Ghostwriting Can Grow Your Business
I got some surprising results when I updated my LinkedIn profile to say “Ghostwriter for CEOs and B2B SaaS” earlier this year. At networking events I mention that I’m a ghostwriter and the reactions are universal: “Oooh, that sounds interesting! What’s that like? I want to know more about ghostwriting!”
And since you clicked on this article, I’ll assume you’re interested, too. Here’s why ghostwriting is a useful, impactful tool more tech founders and leaders should leverage.
Writing is an Overlooked Skill for Business Owners
For business owners, writing is probably one of the most important skills, and yet it’s probably the most overlooked. People think about their website and packages, but they don’t think about what’s involved with the writing.
Business owners are excited to share their products and services with the world. In fact, they get so excited that they forget to write for an audience. Instead, they focus almost entirely on “Here’s what we do and here’s how you can buy it.” We call this problem “featuritis” and it’s everywhere: websites, articles, case studies, email campaigns, newsletters, and white papers.
That content needs help. Who you gonna call? Ghostwriters.
Writing for an Audience vs. Writing for Yourself
Many entrepreneurs write from the perspective of, “I need to tell the world about my business.” However, consumers are rarely looking for someone else’s business. Buyers are looking for ways to solve their problems.
This is why the word “innovation” is a waste of time. No one ever searches for “innovation” because “innovation” doesn’t solve consumer problems. (Same goes for “business solutions” and other corporate jargon.)
@thisisellisf #stitch with @jack.delosa Biggest misconception I see with entrepreneurs? The “If you build it they will come” mentality. #entrepreneur #marketingtips #saas #techtok #techfounder ♬ original sound - ellis | Tech Content Marketing
https://www.tiktok.com/@thisisellisf/video/7151693548482612526
Ghostwriters help founders and entrepreneurs reorient their writing and appeal to readers. My ghostwriting process starts with a 45-minute interview where I type everything they say (I type really fast, it’s kind of a big deal) and I capture as much of their natural language as possible. This helps me understand how they think, the order in which they communicate ideas, why those ideas are important, and how those ideas are prioritized.
Once I have all this information, I can transform it into an piece that:
Is enjoyable for the target audience
Is strategically crafted to relay a specific message
Makes sense and isn’t stream of consciousness
Leads the reader to a goal or purpose
Improves the reputation of the person for whom I’m writing
“Who the hell hires a ghostwriter?”
Literally anyone can hire a ghostwriter. You don’t have to be rich, famous, influential, a business owner, or noteworthy in any way. We’ve worked with more than 60 clients since starting Edify two years ago. We’ve encountered a variety of budgets, industries, and company shapes and sizes. We’ve written for solopreneurs and we’ve written for Fortune 100 companies. Good ghostwriters can work in any context at any price.
However, we have a unique competitive advantage. Most ghostwriters (or writers on staff at marketing agencies) don’t have the experience that Ellis and I do. She’s got more than 10 years in B2B tech SaaS marketing and I have more than 20 years in software development and IT roles. We’ve both worked at startups and enterprises, on either side of acquisitions, through rebrands, through leadership changes, through digital transformation, and more. We’ve seen it all.
We’re experienced. We don’t win on price—ever. We win on authority, quality, and expertise. This works great for our clients, especially when they’re looking for their time-constrained developers and leaders to write blog posts. These busy people don’t have two to eight hours to slog through:
Writing a logical, ordered, SEO-friendly article between 600 and 2,000 words
Undergo rounds of edits with a marketing team
Get product screenshots and visuals
Do research for useful facts and data
Sentences and Paragraphs and Search Engine Optimization—Oh My!
Writing a good sentence is hard; writing a good paragraph is even harder. Leading a reader from one sentence to the next paragraph is rarely intuitive or easy. We may all write and communicate every day, but that doesn’t mean we’re good at it.
In fact, we may have practiced our way into poor writing and communication. In the words of Vince Lombardi, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
Learning how to write an enjoyable article is a skill. Making it compliant with the latest search engine optimization practices is a whole other level. Software developers and executives and VPs have so much other stuff to do. Ghostwriters take a huge burden off their shoulders by producing the content they wish they had time to write at a quality level they wish they had time to achieve.
As my friend Mary Fain Brandt said, “Founders can only wear so many hats and there are only so many hours of the day. We all need to stay in our lanes. Utilize the skills we’re really good at. And for what we’re not good at: hire it out.”
Ghostwriters and the Production Process
Having 1,000 (or 10,000) words is awesome, but isn’t the only requirement of a great piece of content. We work with designers, marketing directors, customers, and subject matter experts to ensure a piece of content is successful. Putting words on a page is not the only step.
Ghostwriting something as small as a blog post or as big as an ebook usually requires work with a marketing leader or a graphic designer. We either work with someone in-house or we subcontract it out to our trusted network of experts.
The bigger the project, the bigger its reach, so there’s usually more work that’s involved like setting up an email marketing campaign (more ghostwriting), a PPC landing page (copywriting), social media promotion (ghostwriting/copywriting), and more.
Good ghostwriters get deliverables across the finish line and help you accomplish your marketing goals. Grow your email list, convert users, establish thought leadership, persuade people to your point of view, improve your online marketing—all of this stuff fits under the ghostwriting umbrella.
Why You Should Hire a Ghostwriter
The initial arguments against ghostwriting are: “It won’t sound like me,” or “That sounds expensive,” or “It’ll take just as much time to write it as it would to work with someone.” These are silly arguments. Besides, ghostwriters wouldn’t exist if they were wasting important people’s limited time.
There are a few key reasons to hire a ghostwriter:
There’s not enough time to write
Writing well is hard, writing for SEO is even harder
You’re not clear on your target audience or how to communicate to them
You want people to actually open your emails and read them
You specifically need descriptive, persuasive, expository or writing (or another specific writing style)
If you’re on the fence, I’m not here to convince you, but I’d be happy to talk to you about it. Just message me on LinkedIn and I’ll happily answer any questions. You can also watch my conversation with Mary, which covers other questions about how ghostwriting works and why it’s a secret tool tech founders need to leverage more.
