Ghost blogging

(Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes)

The spectre of expected success often overlooks the tactile ghost of reality.

That’s what I’ve discovered in a worrying number of cases where companies blithely ignore the voice of the brand and hunt forth a writer with all the aesthetic potential of Stephen Hawking on a windsurfer, but with the promise of a hen about to lay golden eggs.

I had an interesting chat with my mother today. She’s an exceptional wordsmith. You’d expect nothing less since she bores me. In any case, I discovered in her a candid frustration in becoming a published writer. She had no track record as a published writer, you see. And to become a published writer you automatically need to be one.

But what’s more alarming than the stilted reality of a catch 22 situation is a sizeable number of people who have become published – perhaps by offering their services for free to desperate recipients – and then building upon a lacklustre job a somewhat vacuous reputation that somehow beguiles future assignors into believing they have what it takes.

This occurs more often in the sphere of ghost blogging than anywhere else, a survey* recently revealed. The number of companies who are jettisoning their brand voice in favour of someone who can patch together – in a manner of crazy paving -words that breathe an altogether different conceit.

I’ve worked with big brands and those not so big. One thing that unites each and every one is uniqueness. Yet there’s a breed of writer which cannot discern between the subtle nuances of enterprises which, delving a little into the company’s background, are amplified into shrieks of exclusivity.

As a writer I spend at least two days with an organisation that wants me to either speech-make or craft intimate web content. I don’t make this promise for ad-hoc jobs relating to one or two pages of editorial: one has to make a living.

To recruit a ghost blogger, you need to know they share the same personal goals and objectives as those in your professional realm. They must vicariously live your brand and what it stands for. Don’t employ a snowboarder if you’re an abseiling products manufacturer: unless they manage to combine the two disciplines faultlessly.

Like them. If you like them and their work, they’ll probably like you too. And they’ll strive for you. But more importantly, your readers will like them, and respond accordingly.

Make them feel like the CEO. Here’s the rub: if your ghost blogger is exactly who you’re looking for, you’d trust them to run the company. It’s that simple. If you wouldn’t, don’t employ them. Because in a marketing sense their role is more important than the CEO. Customers will live and die by your ghost blogger’s keyboard.

Found the right person? Watch your profits soar…

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