Education & Career Trends: April 26, 2023
Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
- Excerpts are taken from an article published on makeuseof.com
When it comes to writing books, blogs, articles, and even scripts, ghostwriters are crucial. Understanding important writing and marketing techniques is essential to become a ghostwriter. If you’re interested in joining this career field, it helps to know how to translate another person’s words and ideas into writing.
A ghostwriter is someone who writes content for others without taking credit. It’s a legitimate, lucrative, and quite versatile profession, especially for freelancers.
Ghostwriters will always be in demand given the variety of written content that today’s digital environment requires. Additionally, it helps to know how to maximise your abilities. Besides honing your content writing or grammar, get to know what digital job roles can you do as a ghostwriter.
1. Fiction and Non-Fiction Books
- A ghostwriter can produce a whole novel for a client.
- The latter provides the ideas, materials, and so on, while the former puts it all into a coherent sequence.
- It’s a highly creative partnership that takes time, good communication, and creative writing know-how to complete.
- For a successful ghostwriting career involving books, gather experience in fiction, non-fiction, and publishing in general.
2. Articles and Blog Posts
- If you’ve ever written a piece for a blog or online publication that was released under someone else’s name, you’re already a ghostwriter.
- This career path isn’t much different from becoming a content writer.
- You produce copy that hooks and informs online readers. You also collaborate with clients, following their briefs to the letter.
- Your job as a freelance ghostwriter specialising in digital content is to follow instructions and write to the best of your capabilities, ideally on topics you know or can easily learn about.
3. Messages, Emails, and Newsletters
- A client might want an email template that they can adjust and send to their contacts as necessary.
- They could do the same with newsletters, text messages, and even social media posts.
- You can help with that by writing the templates to match their voice and intent for different situations.
4. Speeches and Press Releases
- Executives and politicians often use ghostwriters for speeches and press releases.
- While they polish the text and make sure it fits the occasion and audience, their clients are free to deal with other matters.
- This path is truly diverse.
- Press releases can be about anything, from a new product to a company update.
- Speeches can also be live or recorded videos, each with a different goal.
- Any kind of business would need a press release or speech at some point.
- As a ghostwriter, you might work with influencers and artists as much as businessmen.
5. Interviews
- Like speeches, interviews aren’t always done in person. They can be a list of questions that the interviewee answers in writing at their leisure.
- Ghostwriting can involve responding to these questions in the client’s voice and covering the points they specify.
- Discuss the interview in detail and ensure you know exactly what to write.
- You might also be asked to take a recorded interview and write down the whole exchange.
- Whatever digital content you work on as a ghostwriter, it’s a career path that depends on skill, organisation, and communication.
6. Transcripts
- Turning video and audio files into written copy is a task you’ll come across often in the ghostwriting business.
- Besides interviews, you can transcribe podcasts, vlog posts, songs, and more.
- It’s one more part of your job that can link you to a range of industries.
7. Scripts for Videos and Podcasts
- Instead of putting existing audiovisual content into writing, you can create scripts for projects in development.
- This is where a rich writing and reading background comes in handy.
- Scripts are quite different from prose or poetry, so relevant experience is important.
8. Song Lyrics
- Ghostwriters can help musicians put their vision into words.
- Sometimes the best tools for writing song lyrics aren’t enough.
- So, if your ghostwriting skillset includes music and song, you can put it all to good use by offering your musical knowledge as well as your pen.
9. Website Content
- All sites combine text with audiovisual elements, and you can be a part of it.
- For example, an online portfolio needs an about page that exudes personality, professionalism, and awareness of the target audience.
- A ghostwriter can handle that.
- Then there are service or product descriptions. Even these work best with meticulous detail and a degree of character.
- Clients might want to post disclaimers and press releases with their signatures but not write them themselves.
- Get to know all you can about web design, from digital content structure to SEO, and how you can help brands with their domains
There’s plenty of work available for experienced ghostwriters. Depending on your overall skillset, branch into types of content that interest you and that you can produce at the highest quality.
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Have you checked out yesterday’s blog yet?
How Saying A “Micro-Yes” Can Help You Deal With Procrastination
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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