Ghost Busting: Is Your Content Haunted by These Scary Ghostwriter Myths?

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Ghost Busting: Is Your Content Haunted by These Scary Ghostwriter Myths?

Content marketing is full of ghostwriters, producing professionally written content under someone else’s byline. I’ve done plenty of ghostwriting assignments over the years, penning magazine columns and blog posts for CEOs and other professionals. Ghostwriting is simply a fact of life for an agency or freelance writer and I have no problem with that. Outsourcing at least some of the content production is unavoidable for many businesses.

However, I’ve also encountered a lot of confusion over how ghostwriting should work and where lines should be drawn or credit given.

I still receive a number of requests every year to ghostwrite a regular blog or column for a brand, agency, or one of their clients. Unfortunately, too many of these inquiries demonstrate just how little is understood about the writing process and the true value of the ideas behind the words.

These are merely my own observations from personal experience. If you’re a content writer, journalist or blogger you may have different ideas on how to handle ghostwriting opportunities (and if so, let me know in the comments). If you’re a business or agency, this might just give a little insight into what you’re really asking of us with your ghostwriting inquiries.

Who’s the thought leader?

Many corporate blogs and content pieces are supposedly (warning: buzzword alert) “thought leadership” tactics. By posting informative and insightful content, the brand appears experienced and authoritative. And this can be very persuasive for consumers looking for someone trustworthy to advise them on a purchase. But, if a brand hires a subject matter expert to ghost write under the brand’s byline, passing off the writer’s ideas and opinions as its own, that seems far less trustworthy.

It just seems incredibly deceptive, to me. Any authority and trust assigned to the brand as a result of that content – which is surely the intention of such thought leadership – would be terribly misplaced. It’s like a baker putting a delicious-looking store-bought cake in the window because he was either too busy to create his own display or too unskilled to match the same quality.

Case in point: a while back I was approached by a digital agency looking for a “higher-end writer with expertise in digital marketing strategies”. The email explained that the team were fans of my articles for the Content Marketing Institute, praising the insightful marketing advice and entertaining style: I would be a perfect match for one of their clients.

“Sure,” I said. “Tell me more,” I said. I explained that my rates are higher than most, but if it was me they wanted, we should chat.

The reply quickly came back. This was actually for the agency’s own blog, not a client. Extremely tight turnarounds from brief to first draft (48 hours) plus another 24-48 hours for revisions. Oh, and this would be a ghostwriting gig to boot, going out under their brand’s byline, not mine. I would do the work, they would take the credit (and benefit from the value). And then they offered me a rate that would barely cover my coffee consumption while writing the piece.

Unfortunately, I’ve experienced this sort of inquiry many times – offering basic production-line rates for what they acknowledge is premium content – and often without the benefit of credit. Speaking of which …

How much is a byline worth?

My articles for CMI’s Chief Content Officer magazine have proved to be popular, so inquiries aren’t unusual. But each of those articles takes a great deal of time and effort, including three or four drafts to dig deep into a specific topic, explore my own thinking, form an argument, research supporting information and examples, come up with an entertaining angle, scrape off the cliches, and wrestle every paragraph into submission. These columns are my showcase, combining my experience as a magazine columnist and blogger with my experience as a content marketer while allowing me an opportunity to further develop and explore my own theories and observations.

On a couple of occasions, enquirers have suggested I lower my rates or offer a discount precisely because they weren’t using my byline. The idea seems to be that my name must have some value thanks to my reputation in the industry (such as it is) and the popularity of my CMI articles. So, if they don’t exploit that reputation they shouldn’t be charged for it.

However, the reverse could also be argued. My rep is a by-product of my experience and ideas, which definitely does have a value even without my name attached. In fact, I should probably charge above my usual rate for content that uses my ideas without my byline because, by doing so, they’re effectively buying my IP. If I’m coming up with the topics, research, insights, advice, opinions and conclusions, I’ll be damned if someone else can claim the credit while paying me less for the privilege.

That’s not just 1,000 words of content, that’s me on the page! And I ain’t giving away the best of myself for pocket change.

Collaborating with your ghost writer

Thankfully, most ghostwriting gigs are not like dodgy bakers. A huge number of celebrity autobiographies use a ghost writer: After all, most autobiographies are by people whose fame doesn’t derive from skilled word-smithery. Readers understand this.

The ghost writer interviews and researches the person, takes guidance from them on what to include or leave out, collaborates on the story to be told and then applies the structure and the words that form the final book. At every stage, it is still the celebrity’s story. As UK celeb Katie Price told The Guardian, “I talk in a tape and say the stories that I want. [The ghost writer] then writes each chapter. It comes back, and I read it through.” Her manager Claire Powell sums up the process even more bluntly. “They just write it into book words.”

I’d like to think there’s a bit more to the process than that. But a ghostwriting gig should still be more of a collaboration with the writer operating as the scribe to the client. Sometimes, the writer may also be a kind of muse, prompting the right anecdotes or asking the right questions to uncover the client’s ideas and thoughts on relevant topics in sufficient detail.

This remains my approach when I take ghostwriting gigs. The content is a collaboration between me and the person whose name will take the byline. The client determines the topic for each post and should provide at least some of the key points, opinions and supporting information to be included. Some of my favourite ghostwritten pieces have started out as recorded conversations with the client on an agreed topic, before using their ideas and responses – as well as their own analogies or turns of phrase – to form the basis of one or more articles. I become the conduit for their ideas and opinions, not the source of them.

This is a skill in itself, a different writing discipline with its own complexities, particularly as I have to try to capture the client’s style, tone and ‘voice’ while reducing the giveaway fingerprints of my own distinctive writing style. It’s not a lesser or easier form of writing – it can be even more time consuming – so that I usually charge a similar rate to my other work.

Yes, I’m afraid good content writing isn’t cheap no matter how you approach it.

That’s what I think. But what about you? Are you a byline discounter or a ghost buster?

It Ain’t What You Say, It’s the Way That You Say It

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It Ain’t What You Say, It’s the Way That You Say It

If there is one argument I love to have, it’s debating the concept of professional language. Too often, it describes flawed attempts to emulate an academic thesis or a Victorian bank manager. You know the sort of stuff – a white paper, official email or corporate website where the language is so dense, formal and archaic that your brain melts from the sheer dullness of it all.

How can that be considered professional? If your readers have to go over a sentence twice to glean the correct meaning, then your writing has failed. If your readers decide it’s too much effort to push beyond the opening paragraphs – never mind make it to the end – then your writing has failed. If your readers draw the wrong conclusions about your message, your brand or your product, then your writing has failed.

Show a Little Decorum

Professional language is that which conveys the right message to the right audience in the most appropriate and persuasive manner.

Classicists, rhetoricians and speechwriters have a word for this: Decorum. These days, the word “decorum” is more often used to mean general politeness in various social settings; but its rhetorical definition is more specific – adapting one’s language and behaviour to suit the specific audience.

We all use decorum to a degree. Some of us have an almost chameleon-like skill to fit in with any group, whether a maiden aunt’s tea party or a bawdy group of lads down the pub. But businesses and marketers often struggle with this. Language and content are more often adapted to appeal to the Board, instead of the individual customer.

Yet, when used well, decorum can turn even the most casual use of language into a professional win. This Twitter conversation from 2014, between UK retailer Argos and a disgruntled customer, remains one of my favourite examples.

Tweet to @Argos Online that says, YO wen u gettin da ps4 tings in moss side?
Tweeted reply from @ArgosHelpers that says, Safe badman, we gettin sum more PS4 tings in wivin da next week y'get me.

This Argos example illustrates perfectly that decorum is possible within a professional business context. Sure, the information contained in the reply wouldn’t have changed if the community manager had used formal language, but the message may have been received very differently by the customer—particularly as he already felt disrespected by a member of staff. The difference in tone and language would have been a wall between the brand and the customer that could have hampered attempts to resolve the situation.

Decorum works by appealing to our natural instinct to trust those most like ourselves or, at least, those who can demonstrate that they genuinely understand who we are. Differences in how we communicate can imply other differences, such as background, experience, education and attitude. We automatically assess these factors alongside the information contained in those words when deciding how much weight and trust to give the message.

Yes, authenticity is still important. The Argos tweet would never have worked if the community manager got any of the lingo even slightly wrong. Attempting to ape a style and missing can potentially be worse than sticking with your natural tone of voice.

While the slang dialect used by Argos may seem like a different language to many other customers watching the exchange, they were not the intended audience. This was a direct response to a particular customer in his dialect. The side effect was that the wider audience could see that, instead of expecting the customer to conform to the brand, the brand conformed to the customer—a very powerful statement.

Alternatively, much of the academic terminology, corporate jargon and buzzwords in so-called professional writing can be just as impenetrable or meaningless to the average person, but without the justification that the intended reader actually speaks that way.

Leveraging the Linguistic Learnings

I think a threw up a little in my mouth writing that subheading, but it illustrates just how inhuman so-called “professional language” has become. Anyway, the irony amuses me.

In my time, I’ve written a lot of corporate copy. On more than one occasion a client has edited or provided feedback on my copy that effectively peppers it with vague buzzwords, tortures the grammar and deletes anything approaching a human tone of voice. When I challenge this sort of feedback, the reasoning is always, “We think our version is more professional”. That’s usually the red flag that tells me it’s time to find a new client. Another red flag is, “I love it, but you need to make these changes before the CEO/Board/other stakeholders will approve it.” If it’s a choice between educating the boss or undermining the content, guess which side I’m on.

If I were cynical old bugger (don’t say it) I’d think the intention was to smudge over anything approaching clarity or emotion until it becomes a homogenised, generic slurry of corporate cliches. But that can’t really be the intention. No company would actively set out to make their content less clear, less competitive and less targeted to the customer. Would they?

This corporate tone of voice fascinates me because it definitely isn’t human. It is a highly conservative and reduced form of English that has evolved out of continual imitation and repetition within corporate circles. In this sense, professional language is about conformity and a fear of not fitting in with those deemed to already represent a successful corporate ideal. They don’t want to appear different to their competitors because being different can feel awfully like being wrong. And that reveals a lack of confidence.

So much for competitive advantage and brand differentiation.

The result is a generic kit of safe, inoffensive and important-sounding words and phrases that can be bolted together in almost any order to produce copy that conforms to this corporate norm, without necessarily saying anything of real substance. It is possible to write paragraph after paragraph about how the “enterprise-grade, mission critical solution” can “empower business goals” and “leverage strategic opportunities” that are “aligned with internal priorities” without once specifically describing how the product works!

Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Corporate language is also about obfuscation or misdirection. Too often it is used to mask the uncomfortable truth that even the company isn’t sure what the product really does (I’ve certainly received briefs like this). On other occasions, it may be misguided, entitled bluster that hopes to assume authority without having earned it. “They seem like professionals, so the product must be good—whatever it is. We must obey our corporate overlords.”

Do You Speak My Language?

We’re constantly surrounded by these same empty phrases and buzzwords, so they can be the first to pop into your head when speaking or writing. It’s easier for the brain to pick a vague term that is at the top of your mental lexicon due to common usage than to dig deep for an original or more accurate phrase. In that way, buzzwords and cliches can infect everyone.

Professional content and copywriters have to remain vigilant, eliminating empty words and phrases from our content while resisting unhelpful feedback. We must always write for the target readership, not the board or CEO. We must banish the predictable and embrace the thesaurus. Above all, we must always get our message across.

That’s how to use language like a professional.

Declaring war on ‘solutions’

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Declaring war on ‘solutions’

If there is one word I would expunge from the English language tomorrow, it would be ‘solution’. Give me dictatorial power and by sundown all dictionaries would have the single page ripped out. All electronic documents would be subject to enforced ‘find/replace’. Google would automatically de-index any offending webpage.

But that wouldn’t be enough. Anyone in danger of ever putting words on paper or screen likely to be exposed to innocent people would be required to undergo a surgical removal of that part of the brain where the word sits in the linguistic memory, like a cancer in the lexicon.

Sure, we may lose some other words as unfortunate casualties in this war against vocab barbarism. The dictionary purge would delete ‘sombre’, for example. But as the English language has more synonyms than any other in the world, it is easily compensated with ‘gloomy’, ‘mournful’, ‘dismal’ and a slew of others with overlapping shades of meaning.

‘Sombrero’ would also be a casualty. But hey, every cloud…

We would also lose the alternative definitions for ‘solution’ itself. Understand, I have no beef with dissolving solids or gases into a liquid. Chemists may carry on their experiments unimpeded. We just need to pick another word for it. There are a couple of other more obscure definitions which I’m sure won’t radically undermine our language too much. There’s a greater cause at stake.

It’s the richness of the language and the sheer number of synonyms available that is partly why the word drives me to such puritanical measures. Why? Because it is so often used to obfuscate or blur over accurate meaning rather than clarify and convey detail.

It has become a dull (in both senses of the word) landmine of letters, turning so much marketing copy into minefields of banality. At any moment, a reader interpreting a sentence to glean necessary information or insight may innocently come across the eight letters of linguistic doom. Once the reader’s eyes alight upon the word, the entire sentence implodes into vaguery, leaving in its stead a crater of bland, meaningless twaddle.

It is a lazy word. It has become synonymous with almost any phrase where the writer wants to sound professional, while simultaneously positioning the subject of the sentence as a positive benefit. What the word really displays is either a) a disinterest in thinking up a more appropriate word more accurately describing the subject, which ironically would be more professional, or b) even the writer doesn’t know what this thing does.

A few years back, Private Eye ran a wonderful column of submissions from readers of the most ridiculous uses of ‘solutions’ in marketing spin. For example, cardboard boxes described as “Christmas Ornament Storage Solutions”. It ran for many years and received hundreds of increasingly mind-boggling variations. But constant ridicule hasn’t deterred repeat offenders from sticking it into company slogans, website headings, product descriptions and sales copy.

Yet the majority aren’t even that imaginative. Why say ‘Electrical Solutions’ on the side of your work van when you just mean ‘Electrician’? We all know what an electrician does, so you would save some money on the decal letters at least. Or maybe that van wasn’t an electrician but a supplier of household electrical appliances? How would we know? Adding those extra letters doesn’t add greater meaning. It actually subtracts it, removing all context and make it less clear what it is you’re selling.

And then there are those instances when it is added to an equally ambiguous word. What exactly are ‘business solutions’? That’s a pretty broad concept you’ve tried to commoditise there. Or consider ‘technical solutions’? OK, we’ve narrowed it down to anything involving a device of some kind… or something. How about ‘Strategic Consulting Solutions‘ for a triple whammy of WTF?! Do they even know what it is they do?

Why oh why oh why has the art of marketing and copywriting become obsessed with selling solutions? You don’t sell solutions, you sell a product or service! I’ll be the judge of whether it solves my problem or not if you would simply tell me what it is you’re actually selling! In plain English! If you can’t tell me what it is yourself, why the hell would I give you my cash?

Yes, it’s probably a good thing I don’t have dictatorial power to enforce laws based on my own grammatical preferences and linguistic pet hates. Bad copywriters don’t need to fear a knock on the door late at night and dictionaries can continue unmolested.

But I’m watching you… I can bide my time.