Six Reasons Why Executives Should Consider Working With a Thought Leadership Ghostwriter
Your schedule as an executive is already well spoken for, from internal and external meetings to the not-so-humble task of shaping your organization’s future. Throughout your busy days, though, you absorb a lifetime of valuable insights that others could benefit from. Unfortunately, there’s not enough time to write and fine-tune that LinkedIn post or newsletter.
That’s where a ghostwriter comes in.
We hear the objections. But if I use a ghostwriter, are those my thoughts? Of course, they are. There’d be no content without them. A ghostwriter simply helps you present them.
Isn’t that inauthentic? What’s inauthentic about sharing your unique ideas? Is it inauthentic to use spell-check, Grammarly, or a style guide to improve your writing or to make the process of writing more efficient? View your ghostwriter as a valuable tool that can help you shape your thinking and structure it effectively and cogently in a way that remains authentic to your voice. It’s your story. A ghostwriter helps tell it.
If you’re not interacting with your target audience regularly, you’re missing a huge opportunity. Today’s consumers and stakeholders much prefer hearing from a human being to hearing from brand accounts. Putting a face to your brand is a valuable way to hear from your customers, engage with them, and learn from them. Admittedly, though, producing content regularly can be extremely time-consuming. But that doesn’t mean your ideas should die in silence.
Here’s why executives should strongly consider working with a ghostwriter to share valuable thought leadership.
Working with a ghostwriter unlocks massive time savings.
When you think about reasons to work with a ghostwriter, time saved is perhaps the most obvious. Executives who are extremely busy with their day-to-day business don’t have much surplus time to sink into writing LinkedIn posts, newsletters, or blogs, even if they want to spend time on those things. Unfortunately, consistency is a remarkably powerful asset in content creation, and for executives, that’s the hardest thing to achieve. They might produce one terrific newsletter and disappear for months because obligations got in the way. It happens. But it’s suboptimal.
When you work with a ghostwriter, the time-consuming parts of the process - drafting the content, editing it, formatting it, proofreading it - belong to the ghostwriter. The executive delivers the secret sauce - the ideas, insights, and perspectives - but they can do so in a way that’s minimally demanding of their time. By arranging to work with a ghostwriter on a specific cadence - say, a monthly 30-minute phone call - executives also have some accountability to be consistent with content efforts without the pressure to stare at the blank page and spend hours bringing ideas to life.
Think of ghostwriters as a tool. You know the message you want to deliver. We know how to deliver it, and as a result, we can save you an enormous amount of time.
Working with a ghostwriter encourages you to voice your learnings and organize your thoughts.
The very act of speaking to a ghostwriter out loud can help you clarify and fine-tune your thoughts. By talking through your experiences, struggles, and results, you crystallize them into meaningful insights and learnings. The process of pulling those things from your brain and articulating them can be challenging, and it’s that act of verbalization that will prod you to take a moment and think critically about what lessons you want to impart.
Your conversations with a ghostwriter are your opportunity to take a break from your busy day-to-day and explore all those ideas you’ve bookmarked in your mind. Without that regularly scheduled break, those bookmarks eventually shake loose, and the thoughts are crowded into the abyss by all the other things that demand mindshare. With some luck, you might find them again. But like Dwight Schrute said, “‘A real man makes his own luck.’ Billy Zane. Titanic.”
Ghostwriters can provide you with feedback and stress-test your conclusions.
Interactions with a ghostwriter can help you to extract learnings, but the ghostwriter can also provide significant value in responding to them. We’ll ask thoughtful questions to help you expand upon something you shared, or, we might press on a certain notion if it’s not clear to us or if perhaps the logic is murky. We do this not to be a pain but to help you further clarify your thinking. That’s in your best interest and also in the interest of the audience.
You might also say something fascinating that, to you, is a throwaway thought, but to us is a differentiated pearl of wisdom. Because you live in the weeds of your industry, it’s easy to forget how much you know and how much expertise you’ve developed. We can identify those incredible insights that seem pedestrian or mundane to you.
We’re a thoughtful sounding board. We absorb what you throw at us and bounce back questions, ideas, and suggestions that will sharpen your thinking. The next time you speak with a journalist or make a podcast or TV appearance, you’ll be thrilled with how naturally your answers flow from brain to mouth, and it’s because you took this time to practice and refine them.
You can benefit from all the best practices in the ghostwriter’s arsenal.
The most important thing we can do as ghostwriters is authentically capture your message in your voice. These thoughts, insights, and ideas are uniquely yours. They need to be shared as such.
However, you can still benefit from leveraging best practices from experienced writers who have seen what works well. That doesn’t mean your work will be cookie-cutter or follow a template. It can, however, improve by implementing best practices in areas like formatting and structure. Similarly, we might know what kinds of stories or ideas resonate well with audiences at the moment, and as a result, we might suggest emphasizing your stories that are likely to have the same impact.
We can help you make your best possible impression. Using lessons learned elsewhere doesn’t make your ideas any less yours. Neither does using a ghostwriter, by the way.
Ghostwriters can audit your existing content and leverage it in new ways.
In addition to interacting with you to produce new content, ghostwriters can also audit all your existing output, mining it for fresh ideas or content worth repurposing and re-sharing. We’ll be doing this regardless to engross ourselves in your manner of communication and better understand your voice. By consuming your podcast appearances, books, newsletters, or internal and external communications, we can develop and organize an inventory of insights that even you may have overlooked.
You’ve made many salient points in the past. So many you've probably forgotten them. And if you've forgotten them, so has your audience. It’s important to amplify those points and broaden their reach. Too often, we assume that because we’ve said something before, we’ll be fatiguing our audience if we say it again. In most cases, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
We can help you play the hits.
Ghostwriters offer a second set of eyes on content feedback.
Once the work is published, your ghostwriter will serve as a second set of eyes on audience feedback, carefully examining the questions and comments for future subject matter ideas and areas for improvement. This interaction is great for pure engagement, but we can also learn about the audience’s preferences and desires. What do they want to hear more about? What are their pain points?
With that feedback in hand, we’ve got incredible momentum to add to your archive of content in ways that will resonate with readers and further forge a connection with them. Now, we can do that consistently. As noted above, consistency is key.
ThoughtLede provides thought leadership ghostwriting services for busy executives, working conscientiously to capture your voice and deliver your message. We care deeply about your authenticity and bringing your insights to market precisely as you intended. Get in touch today to learn more about our executive ghostwriting services.
You have so much expertise to offer. Let us help you share it.