Opportunities in Ghostwriting Services

Tell people you are a “ghostwriter” and they will conjure up enticing visions of you rubbing elbows with major entertainment celebrities, top athletes, and business icons. They are thinking of those books where the famous tell their tales and the political heavyweights push their policies, knowing that most of those people needed professional help to craft readable, persuasive, entertaining narratives.

But there are legions of ghostwriters working on more mundane projects in the business world. Mundane, but lucrative. They might identify themselves as “copywriters” or “freelance editors” or “public relations specialists” or something else, but each one is writing words to put in the client’s mouth.

The Need

Now, to some extent, a wide range of writing projects involves creating content for clients, material that the clients use to deliver their own messages. But this “business ghostwriting” is a little different than, say, writing a marketing brochure for a company.

I’m talking about writing material that exhibits a personal point of view, and a personal style, rather than just a corporate message. When the CEO addresses the company’s employees to promote a new program or reinforce key practices, the personality of that leader is part of the message. When a freelancer uses an e-newsletter to build the trust of prospects, that freelancer’s personality and style are key elements in producing the desired outcomes.

And, in fact, those examples point to where the need for business ghostwriting is greatest: among the top leadership of very large organizations, and among the very smallest businesses, especially one-person shops. Messages delivered by middle management in a large corporation rarely need to have that personal touch embedded in them (although good managers will add that personal touch along the way).

Consider writing web site content. Creating the content for a large corporate web site is more like traditional marketing copywriting or public relations, a broader view. But if you are a consultant who does business coaching, your personal style is crucial to your success, and to your ability to attract clients. You need a writer who can generate all that content in your voice, and not every writer does that easily.

Why Hire Someone to Say What You Want to Say?

There are two main “triggers” to enlisting business ghostwriting help, whether the client is the CEO of a huge company or a solopreneur:

1. Lack of time, and
2. Lack of skill.

Whether you are running a huge business, or running your own small business, it can be pretty hard to keep up with a blog or newsletter. Article and presentation deadlines get away from you. Updating your web site keeps drifting to the bottom of the list. So you bring someone in to do the writing you want to get done, but just cannot seem to do yourself.

On the other hand, it may be the case that you need a little professional polish. I know training consultants who are brilliant in the classroom, smooth, glib, amazingly effective. But when they write an article for a business journal or a newsletter, their style suddenly becomes stilted and, frankly, boring. They cannot write in the very style, their speaking style, that has built their reputation. So they get some help to make their written selves sound more like their spoken selves.

Of course, often both factors are in play. It isn’t unusual for a project that started because the client lacked writing time to continue as an ongoing gig, once the client recognizes the additional value a writing pro brings to the content.

Over the years, I have written presentations for CEOs, articles for trade journals, newsletter articles, web pages, responses to requests for information from the media, and even sections of project proposals where the personality of the client was important to winning the work. Think about all the communication needed to bring a business success, and the portion of that that needs a personal touch presents an excellent market for the business ghostwriter.

In the Client’s Voice

A client once handed me a draft document of an important message from a division head and asked me to rewrite it, saying, “You say what we would say if we knew how to say it.” His point was that, as a professional writer, I did a better job of presenting their material with their own distinctive view than did the employees who created the original message. I helped them find, and display, their unique voice, which ultimately enhanced the impact of an important message.

Obviously, this is one of the most important skills of the business ghostwriter. You have to sound like them, not like yourself. Similar pieces written for different clients must sound different.

Some writers are not very flexible about how they express things. But most good writers can, with a little effort, learn to adapt their styles to reflect their clients’ personalities.

And we’ll look at some of the first steps in learning to speak in your client’s voice in the next post in this series.