Did you know you can hire a ghost writer to take care of your blog? Finding the right blogger can be a lifesaver, freeing up your time to focus on the parts of your business you really love while still giving you all the benefits of an active blog. If you don’t like writing, have trouble keeping your blog up to date, or just don’t know what to write about, bringing a professional or freelancer on board might be just what you need. Before you take the plunge, here’s what you need to know about hiring a ghost writer for your blog:
What You Need to Know about Hiring a Blogger
You Get What You Pay For
If you’re looking for someone who’ll write a $5 blog post for you, chances are high that you’ll find plenty of options. The chances that you’ll be happy with the work? Not so high. Like just about every other product or service, you pay for quality.
When I started out as a ghost writer—with exactly one client—I was charging very low prices. Why? Because I had zero experience. I was just a girl who wanted to write for a living and whose college professor had told her she had a flair for copy. When my first client reached out and asked me about blogging services, I was totally upfront with her and told her that as long as she was okay with me learning as I went I would love to take on her photography blog. It was a learning experience and I’m happy to report that we both benefited from it. That first client is still with me, even though I’ve increased my prices considerably over the years as I’ve learned how to provide better content for my clients.
So yes, you can definitely take a chance on a newbie—it might just work out great! But someone charging low prices should be honest about where they’re at and what they can deliver. When shopping around for ghost blogging services, remember that you’ll pay more for someone with experience. Writing is a skill—and writing as if you’re someone else requires a lot of practice, flexibility, and research. Plus, for blogging you don’t just want a great writer. You also want someone with an understanding of SEO, which is a whole ‘nother skill set. Hiring the cheapest option won’t get you the results you want, and it can lead to its own set of headaches. Getting the right combination of expertise and relatability is totally worth the investment.
Use Your Ghost Writer’s Expertise…
Since you’ve invested as much as your budget will allow for professional ghost writing services, it only makes sense that you would want to take advantage of your ghost writer’s expertise. And I’m not just talking about leaving the crafting of well-worded sentences up to them. Ask them what they would recommend for things like keywords, word count, and posting frequency. Ultimately, you get the last say, but a good ghost blogger will be able to offer you sound advice on those types of details.
Keep in mind that their advice may change depending on the type of content you’re looking for. When I write up a newborn session, for instance, I’ll recommend a much shorter word count than I would if my client had ordered an informational blog post about what parents should bring to their newborn session. And that would be shorter than a step-by-step tutorial for how to take better newborn pictures at home. Why? Because I want to create outstanding content that offers value to my clients—which means offering value to their clients. And I happen to know that my clients’ clients don’t want to read a thousand-word saga about a cute and sleepy baby any more than I want to write one. Nor are they going to find much value in a post about what to wear to their photography session when the bare minimum of information has been crammed into two hundred words and they can find a much more comprehensive guide on somebody else’s site.
If you decide not to take your ghost writer’s advice, realize that they’ll do the best they can with what they’re given, but the results may not be as spectacular. No matter how good they are, they’ll have a much harder time increasing your site traffic on five hundred words per month than they will than if they can divide up your five thousand words a month budget into multiple blog posts of varying length each week.
…In Combination With Your Expertise
While your ghost writer can bring a lot to the table, don’t forget that you’re the expert in your industry and your blogger will welcome your guidance and direction. That doesn’t mean you should micromanage the writing process—no professional writer will thank you for that—but it does mean you should provide an outline for your posts and make yourself available to answer questions.
If you’ve requested a long-form (higher word count) post on how to plan a cake smash, for instance, let your ghost blogger know what points you want them to touch on and that you want them to include a link to the bakery where you order your cakes. If you fail to provide any guidance, you may end up being bombarded with emails from your at-a-loss ghost blogger as they try to come up with enough specifics to write a post. That, or they’ll do some research online and scrounge the rest of what they need from your website. This can cost you more, if they charge for research time, and you may end up with a blog post that provides very general tips and advice, rather than an informative and detailed guide that’s specific to your studio.
Even for shorter blog posts, the more details you can provide the better. I always love when I get helpful tidbits like “The blue blanket in the third photo is mom’s baby blanket that her grandmother made” or “These photos are actually from two separate sessions. Baby was really fussy the first time so we decided to reschedule. Emphasize that our newborn shoots are always baby-led.” Little details like these can make the difference between a bland post and an engaging one that sounds like the person who did the shoot actually wrote the blog.
Give Your Ghost Writer Feedback
Your ghost writer wants you to be happy with their work. But the relationship between business owner and ghost blogger is like any other relationship. It can take some time for you to get to know each other well enough that your blogger can imitate your style. If the first couple of posts feel too sedate, let your writer know that you have a super gregarious personality and that they’re good to go wild with the exclamation points and put words in all caps for EMPHASIS!!!!
Writers can be a sensitive bunch, so keep your feedback constructive, and let them know what they’re doing right as well as what you’d like them to change so they can give you the best results possible. And remember, constructive feedback is about helping your ghost writer achieve the voice you want. It’s not about nit-picking. If there’s an occasional typo, realize that’s only to be expected from someone who’s been staring at a screen for 8 hours, studying every word on your website so they can sound like you. The gracious thing to do may be to just correct it yourself. On the other hand, if their work is consistently riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, it may be a sign that you need a different blogger.
Remember, It Takes Time and Experimentation
If you’ve hired a ghost writer for your blog, there are probably specific results you want to see from your investment. Maybe you’re hoping to boost your SEO. Maybe you want to increase traffic to your website, get more client engagement, or book an additional client each month. Blogging is a long-haul kind of thing, and it can be six months to a year (or longer) before you start seeing results. Scrapping the whole thing six months in because you haven’t seen results yet is a waste of the time and money you’ve invested into something that could have helped your business given a bit more time.
It’s a good idea to keep track of your primary goal for blogging, but remember to be patient and give your blog the time it needs to work. It’s also important to pay attention to other changes you notice along the blogging journey. Maybe your goal is to appear on the 1st page of Google results for a specific keyword. When you hired your ghost blogger you were on page 6, and now you’re on page 4. You haven’t hit your goal, but things are moving in the right direction. Or maybe you’ve noticed more client referrals, because people are stoked to have their session on your blog and have been sending friends to check it out. Maybe you haven’t noticed a lot of new business, but website traffic is up because you post great photography tips and parenting info. It’s up to you to decide whether these results are worth the money you’re putting in, and to do the detective work to figure out whether trends like these are due to blogging or something else. Changes like these can be valuable, and you want to be aware of the many different ways in which blogging might be supporting your business.
And Blogging is Not a Complete SEO Strategy
There’s no question that blogging can be super helpful for SEO. But it’s only one part of the puzzle. Hiring a blogger as your entire SEO strategy is like buying photo editing software and expecting it to create great pictures for you. Yes, of course you need high-quality editing software to produce beautiful images, but that editing software isn’t going to pose your subjects, take classes in newborn safety, set up lighting equipment, or make clients feel at home in your studio.
Same thing with blogging. Hiring a blogger and then neglecting website optimization, keyword research, and social media posts is going to produce disappointing results. Not to mention a blogger who may decide not to work with you again once they find themselves under pressure to manage your entire SEO campaign with a weekly blog post as their only tool. So, be fair to your business—and your ghost blogger—by putting blogging into perspective: as an important tool that has to be used in conjunction with others if it’s going to build your business.
Should I Hire a Ghost Blogger?
Hiring a ghost writer for your blog can be a lifesaver. Outsourcing your blog can free up a significant chunk of your time and mental energy, give you better search engine results, and provide free value to your clients. And when you know up front what to expect, you can create a long-term, beneficial relationship with your blogger based on mutual understanding and respect. The decision to hire writing help is one only you can make—but I can tell you that if you keep these need-to-knows in mind, you’re likely to find a great fit and be able to look back and say, “Hiring a blogger was one of the best things I did for my business!”
