Archives for June 2016

The Ghosts and the Unseen: Is Ghostwriting Ethical?

June 21, 2016 by Patti Podnar

A long, long time ago (give or take a few thousand years), the orator Antiphon began writing speeches for courtroom plaintiffs. Was that the first known case of ghostwriting? Possibly — although some would argue that the oldest example is the Bible itself. Except for the 10 Commandments, I can’t recall reading about God actually sitting down with tablet and chisel. So the Bible may well be the very first example of “as told to” authorship. But there are hundreds of examples throughout history — some of them well-known, and some not so well-known:

Citizens living in ancient Athens hired Lysias to write speeches that persuasively extolled their positions.
Julius Caesar used ghostwriters to produce Commentaries.
Many of Nero’s speeches were actually written by Seneca.
Alexander Hamilton wrote George Washington’s farewell address.
Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs were also written with the help of a ghostwriter — Mark Twain.
The Monroe Doctrine was penned by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.
JFK worked with a ghostwriter on Profiles in Courage, which went on to win a Pulitzer.
Many of the most beloved children’s books of the 1900s were the creation of one man, Edward Stratemeyer. While he originally used pseudonyms so that he could market his work under different “brands” — like The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew — the demand grew to the point where he could no longer keep up on his own, so he hired ghostwriters. He developed a template of sorts — like insisting that every chapter end with a cliffhanger — and would send that template along with a synopsis of the story idea off to a writer, who would take the idea and turn it into a marketable product.
In an outright (and seemingly unashamed) admission of working with a ghostwriter on his memoirs, Ronald Reagan said, “I hear it’s a good book; I should read it some time.”

And the number of celebrity books written by ghostwriters is too high to count.

As I write this, I can hear my mom whispering in my ear: “Just because everybody else is doing it doesn’t make it right.” And she’d be right. Fortunately, that’s not my only argument. Here are the rest:

Deception is a matter of perception.

I was absolutely flabbergasted when I came across this conversation on inbound.org and quickly found myself in the minority. After a great deal of pondering, I think the reason I don’t see ghostwriting as deceptive is because it never in a million years would have occurred to me that “thought leaders” and “influencers” were writing their own content. And I was shocked that so many marketers did think that. I wondered if my insider’s perspective was speaking so loudly that I couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, so I conducted a (completely unscientific) Facebook poll to find out what my other friends thought. All but one respondent said that they always assumed most of that content was written by someone else. The one exception said, “It depends,” but didn’t elaborate, so I’m not sure what to do with that one. Regardless, perhaps the feeling of deception is dependent on your expectations. If you never thought these leaders were developing their own content, there’s no feeling of deception.

An honest look at our culture indicates that we don’t mind ghostwriting when we know about it. Take presidential speeches, for example. Presidents are supposed to be the “thought leaders” for the entire country, yet no one even blinks at the knowledge that someone else writes their speeches. Business executives? I can only speak from my own experience, but I’m honestly shocked at the idea that anybody would think they write their own speeches. They’re too busy focusing on things like EPS, EBIT, profit margin, market share, etc.

You can be brilliant without knowing how to write.

From the time I was a baby writer fresh out of college, I was writing for executives who, while absolutely brilliant from a business perspective, couldn’t get their thoughts on paper. What they said when we sat down and talked bore no resemblance whatsoever to what they wrote. It wasn’t even the same message. And that’s OK! Writing is a skill just like anything else. I don’t do my own taxes, but that doesn’t make me a lousy business owner. It makes me a smart business owner, because I do what I’m good at and pay other people to do the rest. So my expectation is that smart leaders have a pro do their writing while they concentrate on running the business.

Titles don’t bestow perfection.

Some argue that, since ghostwriters aren’t “experts,” their writing is less credible. While it may be true that ghostwriters are more likely to make mistakes (which is one of the main reasons it’s so important for the person whose name will be on the content to read it before publishing), just because someone has earned the moniker of “thought leader” or “influencer,” that doesn’t mean they’ve been sprinkled with fairy dust that ensures they’ll never again make a mistake. I have caught mistakes in material sent to me by “experts,” and I’ve had situations where the source articles they sent me were highly questionable, so I had to find my own backup sources to keep them from looking bad. Experts and thought leaders make mistakes just like anyone else, so let’s not put them on too high a pedestal.

Writers aren’t helpless victims.

One of the complaints I hear is that ghostwriting exploits writers. I call BS. I’m a big girl. I charge more for ghostwriting than I do for bylined work, because those bylines have a tangible monetary value. I sell a product and, if I negotiate a bad deal, that’s on me. Nobody else. The one thing I do struggle with is that I can’t use my ghostwritten work in my portfolio. Again, though, that’s on me. No need for anyone else to worry their pretty little head about my not getting credit.

Brands exist.

Not only do brands exist, they’re everywhere. We even talk about “personal branding” and “the brand of YOU.” So it’s disingenuous to pretend we don’t know that a brand name, logo, etc., signifies endorsement more than hands-on involvement. When I board an airplane, I don’t assume that the CEO engineered the plane’s design or that he will be flying the plane. (And, if I did, I’d get off! ) I assume that the CEO built an organization, and that the organization recruited and retained experts who knew how to design and/or fly the plane. Similarly, I don’t assume that Michael Jordan actually designs the shoes that bear his name, and I don’t assume that celebrity chefs create all of the recipes used in their packaged food products. I don’t even assume that Olympic athletes actually eat Wheaties. I do, however, consider the use of their name to be a stamp of approval for both substance and style. Like ghostwriting, licensing and celebrity product endorsements have been around for a very long time, and I struggle to see a significant difference.

With the exception of academic writing, which I do consider to be cheating, I really don’t understand why so many people find ghostwriting to be unethical. But I’m open to being convinced. What do you think?

Is your content successful? Maybe…if you know what “success” looks like.

June 13, 2016 by Patti Podnar

Conventional wisdom drives me nuts. Far too often, it’s accepted without question. Something doesn’t really have to be true; you just have to get enough people to say it’s true: Dogs see only black and white. You can’t swim for an hour after eating. And you can identify a piece of successful content by the number of shares and likes it has.

That last bit of conventional wisdom has been bugging me for a while. The problem is that likes and shares don’t necessarily correlate with conversions and sales. Nonetheless, some would insist that a blog post that got 1000 shares and 0 conversions was more successful than a blog post that got 0 shares and 1000 conversions. And, in my opinion, that logic is just a few sugars shy of a sweet tea. So I decided to do a little detective work. Here’s what I learned:

Soft metrics may be relevant, if they’re tied to business goals.

Adwin Gerritsen, writing for spotONvision, made an excellent point: If soft metrics have no connection to the bottom line, why bother with content marketing at all? Even I can’t argue with that logic! Still, though, it takes us back to where we started. Soft/social metrics, to be meaningful, have to be tied to business goals. The kicker is that you have to understand how they’re tied to business goals and why it matters.

According to Gerritsen, there are three business goals that matter when it comes to content marketing: finding customers, keeping customers, and growing customers. Here are some ways soft metrics tie in to those goals:

Page views and likes

Finding customers is a two-way street. Sure, you want to find customers, but you also want them to find you — you know, that whole awareness thing. The more awareness your brand generates, the bigger your pool of potential customers becomes. Metrics like pages views, bounce rates, and likes are good indicators of awareness.

Shares and comments

Have you ever watched a cat toy with a mouse? Or been fishing and felt those first few tentative nibbles? That’s engagement. It’s the I-think-I’m-interested-but-haven’t-made-my-mind-up-yet phase. And that engagement can be indirectly measured by things like shares, Tweets, etc. The more potential customers comment, share, Tweet, etc., the more engaged they become. And there’s even a bonus benefit: All of that sharing spreads awareness among other prospective customers.

Proactive advocacy (i.e., free advertising)

Remember when Tom Sawyer convinced his buddies that painting that fence was so incredibly awesome that they stood in line waiting for their turn to do his chore? Yeah, that’s advocacy: When your customers do the hard work for you. You can track this by monitoring things like testimonials and mentions on social media.

But don’t stop there.

If you prefer hard numbers, take heart: It’s definitely doable (if not always easy). According to the folks at Buffer, you need to follow these steps:

Identify your goals: Get people to subscribe to your newsletter, sign up for email notifications, download a PDF, etc.
Measure your success: How many people subscribed, signed up, downloaded that PDF, etc.?
Assign a monetary value to each of your goals: Some people focus on the lifetime value of a customer, others on average ticket, others on conversion rate, etc.
Calculate the cost of achieving those goals: Sure, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are free, but you have to consider the cost of your time (or the time of the person you’re paying to do it for you). And if you’re paying for things like social media ads and premium services, don’t forget to include those costs as well.
Do the math: The commonly accepted calculation for ROI is (Return – Investment)/Investment.

Now, far be it from me to question Buffer, but I’d change the order around a bit. It seems to me that calculating ROI ahead of time (even if it’s just an estimate) is critical to knowing which goals you should focus on. You can always go back and recalculate with hard numbers later.

The bottom line? Yes, you can use social metrics to measure the success of your content. But you have to thoroughly understand the whole cause-and-effect relationship for it to be meaningful.

And then there’s this: What good is the ROI going to do you in a vacuum? Do you have to know what your ROI should be, in a perfect world? Or does it only matter that it’s better than the ROI of traditional marketing? What do you think?

Rewards and incentives for freelance writers: the good, the bad, and the ugly

June 3, 2016 by Patti Podnar

Some of my best topic ideas come from questions I read on other forums, in particular LinkedIn and inbound.org. They serve kind of like customer service/help desks, offering insight into what people are wondering about or struggling with.

This particular post was inspired by a discussion on inbound.org, where someone asked about the best ways to reward and incentivize freelance writers. First, kudos for realizing that a good professional writer is worth holding on to.

But it got me thinking…what should brands do to hang on to a gem of a writer?

In a lot of ways, it’s not that different from incentivizing and rewarding employees — you just have to tweak those best practices a little bit to take into account that freelancers aren’t really employees.

These are my top suggestions:

Get real about pay.

There’s one thing all brands need to understand about freelancers: It’s very easy for us to say, “No, thank you,” and move on.

We don’t have to worry about benefits and pension accounts, we don’t have to reroute the best way to work, we don’t have to move our kids to a different daycare because the current one will now be completely out of the way, we don’t have to spend six months as “that new person in marketing,” we don’t have to say goodbye to friends, etc.

We simply say, “No, thank you,” and fill up our schedules with clients who pay better.

It may help to think of freelancers as business owners rather than employees. It’s not about loyalty; it’s about business acumen. You can’t turn down higher-paying work in favor of lower-paying work and still stay in business. Would you?

Base incentives on criteria that make sense.

When it comes to content marketing, most people seem to think that a post’s success can only be measured by social metrics — page views, shares, likes, etc. And, if your company makes most of its money from ad revenue, that makes sense: The more eyeballs a piece of content attracts, the more money you make.

But if you sell a product or service, what matters is conversions. Offering bonuses based on shares and likes can actually backfire.

Let’s say you sell safety equipment (personal protective equipment) for the plumbing industry. I can’t imagine a lot of plumbing business owners or their procurement managers sitting around on Facebook clicking the “like” button for a post about safety equipment. It’s just not the kind of content people get excited about sharing.

So if I were being compensated based on shares and likes, I’d write something with more popular appeal, like “How ‘Plumber Pants’ (you know what I mean) Got to Be a Thing.” Even if that article went viral, it would be unlikely to lead to a sale.

On the other hand, an article about the newest OSHA regulations might generate no shares/likes at all — but it might motivate a dozen businesses to order the equipment they need to get up to speed. To be effective, rewards have to be linked to business objectives.

It’s also crucial to think about unintended consequences — when you accidentally incentivize the wrong behavior. I read an article recently about a major prepared food company whose customers had been finding insect parts in their frozen vegetables. So they started giving employees bonuses for finding them. Not a bad idea, but it worked a little too well — employees started bringing insect parts in from home so they could “find” them.

There are always people who will try to game the system, especially if they already feel like they’re underpaid. That’s one of the nice things about goals that are linked to business objectives — even if somebody does try to game the system, you still win.

Offer a byline.

If you’re not a professional writer, it may have never occurred to you that a byline has a monetary value.

It’s free advertising. It boosts your SERP rankings. It builds your portfolio and gives your completed work a second life as marketing material.

It’s important enough that I offer a discount to clients who will give me a byline and a short bio that links to my website.

Ghostwriting definitely has its place — if you’re trying to establish a CEO’s thought leadership, for example — but I strongly encourage you to ask yourself if it would really cost you anything to give your freelancer a byline. If you decide that attributing the article to someone else is a business imperative, at least consider giving the writer permission to use the article in a portfolio or to show prospective clients as a writing sample.

Offer to write a recommendation or testimonial.

As with bylines, recommendations and testimonials have a tangible value in that they help freelance writers attract new clients. Write a glowing referral that the writer can put on his website and LinkedIn profile. And make it specific — explain in detail what makes the writer so awesome; don’t just write “Great to work with.”

Refer them to your network.

Referring a freelancer is very different from referring a permanent employee, because almost all freelancers work with multiple clients — so no hoarding! You probably wouldn’t think twice about referring a painter or roofer who did an outstanding job, so why not do the same with a freelancer writer?

Again, think of them as business owners: You’re not giving a resource away, you’re sending a deserving entrepreneur new business.

Give them first shot at the best projects.

One very effective way to reward your best writers is to give them “first right of refusal.”

Whether it’s a tiered system or a personal email, it’s a huge incentive. Nobody likes getting beat out by a writer with half the skill just because they didn’t happen to be online at the right moment.

I would suggest, however, that you not base it on customer reviews. Those are always skewed to the negative — people like to complain when something doesn’t work out right. Exceptional work might motivate someone to post a review, but “good” work often flies under the radar.

Make rewards personal.

People are different. What one person sees as a valuable reward might hold no value at all for another.

I, for instance, am an introvert with noise issues. Concert tickets — even to my favorite artist — would be more stressful than motivating.

A weekend away? Forget it. I have three young children and no one to leave them with.

A couple of bottles of fine wine and a box of filet mignon? How high do you want me to jump?

Incentives that are personalized mean a lot more than those that aren’t — partly because the recipient might actually enjoy the reward, but also because a personalized reward shows you care enough to find out what would make that particular writer happy.

Freelance writers aren’t that special (OK, maybe we are…but we’re not a different species). Take what you already know about effective recognition programs, and modify it for people who are business owners instead of employees. Pay them fairly, make sure any incentive program makes sense, and never forget that things like bylines, testimonials, and referrals have a tangible value.