How to Find a Ghostwriter for Your Small Business The 7 Most Essential Steps to Take

Ghostwriters sound scarier than they really are. But it’s just a person who works in the shadows to research important ideas and write about them for your small business. What’s even scarier to some entrepreneurs is how to find a ghostwriter. It’s not easy to find someone you can trust with your business story. But if you approach the ghostwriter-hunting process in the right way, you will land yourself an amazing collaborator.

In this post, we will review the benefits of finding a ghostwriter and practical steps you can take to finding a ghostwriter you trust.

Before we get into how to find a ghostwriter for your small business, let’s first discuss the benefits of looking for a ghostwriter in the first place.

Brain Assistance

Ghostwriters are great at taking the ideas right out of your brain that might otherwise stay there to die. People have great ideas all the time. Sometimes they just need some help organizing and delivering them. By asking the right questions, ghostwriters can sneak through the halls of people’s brains and find exactly what needs to be said.

Quick Turn-Around-Time

Ghostwriters are also great at freeing up people’s time to tackle the things they love and the things they’re great at doing. Some people write at a snail’s pace, wrestling over every syllable and thesaurus-hunting for every word. Ain’t nobody got time for that! Give it to a ghostwriter. A good one can have that copy drafted, revised, rewritten, revised and finalized in the same amount of time.

Word Masters

At the end of the day, ghostwriters are writers. They put words in what’s called a sentence with relative ease and they like doing it. Sometimes they’ll even intentionally break their beloved grammar rules to drive home a point. It’s okay…they know what they’re doing. They understand what it takes to develop quality content in a manner that is witty and professional.

More Devoted Focus

Hiring a ghostwriter provides you with the time you need to focus on the most important aspects of your job. Instead of spending loads of time coming up with topics, doing research, and writing articles, you can free up valuable working hours by talking to a ghostwriter. You will spend some additional money, but your return on investment will include high-quality content and a cost-effective use of everyone’s time.

All right, now follow the next seven steps to find a ghostwriter for your small business needs.

1. Define Your Blog Post or Project Goals

Before putting resources into this project, you first need to be clear on what you want to achieve. This will help you in the later parts of the process when you’re explaining your objectives and goals to your ghost.

Ask yourself:

• What will your piece do for readers?
• Do you want to teach readers something valuable or life-changing?
• Are you hoping they’ll be changed in some way or make different choices as a result of your piece?

You also want to be sure to ask about what your project will do for you. Are you looking to expand your outreach, increase your credibility or brand yourself or your business? Give some real thought to how you want this blog post to benefit your small business — that will be an important factor in determining and communicating the value.

2. Know Where to Find Ghostwriters

Ghostwriters aren’t the easiest professionals to find. They tend to keep low profiles and are limited in terms of sharing work previously done due to the private nature of the writing they do.

In cases like this, we encourage you to research and partner with an agency — like our team at Keyhole Marketing — to find the best writers for your posts. Sure, you can look into online companies like Freelancer to match up a freelancer or professional, but oftentimes you’ll find that your needs expand far beyond just writing one or two posts here or there.

Partnering with an agency allows you to be fully situated with professional writing, photography, content marketing plans, and SEO management, so that your content reaches the right people at the right time.

3. Meet Face-to-Face

It is always a good idea to meet in person, if possible, when looking for someone to match your writing style. They may not talk like you, but it will allow you to get to know them better and start personal conversations that let them learn your voice.

Some questions to get the juices flowing include:

• Who was the main character in the last novel you read and what about that person most intrigued you?
• When you last took someone to lunch, can you describe in detail the scene around you?
• Can you tell me about a time when you were overcome by emotion?
• What’s one childhood memory you hope to never forget and one adult memory you wish you never had?
• If you gave your own eulogy, what’s the greatest achievement you’d share?
• At that same funeral, what words would someone put on your tombstone?
• What’s your “why” in life?
• What’s your purpose for getting up each day?

4. Review Their Skill Level

The best ghostwriters have strong writing and storytelling skills, keen problem-solving skills, and the ability to process and organize large amounts of information. You’ll be able to tell great writing from writing that stinks, but a professional in the field will be tuned in to some of the finer nuances that make a big difference. You can also make an assessment based on what you like and what sounds good.

5. Review Previous Work

Again, getting to view past work might get tricky if there are confidentiality clauses in place from previous work. However, some writers will negotiate whether they’re permitted to tell potential clients about the scope of the work previously written. So, chances are that the ghostwriter you’re considering to hire has work they can show you or tell you about.

Once they provide you with resources or links to articles they’ve written, read them through to see what you think about style, tone, and voice. While it might not be YOUR voice specifically, it can speak volumes if the voice matches the author it’s intended to reflect.

It’s also important to ensure spelling and grammar are in check, as this can cause major problems down the road if it’s missed.

6. Run a Test Piece

If you’re happy with the work a certain ghostwriter has provided to you, it’s time to ask them to write a short sample to really gauge how well you’ll work together. Give them a blog with a title and goals and let them ask their questions. Whatever they send back over to you should prepare you for what’s to come and hopefully be enough to establish an ongoing relationship.

7. Be Detailed, Be Clear

At this point in our how to find a ghostwriter process, you’ve found the person with whom you want to collaborate and you’ve reached out. Now what?

Most ghostwriting involves communication and cooperation between the author and the writer, but the amount of both depends on the author’s needs and the ghost’s process. What’s important is that you understand the process the ghostwriter uses and ensure that it’s compatible with your work style.

If you’re accustomed to micromanaging, it might make you crazy to not receive a final product for a few weeks. You might request they provide an outline and then a draft. If you’re extremely busy and want the ghostwriter to work as independently as possible, you may prefer that they send you the final version and you review at the very end.

Determine what role you’ll play and how you’ll track and send feedback. Decide together and then follow a schedule that works best on an ongoing basis.

Finding a ghostwriter doesn’t have to be so scary. It can actually save you a great deal of time, stress, and money down the road and provide the support you’ve always been looking for when it comes to delivering rich, quality content.