How To Blow A Business Ghostwriting Assignment

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“Ghostwriting” business communications is a lucrative and satisfying writing niche that requires some special skills and the right mindset. I’ve had excellent projects writing presentations for CEOs of very large corporations, and writing trade and newsletter articles for one-person consulting shops.

What they have in common is that these projects go beyond contributing good writing — professional, grammatical, persuasive, interesting — to capturing the client’s voice. When people are familiar with a given CEO or consultant, for instance, hear those presentations or read those articles, the ghostwriter’s contribution should be transparent, leaving the client’s themes, values, and style clearly visible to the audience.

These opportunities often come along after you have already been writing for a client for a while, or as a referral from one of your new client’s colleagues. You have been recognized as a skilled and dependable writer, and the client asks if you could help them with a more personal message, whether that message is delivered to employees or investors or trainees or clients or the media.

If such an offer comes your way, recognize from the start that this is different from your previous writing projects, and make sure you don’t blow it!

5 Ways To Get It Wrong

I’ve seen good writers have big problems ghosting CEO presentations or creating good articles for small business owners. Here are five of the most common paths to problems with ghostwriting clients:

• Ghostwriting When You Only Have One Voice. Be hard-nosed with yourself about your ability to alter your style. You may be an excellent writer whose work is valued precisely because you bring an effective style to your projects. But if you can only sound like yourself, pass the ghostwriting assignments on to someone else.
• “Overfixing” the Client’s Style. There’s a balance between offering “better writing” and retaining the client’s character in the finished work. A good example: the CEO may repeat a certain phrase over and over, and as a writer you may be tempted to “fix” this by using other phrasing now and again. But you could actually be weakening the impact on the audience by removing this repetition, and it certainly will sound less like the client’s own style. You may wish the client spoke or wrote differently, but that doesn’t give you leave to dramatically alter his or her style.
• Annoying the Handlers. Not a problem with small businesses, generally, but in large corporations, there are already writers and PR types on staff. And if you are ghostwriting remarks for an executive near the top of the organization, you can be sure that someone will be serving as an intermediary between you and the executive. This is how life works at that level, and if you can’t play along nicely, don’t tackle this kind of project.
• Not Doing Your Homework. To mimic the client’s style, you need some history. If you have been working with them for a while, you may already be familiar with their pet phrases, key themes, and general style. But it is always a good idea to ask to see past presentations, articles, even memos to get a better feel for how your clients express themselves.
• Seeking Recognition For Your Great Work. Ghostwriting business communications is work for hire, and your reward is money. If you are easy to work with and produce good results, your reward is more money. If it bothers you that no one will mention that you wrote the speech or the article, don’t do this kind of work. If you cannot resist telling all your friends, or Tweeting a message to let the world know, that “That speech you see on YouTube by the CEO of XYZ Corp. was all written by me!” you really cannot call yourself a professional ghostwriter.

If you have the ability to adapt your voice to sound like your clients, and you can keep your ego in check, this can be a wonderful business to be in. It is a line of work that generates long-term relationships and lots of repeat work.

But that’s what it takes, relationships. Don’t blow the relationship with the client, and you can count on ghostwriting speeches and articles, and more, for years to come.

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