Are you too busy to post online? A ghostwriter can help

A steelecht ghostwriter can help busy professionals to better structure and share their news on social media, and more frequently contribute their thoughts.

By Peter F. Ohman, Senior Copyeditor & Copywriter at steelecht

Finding the time to regularly contribute news and views on social media can be challenging for busy professionals. Using a ghostwriter can transform the challenge into an effective tactical tool for your company and your career.

Finding the time

Everyone is so busy nowadays, and the pressure to perform is high. So, when does a hardworking professional find the time to keep the world up-to-date on their insights and achievements?

Corporate leaders are now expected to boldly claim the territory of social media for their company, but they are rarely given valuable support. So more and more of them are turning to other professionals – to experts in writing online articles. It’s the obvious, easiest and simplest thing to do.

Welcome to the jungle

Let’s review. Social media is widely trumpeted as the place where companies can be made or broken, a magical land of fear and wonder, where the yellow-brick road to “trending” or “going viral” is littered with thousands of unseen posts and the occasional admonitory – and chilling – example of… a post gone bad.

One of most common ways to use social media is to have an account on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Many people are quite good at acquiring contacts on these accounts, and as a result now have hundreds – or even thousands – of “connections”. That’s great!

But this success comes at a cost. Those contacts are also under pressure to prove their online worth, so each one of them contributes to the overall flow of content. Even if most of these tributary streams of data are simply forwarded links, the result is that many social media feeds now resemble a river in flood – an overwhelming rush of information.

Relevance makes you stick out

To survive and keep up with such a torrent of impressions, people develop mental filters. For instance, people generally view their feed with an eye out for postings about, or by, their real friends, their valued workmates, their company and such. Relevance is essential.

Beyond personal connections, content that has meaning stands out. If you have expertise that is relevant to people out there – really relevant – you should share it. The best way is with well-written posts that share bite-size morsels of your knowledge, week after week.

WAIT A MINUTE! That takes time, and we began this discussion by acknowledging how busy everyone is. How can writing an online post – or a series of posts – be the solution? We’re back to where we started, aren’t we? Yes, unless you…

Hire a ghostwriter

A ghostwriter is someone who takes your ideas and interests, your priorities or observations, and writes them down for you. In the era of social media, a ghostwriter can help you easily produce an attractive post or short article on a subject of your choosing, with an investment from you of about ten minutes.

By using a ghostwriter, you are able to outsource something that you don’t have the time to do, to someone who does – and who can do it quicker (and possibly better) than you can. But it’s still your thoughts and your leadership that are on display. The ghostwriter is simply helping you to articulate your thoughts and enabling you to get some well-deserved attention.

The goal is to transform you into a regular contributor on issues of importance to you, your company and the many readers out there looking for relevant content.

“If you have expertise that is relevant to people out there – really relevant – you should share it. The best way is with well-written posts that share bite-size morsels of your knowledge, week after week.”

Writing with a strategy

That brings us back to relevance. That’s the bait, as it were, that draws your readers in. Just baiting, however, will drain your social clout in the long run. You want to raise your profile, not lower it. So you need to really share some of your expertise. People love to learn. That’s why posts are most likely to be read from start to finish if the reader actually learns something new in the process.

Isn’t that just giving away your expertise for free? No. People spending their time to read your post is actual currency in our attention economy. Ideally, your post on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram will also link to your own website, i.e. blog or content hub. That kind of attention is even better: it’s called traffic.

Over time, your self-hosted articles will also drive organic traffic to your site. People will look for your expertise in a search engine, and actually find you. That is the pot of gold. Social + organic traffic = long-term visibility.

To get there, you’ll want a frequent and regular number of shorter articles. 300-700 words is a good length. Here’s a quick overview of how you can publish one post each week, all year long:

• Brand your blog, e.g. Thoughts for a Thursday; Jane’s Mobility Week in Review.
• Choose your subjects. Approximately six general themes or subjects of importance, relevance, or interest is a good way to start.
• Narrow it down. Choose approximately two themes on which to focus in the current quarter (three months). Review your choices every quarter.
• Outline a plan. A rough production schedule for three months might contain eight theme-related topics, two human-interest stories and two uncommitted spaces left open to allow for a quick response to current events, e.g. an industry scandal, fashion hype or seasonal meteorite shower.
• Get a ghostwriter to write your posts, help you organize your thoughts and set up your plan.
• Use compelling images. You can take your own picture, buy an image or draw on a growing pool of rights-free pictures, as long as you are citing the source and not selling those pictures for profit.
• Schedule your publication, e.g. on the same day each week. A ghostwriter can also help you discover the best days and times to do this, for maximum impact.
• Spread the word! Make sure every article you write also has a set of social media posts prepared.

Early adopters of this technique – producing regular articles they post on their blog or website and then tease in their social media feed – gain recognition simply by pioneering the method of reaching out and creating a fixed space for their thoughts and observations. Now is a good time to do this, in other words.

Think of it like this: your “followers” may notice an article you “like”; but they may actually read the one that you have written, alone or with your ghostwriter.

Do you want to say what’s on your mind? Get a ghostwriter! Send us a message.