Ghost Writers In The Sky

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I can’t believe how far back ghostwriting goes – who knew?  We’re all used to today’s celebrities, CEO’s, and public figures who can’t spare the time to write their own books or speeches, and who hire ghostwriters.  (In fact, publishing companies sometimes purposely associate a book with a well known person to make it more marketable.)  As a professional ghost blogger, I am an avid reader about all forms and styles of ghost writing.  The more I read, the more interesting material I uncover.

Composer Wolfgang Mozart, I learned, was paid to ghostwrite music for wealthy patrons.  Come to think about it, that fact was brought out in the movie “Amadeus”.

An absolutely fascinating tidbit I just learned is that romance novelist V.C. Andrews’ estate hired a ghostwriter.  The assignment: to continue writing novels in Andrews’ style after her death!  The readers just didn’t want there to ever be a final chapter, I guess…

It’s fun to learn about all these things, but blogging is much more in the here and now.  The mission of a ghost blogger like me is to market your business.  Your business blog performs a very practical and very important function:  it helps customers find your business.  And they find it, not in the sky, but right here on the Web.

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Ask Not What Your Business Blog Can Do For You

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We ghost bloggers are fairly new to the business scene, but, as I’ve mentioned in earlier “Say It For You” pieces, ghostwriting has a very, very long history.  U.S. presidential speechwriters are one of the better-known examples, starting with the story I told about George Washington using Jefferson and Hamilton to craft his speeches.  I learned recently that Calvin Coolidge was the first president to hire an official, full time speechwriter.  Since then, of course, every president has had an Office of Speechwriting.  There’s even an interesting book called White House Ghosts, written by Washington reporter Robert Schlesinger, on the topic of presidential speechwriters.

I can find quite a number of interesting parallels here.  All of us remember famous lines from presidential speeches.  How about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall!” and, perhaps best-known, Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country”?  Ghost writers had a hand in creating all of these speeches. So, does that mean U.S. presidents have no influence on the speeches they deliver? Far from it!  Michael Gerson, talking about one of the speeches he and his team wrote for Bush, said “Our concern is not to write a good speech, but to write a good speech that is also his speech.” Richard Goodwin, speechwriter for LBJ, said his job was to “illuminate the president’s inward beliefs”.

I’ve said this before:  Your ghost blogger needs to pick up on your unique corporate style in order to speak your message in your voice to your customers. Your blog helps drive business to your website.  When your customers arrive, they find – YOU!  Now you have a chance to shine.  No longer is it a matter of what your blog did for you – it’s what can you do for your new customers! Meanwhile, behind the scenes, your ghost blogger will be basking in unseen and unheard glory, having Said It For You.

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From Meat to Mustard

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A professional writer myself, I derive special pleasure out of a nicely turned phrase, a “word tidbit”, if you will.  And, while driving to an appointment with one of my clients the other day, I caught a really nice word tidbit on the radio.  The station was offering a New York Times news story about rising food prices. Now, inflation is a really serious subject, and I’m as concerned as the next person about spending more and more hard earned dollars at the grocery store. So, I didn’t like hearing news about food costing more and more. But I did like the way in which the reporter delivered that news.   Shoppers are going, he announced, “from meat to mustard”.  Wow! Four small words, and what a punch those words packed!  As much as I enjoy mustard on my meat, the image his words produced of my needing to eat mustard in place of meat really drove home the message about food prices.
The rest of the ride, I reflected how big a difference skillful use of language can make in every aspect of life.  In particular, since I was on my way to see a business owner, I thought about how, sometimes, in doing business, we get so tied up in manufacturing a good, marketable product, and in serving our customers’ needs, that we forget how much help the right words can be. In fact, when it comes to web-based communication, words, along with pictures, are a business’ only tools.
And that – that’s what a ghost blogger does for a living – works with words, turns phrases, tries to find words with the Wow Factor to “Say It For You”!  

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