Customers love to get insights and tips to grow their businesses, especially from experts in the know. But how can you reach prospective customers and share knowledge when your company’s leadership doesn’t have time to write guest posts and articles?
Cue the ghostwriter. These professional writers lurk behind the scenes and are invisible to audiences, but there’s nothing supernatural about them. Learn how ghostwriters deliver meaningful content on your behalf, putting an expert face on your company. We’ll fill you in on their role in content marketing and how you can leverage a ghostwriting service to raise your brand profile and build trust with audiences.
What Is Ghostwriting?
Ghostwriting is the practice of creating content that’s credited to someone other than the original writer. This process is common in book publishing, where public figures often hire professional writers to craft memoirs or autobiographies on their behalf.
With digital content playing an increasingly important role in brand marketing, many companies are hiring ghostwriters to produce online content. Thought leadership pieces, blog posts, articles, e-books and white papers are extremely valuable for raising brand awareness and establishing a company’s authority in a field.
These types of pieces can be attributed to senior leaders and executives or published as general website content. Think of ghostwriters as playing a similar role to speech writers shaping a keynote delivered by a CEO or publicists putting together quotes that appear in press releases. People want insights from those at the top and ghostwriters help get important ideas across in an expressive and compelling way.
Why Use a Ghostwriter?
Companies use content marketing to reach audiences and demonstrate authority in a niche. A smart thought leadership piece from your CEO, published in a respected industry journal, gives your company valuable exposure. It also helps develop the personal brand of senior executives and makes it easier for audiences to relate to your company.
However, while your leadership has plenty of wisdom to convey, they likely have more urgent work priorities. Ghostwriting gets your company’s expertise out to audiences when potential authors are too busy to devote hours to writing. It also makes sense to use professional writers to create copy, as the quality reflects directly on your company. It takes superior writing skills to produce highly polished, engaging content that also fits into your brand image.
When to Hire a Ghostwriter
If you have an in-house writing team, you can get started on your content marketing strategy right away. But some companies may not have staff writers or their team may be stretched thin on other projects.
In this case, you have a couple of options for ghostwriting.
- You can hire your own freelance writers to call on when needed, reviewing applications and vetting them to ensure their skills match your needs. You might have to try a few writers to find one that can hit the tone or style you’re looking for or that charge rates within your budget. Freelance writers tend to have a stable of clients, so you also need to make sure they’re available when you need content delivered in a timely fashion.
- You can use a ghostwriting service and tap into a group of writers with different backgrounds and areas of expertise. You can outsource an array of content, including blog posts, articles, opinion pieces, columns and e-books. And, with a large pool of freelancers, you’re usually assured of finding one who can turn content around quickly and meet deadlines.
How to Work With Ghostwriters
If you’re investing resources in creating content, make sure your efforts pay off. Here are a few guidelines to ensure you receive impactful copy, whether using a ghostwriting service or your own freelancers.
Determine Goals
Set out the purpose of the piece so your team is working toward the same objective. Some examples of content goals are:
- Increasing brand awareness by publishing guest posts on other websites
- Boosting site traffic through blog posts you promote on social media
- Encouraging readers to download an e-book or white paper by teasing key highlights in a LinkedIn article
- Improving your search engine ranking by building an inventory of quality SEO content on your site
Once you know what your content should accomplish, set out a plan to achieve it.
Create a Content Brief
Provide the ghostwriter with as much detail as possible to guide their work. The more clarity you give, the more likely the final piece meets your expectations. Writers need details such as:
- Content objective. What should readers take away from the piece? What impression do you want to make?
- Context. Where will the piece be published?
- Topic. Outline key points to cover, including key information or data.
- Word count. Provide a range to give the writer some flexibility.
- Keywords. List primary and secondary keywords with placement guidelines.
- Links. Provide a list of the types of internal and external links to use.
- Tone. A good ghostwriter can capture different tones and styles. Provide direction to ensure the piece fits seamlessly into your brand voice.
- Formatting. Provide a link to your brand’s style guide or specify any preferences.
Collaborate If Needed
In most cases, ghostwriters with expertise in the subject can deliver accurate, well-researched content to meet your needs, whether in the area of finance, law, real estate, health or technology.
For personal pieces, you may need to provide the writer with quotes and stories. For example, if you want to publish an article by the company founder about the early years of the business, you’ll need to conduct an interview and gather necessary anecdotes. Let the ghostwriter know the type of personality or language to infuse into the piece if you want it to reflect the personal brand of a CEO or executive.
Implement a Review Process
Content marketers talk a lot about demonstrating authority, which is important for establishing credibility and respect. Authority helps persuade customers to do business with you and gives search engines confidence in placing your site higher in search engine rankings.
To establish authority and achieve brand goals, your content must be impeccable in quality. It’s good practice to ensure the content is reviewed for accuracy, either by your in-house team or ghostwriting service.
- Editors ensure logic, flow and style
- Proofreaders look for grammar and spelling errors
- Subject matter experts review for content and accuracy
- Editorial directors or content strategists ensure the piece meets corporate goals
The person receiving the byline should also review the piece for voice and to ensure they agree with the contents.
Benefits of Hiring a Ghostwriting Service
Ghostwriting services can be a cost-effective solution when you don’t have in-house resources to devote to content creation. Here are some benefits of outsourcing to an agency such as Crowd Content.
High-Quality Professional Copy
Content marketing is highly competitive. According to Semrush’s 2023 State of Content Marketing survey, 53% of content marketers are focusing on improving content quality and 55% are creating more content and posting more often.
As standards increase and competition ramps up, your content needs to stand out to make an impression. Professional ghostwriters can transform your content strategy into well-structured, compelling copy that reflects positively on your brand, captures attention and motivates readers toward your goals.
Maximize Productivity
Content creation can be time-consuming, but a ghostwriting service offers a pool of writers ready to produce articles, blog posts and other content to meet your needs. You can leverage this talent and use ghostwriters to execute your full content strategy. By planning an editorial calendar with deadlines and scheduling regular delivery of content to publish, you can grow your online presence quickly and effortlessly.
Better Online Visibility
The more quality content you create, the better your chances of reaching your target audience. Each web page is a fresh opportunity to rank in search engines and drive audiences to your page through social media, marketing emails and internal linking.
You can also build important backlinks to your web pages from other sites, which Google sees as an endorsement of the value of your content. These backlinks improve your site’s authority and search engine ranking.
Save Time and Money
Crowd Content’s flexible pricing makes outsourcing cost-effective. Freelancers are prescreened according to experience so you can build a team that suits your budget. You can access thousands of writers with different specialties without the hassle of vetting each one and negotiating individual rates.
Our ghostwriters fit into your workflow as needed. If you have a specific vision, provide an in-depth outline and writers will follow your instructions. If you prefer to be hands-off, offer general direction about the topic and trust our skilled writers to develop and produce a compelling article on your behalf at the same standardized per word rate.
Need to add more than a writer to your team? Tap into editors, subject matter experts, keyword researchers and content managers, taking more tasks off your to-do list.Whether you want a high-profile article under your CEO’s byline or snappy content to perk up your website or blog, our ghostwriting services make content production simple and efficient. Find out how to get started today and put your content strategy into action.
