My job – any ghostwriter’s job – is to save time for people who can’t fit writing into their schedule. The process does involve some knowledge transfer from you to the writer, but, if you have an experienced writer, that should go efficiently.
That means that the bulk of the time churning out the article is borne by the writer instead of you. That’s the whole point. But there is one part of the process that I can’t offload: article review. You need to check the draft over to make sure it says what you want it to say.
It’s not uncommon for marketing folks to want to do a series of articles on a regular basis – say, monthly or bimonthly. And I can make sure I reserve the time to get the articles turned around. But it turns out that reviewing an article can sometimes take far longer than it took to write it, bringing the whole operation to a halt.
The problem isn’t how long it takes to read the article. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of fitting yet one more thing into your day. Other times it seems to be a matter of different reviewers in the company having different ideas about what the article should be – meaning a potential restart (which costs time and money).
So a regular program of articles can be a really good way of keeping your technology and ideas visible. But when you sign onto such a program,
- make sure that you set aside enough time to read the drafts so that you can approve the content or propose changes, and
- make sure that all of the stakeholders who will do the review are in agreement on the purpose of the article. This may also mean circulating the outline before the draft is started so that everyone sees where the piece will go before it’s written.
By factoring these considerations in ahead of time, your articles can come out on time and on budget.