Confessions of a "Creepy" Ghost-writer

What writing Thought Leadership articles for Execs taught me.

Life constantly forces me to morph, evolve and adapt as a storyteller. Currently, I am a group head creative copywriter, but in a former life, I was a thought leadership ghost-writer and, before that, a professional actor and playwright, so I have some experience pretending to be other people. However, that doesn't mean I didn't panic the first time I was briefed to ghost-write for an expert in their field back in 2016.

The spine-chilling process of ghost-writing

I ended up ghost-writing for two separate content marketing companies over the years but the process was always the same.

It started with an online meeting between me and the client. I generally found 45 minutes to be the sweet spot. I had to glean as much about this person and their business as possible in the allocated time to be able to speak (write) on their behalf as an expert in their field. No pressure!

I would record the conversation and make notes as we chatted focusing on the following:

·?? Who are you and what is your area of expertise?

·?? What do you want to say?

·?? Why should your audience care what you say and what's in it for them?

Some clients preferred to be quoted almost verbatim and others hated it when I used what they said, which was fascinating!

Our clients were a C medley… CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CMOs, Founders, Co-founders and several other titles that were equally impressive and intimidating. I had to develop a strong backbone overnight because most of these people were formidable.

Spooky scribe turned adrenaline junkie

"Explain this to me like I'm an idiot", I would say during an interview and this would usually not be far from the truth regarding their business. I learned about so many vastly different industries that I began to feel like a global B2B conference coordinator.

I had crash courses on Food Manufacturing, eCommerce SEO Automation Platforms, Centrifugal Pumps, Cloud Solutions, Mergers and Acquisitions, Biodegradable Packaging, MICE, Vehicle Leasing, DNA Analysis, Fertility Treatment and many more. The question in the back of my mind would be the same though: What is the story here? Why should anyone care? How should I put it in a way that people will actually read it?

Why I like to be "creepy"

My favourite feedback from a client came in the form of a short email. It read, "Thanks for the article, Bruce. I'm happy. It reads like I wrote it myself. Creepy how you could get into my head like that."

He was the CEO of a global Customer Acquisition Platform based in Australia and as I discovered, one of the wealthiest and most successful people I had ever spoken to up to that point. He also happened to be one of the most down-to-earth and easy-going clients I have ever dealt with.

He understood that it wasn't an opportunity to "soapbox" or evangelise his business but rather a chance to share something useful with an audience, which if done correctly, could result in a beneficial outcome for his business. It had to be symbiotic and he got that. His article cooked. Readers ate it.

Phantom engagement and haunting readability

Inexperienced clients often wanted long drawn out articles that explained everything in detail. These didn't perform well.

Articles that performed the best and resulted in the most conversions tended to be short, conversational, concise and often amusing. Humour and storytelling were the secret sauce for improved reading appetite as well as other conventions like using bullet points and quirky subheadings.

I also found it effective to leave the reader wanting more rather than telling them everything there is to know in one article. Ideally, you want to leave your readers intrigued and curious enough to send you an email requesting more information. Then you've got 'em!

Ghoulishly generic articles

Clichéd hard-sell tactics also didn't work. If everyone is the 'cheapest', the 'best' the 'fastest', 'offers the most value' and is the most 'awesome' then nobody is. Generic and conventional is done to death. And it isn't even a "safe" tactic because nobody gives a diddly. Old news was as bad as fake news when it came to engagement. An article that nobody reads is a sad little spectre indeed.

Also, readers didn't seem to trust anything that was too advertorial. Articles that were customer-centric, authentic and had some novelty outperformed the rest.

In my current incarnation as an advertising copywriter, I've had to adapt to a whole new set of rules, because it is a different beast in many ways. However, I love the twists and turns of this epic evolution journey and luckily many of the lessons I've learned from ghost-writing and storytelling have been transferrable. I hope my passion for pimping my writing continues to haunt me, just not in a creepy way.