But A Ghost Blogger Can PLAY One!

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Alan Alda, as he’d be the first to admit, never went to medical school (although he did address the 1979 commencement at Harvard Medical School).  But as Hawkeye on M.A.S.H., Alda helped millions of viewers understand the crucially important role medics play in wartime.  Pat Dempsey, playing Grey’s Anatomy’s Doctor Derek Shepherd, at least has four sisters who are real-life doctors.   Perhaps that explains why, without any medical training himself, Demsey is able to very effectively convey to viewers the realities of hospital medicine. Andy Griffith, through his role on Matlock, offered a glimpse into the legal world without ever having attended law school.  All three actors, like many of their colleagues in the acting profession, successfully helped viewers identify in a favorable way, not with themselves and their own profession, but with the character they’d adopted, and with that character’s profession.

While the doctors or lawyers who have credentials for real-life practice bring healing and legal recourse to hundreds, even thousands of patients and clients, few have the potential for their message to reach millions.  In a sense, the actors are their “ghost” portrayers, reaching out to viewers on their behalf, offering valuable information and breeding respect for the professions of law and medicine.

As a ghost writer and ghost blogger, I’m sometimes asked how we do it.  How can we ghost bloggers write for business owners and professional clients without being trained in those fields ourselves?  It takes two things:  research and good hearing.  A ghost blogger uses a ‘third ear” to understand what the client wants to say and to pick up on the client’s unique slant on his/her business or profession. 

In these days of Internet commerce, marketing is more and more about search engine optimization driving business to websites than about billboards and advertising.  Blogging can be an absolutely indispensable tool.  But, since web rankings are based on frequency of posting new content, often business owners and professionals, even if they enjoy writing blogs, lack the time to keep up enough frequency and recency to win the Internet search.

So, while I may not be a doctor, a lawyer, an auto mechanic, a telephone technology expert, a travel guide, a gourmet chef, or a  tax expert, as a ghost blogger, I can still play one! 

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Ghost Bloggers Pied Pipers In Reverse

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As a professional writer, I derive pleasure out of a nicely turned phrase, a “word tidbit”, if you will.  In an earlier blog,  I shared one nice tidbit used by The New York Times to report on high food prices.  Then, just the other day, I read another really great word tidbit in the Journal of FInancial Planning (I retired from a financial planning career, but still keep up on continuing education).

A short item about affluent investors’ loyalty to their original financial planners was titled “Advisors No Pied Pipers”.  The writer presented a survey showing that only 33% of clients would follow their advisor to another firm. I confess I hadn’t thought about the pied piper story since grade school, but this title immediately brought into my mind a picture of the Pied Piper, bells on his pointed cap and pipe in his mouth, prancing ahead of an army of rats, leading them away from the town.  In just four words, the writer was able to make me think about the whole story.  And, using just the right words to evoke an image, I reflected, is exactly what we ghost bloggers try to do! 

In the case of blogging, of course, I’m after the reverse Pied-Piper effect, trying to lead customer to my client’s website.  Through search engine optimization techniques, including using key words, posting frequently, and providing relevant content, the blog “pipes” itself towards the top of the search list and then “pipes” customers right to the website  After all, when it comes to web-based communication, words, along with pictures, are a business’ only “music”.

Closing my copy of the Journal of Financial Planning, I thought: Now, that’s what a ghost blogger does for a living – makes music in order to make business happen.  Please excuse me while I sew bells onto my cap!

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Befitting Bloggery

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I’m fond of  thinking of ghost blogging as an art, but, truth be told, there’s quite a bit of science to it as well. Part of the science has to do with targeting an audience.  By that I mean your blog can’t be all things to all people, any more than your business can be all things to everybody.  The blog must be targeted towards the specific type of customers you want and who will want to do business with you.  Everything about your blog should be tailor-made for that customer  – the words you use, how technical you get, how sophisticated your approach, the title of each blog entry – all of it.

Science comes into play in another sense as well.  As your ghost blogger, I’ll be using, and repeating, “search terms” to help search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN “notice” your blogs and move them higher and higher on their list. In other words, your blog becomes a marketing tool to achieve SEO, or search engine optimization.

Earlier, I wrote about blogs bringing you to “top of mind” status with customers. Well, in the same concert program booklet where I found the specialty license plate ad I was writing about, I saw a second advertisement.  Very interesting, this one, called “Make Every Day A Great Performance”.  Talk about targeting an audience –  this ad is printed in a symphony concert program book, remember, and every word of that full-page ad had to do with performances and with music.  The ad was’nt about music at all – it was promoting a retirement living facility!  ”  My compliments to the ad agency or whoever created that page! It was designed to appeal to the type of customer they knew would be seeing that ad.

Your company blog is definitely not an ad and should not sound like one.  What it is, though, is an invitation to learn more about your field of expertise and about the kinds of products and services you have to offer.  Everything about your blog needs to be targeted for your audience.  And everything about my work as a ghost blogger,  both the science and the art of it, must be targeted to Say It For You – to the right people!

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What’s On Your Blog Bumper?

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As a ghost blogger, I’m always alert for interesting ways in which words are used. Leafing through my program book at the symphony concert, I noticed an ad for Arts Trust license plates.  You’ve no doubt seen these specialty plates that can be ordered through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.  The extra fee you pay for a specialty plate supports a not-for-profit organization of your choice.  The Arts Trust plate carries a colorful logo and just three words, “celebrate the Arts”.

Thinking about this for a moment, I realized there’s not much room on a license plate for more than a very few words.  And, when you’re driving behind another vehicle, glancing at the license plate, you don’t have a lot of time for reading.  But, there you are, in traffic, with the arts the last thing on your mind, and suddenly, even if just for a moment, you are thinking about the arts!

In a way, that’s precisely the effect you want your company blogs to have.  Your potential customer is searching for something, scanning various pages ‘s relevant, it’s about what he/she is looking for.  In just an instant, you and your company are top of mind for that customer.  The blog, just like a speciality license plate, is there to seize the momen€ and Say It For You.  You want that customer to”drive on” – right to your company website!

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Enuf Is Enuf In Blogs

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When it comes to spelling, we Americans appear to fall into four camps.  First we have the functionally illiterate (around 30 million of us) who lack basic writing skills, with spelling being the least of the problems.  At the opposite end we have the reformers, the ones lobbying Congress to simplify English spelling.  (At spelling bee sites, you’ll see reformers carrying signs with slogans such as ‘I’m thru with through”, or “Enuf is Enuf, but ‘enough is too much!”   A third group just doesn’t care, devoting no thought to spelling issues.  The last, and apparently the largest group, may not be spelling experts, but they admire and celebrate spelling mastery (if producing and attending movies, plays, and TV programs about spelling bee heroes is any indication). As a ghost blogger whose stock in trade is words, I was fascinated to learn that a Broadway musical I’d attended last year, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”,  ran for more than 1100 performances around the country.

Whatever your position on spelling, that reformer sign motto is worth remembering when it comes to your company blogs.  Blog audiences are scanners, not readers, by and large.  As your ghost blogger, I need to make your blog serve as your invitation to come on in (to your website) and join the party.  The blog offers just enough information to entice the searcher to visit the website to find out more.  I’m nono spelling reformer, but I know a great line when I see one.  When it comes to corporate blogging, enuf is enuf!

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