential, especially if your audience find your publications among the world wide web of competing entries. An experienced SEO writer understands the application of keyword analytics, search engine indexing requirements, and trends, all of which are necessary to optimally boost your site’s standing on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines.
Your Priorities
Hiring a blog ghostwriter can allow you to devote your time to your larger job priorities. For non-professional writers, it can take an excessive number of hours to develop topics, complete research, and attempt to write coherent and attractive articles and blogs. Regaining valuable time by contracting with an article ghostwriter can yield a strong return on investment, allowing you to generate high-quality content while making the most of you and your staff’s time.
Your Interests and Motivations
If you dread spending hours writing and web researching because you have more pressing responsibilities, a ghostwriter can grant you more enjoyment of your work. Letting someone else take on part of your workload will alleviate stress and boredom, and generate quality writing you can publish with pride.
Brand Building
Growing corporations, small business start-ups, and freelancers all need to strengthen their branding in order to attract attention. Publishing strong content promotes your company and helps develop your brand by offering interesting and useful information to your target audience. This kind of engagement helps make your services preferable in your competitive market.
Consistent Production
If you want your blog to represent your company as a source for industry information and insights, you must produce new content on a regular basis. Reliably publishing your blog posts brings readers to view your site, which helps establish you as an expert in your field and demonstrates that your company is highly capable of delivering quality content.
Quality Content
If you have limited publication-quality writing skills among your in-house team, ghostwriting may be a good resource for you. Many professionals are experts in their fields, but are not expert writers. Professional ghostwriters are experts in consistently generating high-quality content. Reasons to use ghostwriting include:
- You may want to publish articles under your own name, but lack the time or skills to rapidly produce ideal content.
- Qualified ghostwriters are experts at adjusting. And they conduct extensive research each topic before they start to write. (Occasionally, you may be asked for insights or clarifications.)
Your Time Constraints
Writing blog posts on a weekly schedule seems easy enough, but it can take more time than you can afford. If you and your staff already have tight schedules and heavy workloads, you may especially benefit from out-sourcing these important tasks:
- Generating topic ideas
- Conducting research
- Writing
- Proofreading
- Rewriting
Turn-Around Time
Typically, ghostwriters do not have to split their focus on business management, personnel, customer services, etc.. Ghostwriters are concentrated on writing content as their primary responsibility. You may have an abundance of topics and ideas you want to present, but limited in-house resources for writing projects. A good ghostwriter can produce content very quickly, and according to your specifications.
Problems with Ghostwriters
For publishing blogs presented generally under your company’s auspices on your site, ghostwriting can be an outstanding option. However, when publishing writing done by another person under your own name, certain issues may arise:
- Ghostwriters cannot represent your original thoughts or express your personal voice through the content they write for you.
- Erosion of professional knowledge is possible. You may end up missing opportunities to develop your expertise in your field if your ghostwriter is doing your research.
- Although ghostwriting is very common today, many people still do not approve of using a ghostwriter. They view publishing someone else’s writing as your own as unethical and akin to plagiarism.
- Readers will not perceive you as an expert if they know someone else is doing your writing. Having someone edit your dictated content or co-write for you may be better alternatives.
- The ghostwriter may also need to discuss controversial topics with you, in order to prevent producing an article that is too subjective and does not convey the message you want it to.
General vs. Creative Content
General Content: Companies invariably have needs for blogs, press releases, and other generally informative content that is not especially innovative or dynamic. Ghostwriters will be very useful for this kind of work.
For website landing pages and social media channels, stakes are high, so content must be cultivated with the greatest care. Content that fails to generate conversions is useless to a company.
Understanding how to succeed on the above platforms can be an even higher priority than having writing done by someone with the deepest possible knowledge of your brand. Ghostwriters are often the most effective experts in providing content for these needs.
Creative Content: For content that is meant to communicate personal expertise and passion, or a deep understanding of your brand, the creativity of someone intimately familiar with its conceptions should be more deeply involved in the writing.
Blogging about industry news and information is appropriate for ghostwriters, but it can be more difficult to find the ideal ghostwriter for more authoritative and specialized content.
Thought Leadership
Ghostwriters can offer exceptional value to a company for a wide variety of purposes. But consider the serious trade-offs before relinquishing the voice of your business to an unknown person, even if the ghostwriter has broad industry experience.
- Ghostwriters do not have the personality of your company’s executive. And, emulations of those qualities are not likely to match them ideally at every turn.
- The more visible your executive is to the external world, the easier it is for readers to spot inconsistencies. To preserve credibility, the executive should continue to do a significant amount of the work required for successful thought leadership content.
- Executives can create first drafts that capture their advanced ideas.
- Marketers or ghostwriters can then organize and polish the work.
- Your executive could also be interviewed by your ghostwriter (by phone or in person) to allow the writer to better capture the company’s ideas and a sense of the personality to be emulated.
- It is advisable for an executive to work with the same ghostwriter for a period of time. This will help reduce the inherent insufficiencies of ghostwriting on thought leadership content.
Finding a Ghostwriter
You can start by hiring a freelance ghostwriter through an online platforms. This solution may cost less, but examine all credentials in writers’ profiles to ensure you will work with a qualified, well-experienced ghostwriter.
Ghostwriting Prices
Prices for ghostwriting services vary, depending on multiple factors. Popular ghostwriters can have very busy schedules. Typically, these writers quote higher prices. Most ghostwriters charge per project or per word for smaller orders, and may ask to for monthly payment arrangements for long-term projects.
Hiring a Ghostwriter
Find a ghostwriter who can write skillfully and has the qualities that are crucial for a smooth and successful working relationship. Here are some qualifications to look for:
- Experienced
- Reasonably priced
- Impressive portfolio
- Strong references
- Writing style and voice reflective of your own
- Proficient in creating the kind of material your company needs
- Fluent in the professional language of your industry
- Understands your requirements
- Committed to deadlines
- Guarantees exclusivity
- Guarantees that he/she will personally do your writing
- Affable and professional personality
- Agreeable to contract
Decide whether or not you need a ghostwriting service that can help you with publishing as well as writing your material.
Keep in Mind
Ultimately, there can be both benefits and detriments to utilizing professional ghostwriting. Such a service can be an excellent investment for your company. However, it’s important to weigh the trade-offs and to carefully select ghostwriters who have proven backgrounds writing for your industry. And, define clear boundaries on what ghostwriters can do most effectively and what must remain the responsibilities of in-house staff.
About the author
Bobbi J‘s background includes sixteen years in business management, including eleven years supervising large chains. She has taught numerous classroom sessions on business management, sales, and various software applications. She has also managed very large regional non-profit projects. Bobbi has written numerous articles on topics in business management for websites, corporate newsletters, business blogs, and one major private university. She has written countless marketing materials and sales scripts. Bobbi has authored an abundance of sales, customer service and operations training materials, including comprehensive training manuals in both the fitness and property management industries. She also wrote nationally-distributed materials for a federally funded non-profit organization. Additionally, Bobbi served as Managing Editor of two widely distributed corporate newsletters and on the Editorial Board of an internationally distributed internal magazine for a global corporation.
