Hiring ghostwriters is a tried-and-true method for generating high-quality content, especially when you need to do so at scale. Discover how this tactic can help you create quality blog posts.
What Is Blog Ghostwriting?
Blog ghostwriting occurs when someone who isn’t listed as the author creates the content for a blog post.
You might pay someone to write content and post it under your own name, or you might not use authorship on your blog at all. In these cases, various people write the blogs, but they’re all positioned as coming from the brand in general.
The Benefits of Hiring a Ghostwriter for Your Blog
There’s a huge business case for hiring ghostwriters to create all types of content, including blog posts. Check out some of the benefits of hiring a ghostwriter below.
| How blog ghostwriters benefit your business |
| Ghostwriters bring the writing talent. Not everyone’s a wordsmith, and that’s okay. But if you don’t know how to wield words to draw a virtual crowd or create the conversion, you may be better off outsourcing your blog content. They understand online marketing. Hire the right ghostwriter, and you get some built-in content marketing support. Experienced blog writers know what to do with keywords and how to create comprehensive content that helps you become a rising star in SERPs. They free up your time. Even if you are a wordsmith, you probably have a lot of other tasks to attend to. Running your business or keeping up with customers can make it difficult to write blog posts on a regular basis. Ghostwriters take that burden off your plate. They help you post consistently. Maintaining consistent posting can improve your authority and trustworthiness with readers and potentially boost SEO performance. But it’s easier said than done, and spreading the work to ghostwriters helps ensure you have content lined up on time regularly. |
How Can You Tell if a Ghostwriter Is a Good Blogger?
The best way to tell if someone is a good blogger is to look at their previous work. Samples and links to previous published posts let you see the person’s writing style and quality. It also helps you understand whether the writer would be a good match for you. Remember that just because someone can string beautiful sentences together doesn’t mean they’re the right content creation partner for your brand.
Hassan Alnassir, owner of toy company Premium Joy, says he looks for quality writing and niche experience when he hires ghostwriters. “I choose writers who are experienced in my specific industry to ensure content is authoritative and interesting,” says Alnassir. “I can easily confirm this by checking the kind of topics they cover online, including on their own personal blog.”
Alnassir says he also looks for evidence that a potential ghostwriter can create web-friendly content that he won’t have to edit heavily. Some markers of good web content, he says, are short paragraphs and the inclusion of subheadings, bulleted lists and images.
Levi Olmstead is the director of marketing at 2ndKitchen. He works with a team of four ghostwriters and lists the qualities he looked for when choosing them:
- Experience writing with keywords
- An understanding of SEO
- Ability to hit deadlines
- Strong writing skills
- Transparency
- Strong communication skills
How Can You Best Use Ghostwriters for Your Blog?
Finding the right blog ghostwriters is only the first step to ensuring you get content that performs in SERPs and works for your brand. Follow the step-by-step guide below to best use ghostwriters for your blog.
1. Understand Your Content Needs
It’s tempting to just bat the ball into a writer’s court and let them take it from there, but that can be a huge mistake. No one knows your business, brand and target audience like you. Take time to define exactly what you want your blog posts to do by answering the questions below.
- Who is your audience? Blog posts for specialists in an industry tend to have a different tone and style than posts for the general public. How you write for a baby boomer audience looks different from how you might write for Gen Z.
- What is your brand voice? Are you serious and professional, desiring blog posts that sound more like journalism? Or do you want a funny, conversational tone? The range for style and voice is almost infinite, and if you don’t define it, your ghostwritten blog posts will be anything but consistent.
- Do you have format and content preferences? Do the research to find out what’s performing best with your audience and in your niche. Some parameters to determine include how long posts should be for different topics, what subheading structures should look like and where CTAs should go. You also need to decide how to create a cohesive visual tone on your site and whether formatting — such as how many images and where they go — plays a role in that so your ghostwriters can create content with those requirements in mind.
- What keywords are you targeting? Use tools such as Marketmuse or SEMrush to generate guidance on keywords and other content elements that you can use as guidance for writers.
2. Create a Detailed Content Brief and Instructions
Once you know all that information, you need a clear, concise method for communicating it to writers.
Pro tip: The more time a writer has to spend digging through your instructions and content guidelines, the less money they make on your project. Creating easy-to-reference content briefs make you a more attractive client, potentially letting you work with higher-quality ghostwriters.
3. Be Clear About Other Requirements
It’s also important to be clear about other requirements. Let writers know up front:
- What turn-around time or deadline you expect
- How much research you need them to complete
- Whether you want sources cited in a list or as anchor text
- Who your competitors are
- What sites you want to avoid sourcing from
- How many revision rounds you estimate and whether you expect them to be included in the price for writing your content
- How you plan to integrate each piece into your overall content strategy
4. Check in With Writers Regularly
Professional ghostwriters are awesome because they take great pride in their work. That usually means that they adopt your brand as their own, looking out for you as much as possible and ensuring you get stellar content.
But it’s important to keep in mind that ghostwriters probably don’t just work for you, and they may have other obligations. Life can also take unexpected turns for anyone. Make it a point to check in with active ghostwriters at least once a week to ensure they have what they need to complete your content.
5. Leave Some Leeway for Writer Creativity
Remember that you’re hiring professionals for a reason. Experienced ghostwriters can bring interesting, unique content to your blog. Yes, that content should correspond to your brand and audience. But if you provide a detailed outline of 1,000 words for a 1,200-word blog, what are you even paying your ghostwriter for? Leave some room for writer creativity and you may be pleasantly surprised at the results.
Where Can you Find the Best Blog Ghostwriters?
Think hiring ghostwriters might be a good fit for your blogging program? There are a few great ways to find the perfect writer:
- Crowd Content. Not to toot our own horns too much, but we do have a roster of 6,000 proven ghostwriters that you can connect with to create your content. Our powerful search tool lets you search by experience and skill level and then review detailed profiles along with samples of past work.
- Job boards. Recruiting a ghostwriter is just like hiring for any other role. You can find great ghostwriters on job boards like Craigslist, Indeed, and LinkedIn among others. One thing to keep in mind is this option can take longer as you need to vet multiple applicants and review more samples before you’re comfortable sending over a first assignment.
- Contact bloggers directly. Chances are you’re reading blog posts in your industry already. Many bloggers freelance on the side, so why not reach out and see if they’re interested in ghostwriting for you? At very least they’re likely to be flattered, and at best you get a ghostwriter whose work you know you like. This method can involve more back and forth and often results in higher costs.
How Do You Get Started?
Ready to put the benefits of blog ghostwriting to the test for yourself, but not sure where to start? Contact Crowd Content today; we can connect you with a marketplace full of pro blog ghostwriters ready to wow you.
