Pros and Cons of Hiring a Ghost Writer

What is a Ghost Writer?

A ghost writer is a professional writer that researches and writes your text, but publishes it under your name; not assuming any of the credit for themselves. They should have a fair amount of experience with research and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This ensures that their services add value to your business and product.

Pros

  1. Professional content – by paying an experienced, qualified writer to generate your content, you’re assured of well-researched and -written material. A good ghost writer may even do research into your target market and competitors. In doing this, they add loads of value to the content that they produce for your company.
  2. Efficiency – when you have a world of to-do’s and a diary that looks like someone with a sense of humour doodled abstract art into it, you don’t have time to worry about posting well-thought-out blogs. Paying someone to do it means it will (should) happen as quickly and regularly as you need. Tim Ferris is my business go-to. He owes a lot of his success to delegating to those who can do a better job in less time.
  3. Focus – by allowing a professional writer to handle the research and writing of the content of your website and blog, you get to focus on what you do best – your actual job. This makes your job less stressful while not compromising on getting the blog-slog done.
  4. SEO – a good ghost writer will know about SEO and how to get it to work for you. This takes research and a keen understanding of current trends in keyword analytics and indexing requirements. Leaving it to the professionals means getting it done right. Good SEO translates to more traffic and, ultimately, more exposure and / or sales.

Cons

  1. Preparation – you will need to spend some time giving your ghost writer a full brief to ensure that they really ‘get’ the brand and your objectives. Failing to do this will likely lead to content that isn’t quite on point.
  2. Preconceptions – there may be some preconceptions that getting a ghost writer to do the work is a kind of plagiarism or, at least, a shirking of your responsibility. Keep it on the low-down.
  3. Expense – hiring a good ghost writer will add to your expenses. Still, these have to be weighed against the value that they can add to your business.

In addition

  1. Style – something to consider is that every writer has his or her own style, and you’ll need to ensure that the one you hire has a style that is consistent with your brand and profile.
  2. Final say – it is crucial that your ghost writer knows and accepts that you, as the client, have the final say over what gets written and published. It is your reputation at stake.
  3. Source – some really busy ghost writers outsource their work to others. Be aware of this and have the conversation with your potential writers so that you’re absolutely comfortable with who will be writing what.
  4. Contract – have a clear, concise contract in place before starting any project. This should stipulate that you have ownership of the material once it has been paid for.
  5. Use of the text – if your ghost writer wants to use the content that they’ve produced for you for references or their portfolio, it should first be discussed with and agreed upon by you.
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