I spend a lot of time doing research for projects and have found that many of the companies that have the best information do the worst job of presenting it. They have the experience, but it’s clear that the wrong people are responsible for sharing what they know.
Now, it’s not really his fault. Each of us has specific skills and areas of knowledge. But just because someone at your company is an expert on a particular topic doesn’t mean they’re also an expert at presenting what they know in writing. In fact, subject matter experts who are also effective writers are a rare breed. Some of the brightest people I’ve ever worked with were also some of the poorest writers. Their writing skills may have been decent though, they just didn’t know how to translate their subject matter into easy-to-understand prose.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to make sure your company’s experience is presented as clearly and effectively as possible: work with a professional ghostwriter. No, I’m not talking about someone who develops novels about supernatural beings. A ghostwriter is someone who takes what subject matter experts know and turns it into well-written content for their website, blog, ezine, magazine article, white paper, speech, or any other channel.
Beyond producing higher-quality work, a key benefit of ghostwriting is that it makes the most of your subject matter expert’s time. Whether that expert is a doctor, lawyer, manager, C-suite executive, salesperson, or any other role, the time it would take to write and refine is time outside of their regular responsibilities or billable hours. He wants that person to use his limited hours in the most productive and profitable way, and that’s probably not agonizing over sentence structure.
Expert ghostwriters can also help you bridge the communication gaps that often exist between experts and their audiences. A great example is a program I managed for a CPA firm that served financial institutions. Although bankers and CPAs are financial experts, their professions don’t always communicate well due to differences in terminology and jargon. I would interview the firm’s accountants (as well as attorneys and regulators) to gather information demonstrating the CPA firm’s expertise and write it for trade magazine and newsletter articles using language more familiar to bankers. He not only provided information to help bankers do a better job of running their banks; it gave them the confidence that this public accounting firm really understood and could communicate with them.
How does ghostwriting work? Once you’ve retained the services of a writer, he or she will likely sit down with your subject matter expert or conduct a phone interview. There are two reasons for that step. First, you provide the ghostwriter with the basic information for the project. Second, and just as important, it gives the ghostwriter a chance to hear how the subject matter expert talks and thinks. That way, the finished work will actually “sound like” it came from the expert, and not from an outsider.
The ghostwriter will then draft the article, post, or other content and submit it to their expert for review. That’s an important step, too, because the material will be published under the expert’s name, so he or she needs to be sure it’s accurate and comfortable with the way it’s presented. The ghostwriter then makes edits or corrections before submitting a revised draft for final approval. When the story or post finally appears, it bears the name of the expert. No one else knows that an outside writer was involved; that’s why the process is known as ghostwriting.
Some managers worry that ghostwriting is unethical. It’s not right to put an employee’s name on something he or she didn’t create, they reason. Nonsense. The information in the article, white paper, or other piece is based entirely on the knowledge of your employees. The ghostwriter just conveys it in a more clear and communicative way. In fact, you’d be surprised how many of the articles, books, speeches, and blog posts “written” by senior executives of companies you respect are actually ghostwritten.
Do your communication materials present your company’s experience as clearly and effectively as possible? Are your company’s experts spending more time than they should trying to fine-tune those messages? Maybe it’s time you found yourself a useful ghost.