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No Time to Blog? Hire a Ghostwriter

You know you need a blog, but you don’t have the time to write regularly. Does this sound like you? Then maybe it’s time to hire a ghostwriter.

One of the top reasons people don’t blog is due to a lack of time. Sales representatives, business owners, virtually any business professional can benefit from hiring a ghostwriter.

Do you need help creating quality content? Click here to contact me.

Ghostwriters don’t just write novels. Today they write blog posts, eBooks, white papers, social media posts, emails, video scripts, and other content to fill out your marketing strategy and build your position as a thought leader.

But don’t worry, working with a ghostwriter doesn’t have to be difficult or break the bank. If you know how to collaborate with a ghostwriter, you can get the most out of your investment.

Working with a ghostwriter doesn't have to be difficult or break the bank. #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

Ways to Collaborate with a Ghostwriter

As a ghostwriter, I’ve written for clients in fields varying from social business, inside sales, insurance, marketing, artificial intelligence, even some content for the food and beverage industry. There are writers out there who are knowledgeable in your industry and open to ghostwriting.

Collaborating with a ghostwriter shouldn’t be hard. Here are a few ways you can seamlessly work with a ghostwriter to get your content created.

  1. Have the writer come up with questions to interview your team and create a blog post from their replies.
  2. Deliver them a list of ideas.
  3. Provide a theme and leave it up to the writer on the particular topic—just make sure they clear it with you before starting on a 1,000-word blog post.
  4. Turn a podcast into an article. If you’re more of a talker than a writer this is an excellent option. Not only does it give you the material for the writer to go off of, but it gives you another outlet to share your message.
  5. Write the majority of your blog post and hire a ghostwriter to copy edit—refining your writing and filling out the content.

3 Tips for Working with a Ghostwriter

Share Feedback – This could likely go unsaid, but once you have the copy from your writer, go through it and tweak it to make it your own. To build a long-lasting relationship with writers, send them your final edits, so they have a better idea of how to write for you in the future. Sharing feedback will make your and their job easier going forward.

Clarify Goals – Be clear in your goals and every detail of what you want and don’t want. There is no magical mind reader tool available, yet anyway. Consider preparing an outline to organize your thoughts. If there are any sources you don’t want to include in the content, be sure to note them. An outline depicting your core objectives will help to secure a quality product faster.

Encourage Creativity – Give the writer some creative leeway. Many of the best articles I’ve written as a ghostwriter has stemmed from when I’m given only a title and a keyword. Once the writer has an understanding of your objectives and voice, let them run with the project. The details should come together nicely.

Remember that the experts may be more expensive. Sometimes a general writer is your best option. A good ghostwriter will conduct comprehensive research into the topic they’re writing about and can save you money.

How can a ghostwriter help you to build your #brand? #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

The majority of my monthly revenue as a writer comes from ghostwriting for busy professionals. If you’re ready to get your time back and still have articles with your byline, then email me to discuss a plan for building up your thought leadership position with a blog.

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How Website Load Time on Mobile Affects Your Facebook Page’s Reach

Earlier this week Facebook announced that they’ve once again changed the algorithm delineating which content to show in users’ News Feeds. Content shared from websites with slow load times on mobile will decrease in views over the coming months.

“During the coming months we’re making an update to News Feed to show people more stories that will load quickly on mobile and fewer stories that might take longer to load, so they can spend more time reading the stories they find relevant.”

While this should fire you up to check on your own site’s load time, don’t forget about the OPC (Other People’s Content) that you’re sharing. If you share a lot of OPC from a slow moving website, your Page’s overall reach will begin to lessen.

Facebook went on to say that the user’s “current network connection” will also be considered. If the user has a slower network connection, and the web page URL you’re sharing has a long load time, it will appear lower in their News Feed. Obviously, you don’t have control over their network connection, so the focus is on the time it takes your website to load that page on mobile.

Testing and Improving Your Pages’ Loading Times

The first thing you’ll need to do is check mobile load time. Facebook provided a list of Best Practices to Improve Mobile Site Performance that included a few options for evaluating current load time. Below is an example of the information you’ll receive on PageSpeed. This tool was easy to use and very self-explanatory. It even provides suggestions on how to optimize your page further.

I also tried a few of the other tools on Facebook’s list. Instead of an overall grade, many gave me specific load times and were honestly overwhelming with the amount of data provided. Those tools are more for a developer, while the data from PageSpeed offered suggestions I could follow through on myself with a little bit of digging.

As a site owner, this may feel frustrating, but looking at it from a user perspective this algorithm change makes sense. Improving your website for a better mobile experience is necessary in today’s world, especially if you want to reach your audience on Facebook. According to Venture Beat, 56.5% of users only log in to Facebook from mobile. Another eye-opening data point – there are over 1.74 billion mobile monthly active users on Facebook. If you don’t speed up your pages load time over the next few months be prepared to see your Facebook referral traffic fall.

If you don’t improve your loading time over the next few months, be prepared to see your Facebook referral traffic drop. Now more than ever before is the time to consider the user experience of your website.

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How to Educate & Entertain Your Prospects with Videos and Images

When it comes to building a relationship with your customers, visuals – specifically videos – are your best option. In this Social Media Day Recap, you’ll hear from various experts on how to educate and entertain your prospects with video and images while guiding them through the buyer’s journey. Read on or watch the video below to learn how your brand can build solid relationships with your audience through the use of video content.

How to Invite User-Generated Content on Snapchat

Mark Kaye, a host on the radio station 95.1 WAPE in Jacksonville, is a Snapchat influencer. During his session, he talked about how to involve your viewers and encourage them to create content. User generated content can then be used in other ways. He made a “12 days of Christmas Mash-up” by asking followers to send him one word that they like most about Christmas. He then took all of the clips and pulled them together to make a video.

Casie Shimansky from Cisco discussed their employee advocacy program. They enlist employees to conduct daily takeovers of their Snapchat. Selected employees are given the password to Cisco’s Snapchat and encouraged to post to their story. Their posts include snapshots of their days while working at Cisco, their favorite products, and more.

Focus on a Problem in Your YouTube Videos

Roberto Blake is a Designer, YouTube Creator, and Marketing Consultant. He recently hit the mark of 1,000 YouTube videos on his channel. Roberto noted how 80% of adults over 25 years old are watching videos on YouTube. To build your brand on YouTube, he recommends owning a problem.

You can look at YouTube as oversaturated, or work to own the problem or solution that your company solves. If you’re not sure what to create your videos about, Roberto recommends starting with a Twitter search of #_____problems (fill in the blank with your industry). Try to address every stage of the buyer’s journey. Create content answering your company’s FAQs to save your sales team time from answering the same questions over and over again.

How 100 Facebook Live Videos in a Month Evolved to Two a Week

Nasdaq’s Head of Social Media, Anna Gonzalez spoke about how they’re using Facebook Live in their content strategy. Their social team consists of three people, but that didn’t stop them from creating 100 videos in one month. A few other months they were pretty high up there with their video count too. They’ve scaled back now and publish about two a week, but they collected a lot of data to analyze during those high volume months.

Anna pointed out that a view is counted after three seconds of a person watching your video. Keep this in mind when analyzing your own videos. Experimentation on Facebook Live is a must, especially with their ever-changing algorithms.

Influencer Marketing and Instagram

Marketing expert Kenny Harper is Co-Founder of Rock My Image in Jacksonville. He talked about influencer marketing and how 92% of those who have worked with influencers see it as successful. To be the best influencer you can be, he says to be consistent. That doesn’t mean daily postings but stick to a schedule.

Chad Israel from Hertz Rent a Car gave real-life examples of how their brand is partnering with influencers. There doesn’t have to be an exchange of money; many influencers will collaborate on a trade if what you are offering is valuable to them. In their case, a rental car. Working with influencer Matt Pierce, Hertz invested about $3,000 in trading a car for two months. Chad said that the return on investment was about $200,000! That’s from images and video assets that the influencer created. This example showed that you don’t need a huge budget to work with influencers.

The final speaker at Social Media Day Jacksonville was Curtis Midkiff from Southwest Airlines. Previously a DJ, his entrance with a Yankees cap and Jay-Z playing in the background only made sense. Curtis reminded everyone about social listening to gauge audience sentiment. He said you need to have a plan but be flexible, adapting as necessary.

Tieing back to part one of my recaps, Carlos Gil said, “The word fun is often lost in marketing.” When creating content of any kind remember to make it enjoyable. People don’t want to see advertisements. But if you make it a pleasurable experience, they may not be so apt to jump away to the next thing online.

The word fun is often lost in marketing. - @carlosgil83 #SMDayJAX Click To Tweet

Read and/or watch part one of my Social Media Day Jacksonville Recap: Biggest Takeaway from Social Media Day Jacksonville – Video is a Major Key