By Dan Ahern
Marketing has transitioned to a new realm where everyone is in the business of storytelling. As you scan the internet and social media platforms, you will see that there are a wide variety of strategies that brands and their leaders trust to strike an emotional connection with target audiences. A cost of entry is that every successful business leader is unequivocally passionate about their brand. However, trying to strike that connection to tell a story, especially through the written word, presents an entirely different challenge. Even the most accomplished and versatile writers can struggle to produce enough content by themselves to attract attention in today’s business landscape.
Thus, it often takes someone better equipped to capture the voice of an executive leader through ghostwriting, to craft written content from a leadership perspective.
When to hire a Ghost
For new and established businesses, creating success means striking a balance between the following factors: efficiency and purpose. Talented ghostwriters can save time and effort while crafting messaging to be consistent and purpose-driven.
Leveraging an agency partner for ghostwriting services provides significant benefits, as opposed to outsourcing to a freelancer or leaning on an individual employee in-house. It provides a unique opportunity for collaboration between agency and client, a juncture to generate new ideas and synergize to promote key messages. An agency team can watch a client’s blind side, source trending industry topics that may have been missed and leverage these trends to develop strong written content through an executive’s distinct voice.
Agency ghostwriters also offer an objective lens for business leaders, avoiding overly promotional rhetoric while bringing brands and a leader’s authentic voice into the conversation. This can be especially critical for fledging startups seeking greater awareness and visibility.
Lastly, agencies understand how to optimize ghostwritten content to deliver the best results for a thought leadership platform. Take for example, an op-ed article on a trending topic penned by an industry-leading CEO. Even after the writing process is complete and media coverage is secured, an agency ghostwriter can take things a step further by providing strategic guidance and execution to amplify the article and its content across popular social platforms, as well as the brand’s website, company LinkedIn, webinars, and personal LinkedIn, to maximize exposure.
READ MORE: Why Brands Need A Personality In 2022
What’s in it for the Ghost?
For starters, ghostwriting allows agency team members to forge lasting relationships with their contemporaries, proving their understanding of the client’s purpose and commitment to boosting their platform.
Ghostwriting is an undervalued, integral practice that inspires new areas of content creation. Contributed articles, blog posts, whitepapers, expert quotes, and social media copy coming from the voice of an executive leader all merge, establishing and supporting brand presence and individual thought leadership.
READ MORE: PR’s Top Pros Talk: Handling Communications During A Crisis
Key Components of a Ghostwriting Strategy
With the benefits of ghostwriting for both sides in mind, here are strategic components that make a successful ghostwriter:
1. Understanding your brand’s story
Ghostwriters combine your key messaging and the value that your product or service suite brings to your target audience, all while identifying the demographic most likely to resonate with the content, whether that be potential new business leads or industry professionals.
2. Understanding the industry landscape
The best ghostwriters carefully observe the top trends and pressing news items dominating an industry. Then, they can enter and lead a conversation on your behalf with content that takes a firm stance on the issue at hand and, when appropriate, can address the conversation from your perspective.
3. Replicating your passion
A ghostwriter must understand (and not take it lightly) that executive leaders make sacrifices by devoting their careers to a specific brand. This comes across in the ghostwriting process as one of the primary goals is to encapsulate a leader’s passion.
The Bottom Line
Leadership ghostwriting services can bring new ideas to the forefront of any communications strategy, simultaneously amplifying a C-Suite leader’s thought leadership platform and overarching corporate identity. As a result, ghostwriters save time, ensure that you evolve alongside the industry, and take your business to the next level.
