Are you a small business owner? How many hats do you where every single week?
As a small business owner myself, I know how easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking I can do everything myself. Whatever task you have to do will only take a few minutes … think about all the time it would take to find and train someone, and it simply seems easier to do the job yourself, right?
Yet 5 minutes here and five minutes there quickly add up to huge chunks of your productive time.
So I learned long ago that if I let other professionals do what they do best, I’ll have more time to do what I do best. It’s a win-win situation.
However, sometimes it’s difficult to decide what those things are. What should you let others do for you? What should you attempt to do yourself?
Let’s take blogging for instance.
I met a psychotherapist about six months ago and sat down with her for coffee. We talked about her business and how she wanted to grow. She only had a few clients, but wanted to expand it into a six figure practice that not only met with people one on one in her office, but also connected with people around the world through Skype and also through an online program she was developing. We talked about blogging and how it could help her grow her network.
Dig Deeper: Content Writing For Top Performance
Then she talked it over with other people in her industry. They convinced her that a blog should be personal in nature, and that if she wanted to grow her online presence and connect with people, she should do the blogging herself. After all, no one knows her business quite like she does; she should be the one that writes.
The problem is:
- She’s not a writer – writing a simple 200 word blog post could literally take her a half day or more
- She doesn’t have time – she’s busy meeting with the clients she does have, and developing the program she hopes to bring to people through her online platform
Not everyone is a writer. Not everyone understands how to develop a persona around who you are and what your business offers.
Yet ghost writing has been around as long as people have written articles and books.
A true ghost writer understands how to dig deep and learn all about what you want to say.
A true ghost blogger also understands how to dig deep and develop the right content that will not only attract your potential client, but also reach out in such a way that it sounds like it’s coming from you.
A ghost blogger is someone that writes content for you, posts as you, and takes on the persona you are trying to develop for your company. They aren’t doing it for them; they are working 110 percent for you. Their job is to sound like you, promote you, “become” you through your content.
That doesn’t mean you can’t contribute things as well. It simply means that by working with a ghost blogger, by using them, you can guarantee quality content on what you specifically want to say to the people that potentially will become you clients.
Blog content has two purposes:
- Build relationships
- Attract prospects
A ghost blogger focuses in on making sure every post they write satisfies both of those qualities. They don’t work “in the dark”. You don’t hire them and have them write without connecting with you ever again.
A professional ghost blogger meets with you regularly to find out who your clients are, what your services or products offer your clientele, what your goals are for the coming month, seasonality issues, etc. They become a part of your company from the standpoint of learning what you do and how you want to portray it to the people looking for what you do.
Fast forward six months; the psychotherapist still has her standard five page website with zero blog posts on her site. Her business? Still at about the same level it was six months ago. Her new online product? Shelved for now. After all, she’s working hard to find enough clients to make ends meet.
They key to business growth is knowing what to do yourself, and what to entrust with other professionals that can help you grow tenfold over what you can do alone.