Are you a founder, executive, or thought leader considering whether hiring a ghostwriter is the right move for your personal brand? Your responsibilities have grown, while your time has become increasingly valuable, and producing high-quality content regularly now feels overwhelming. It's the natural evolution.
Many successful leaders have partnered with ghostwriters to help articulate their vision, share their expertise, and maintain a consistent presence online, so they can focus on their core business priorities.
In this FAQ post, I've compiled the most common questions and concerns I've encountered while working as a ghostwriter.
A ghostwriter is a professional writer who creates content — such as articles, blog posts, social media content, or video scripts — but under the client's name. The ghostwriter's job is to capture your ideas, voice, tone, and unique point of view (POV), and then transform those into polished, strategic content that aligns with your personal or professional brand.
While the ghostwriter remains hidden from the public eye, they act as your collaborative partner behind the scenes. Ghostwriting typically involves interviews, content planning sessions, and thorough research to ensure the final product is authoritative and feels authentically “you.” This practice is widespread, proven and respected. It’s how busy leaders share consistent, compelling thought leadership without sacrificing hours they simply don’t have anymore.
Regular publication of high-quality thought leadership content establishes you as a recognized authority in your field, which can lead to speaking opportunities, media interviews, and industry recognition. Enhanced visibility online often translates into business development opportunities, strategic partnerships, and increased credibility with both potential clients and investors.
The relationship you build with your ghostwriter also becomes increasingly valuable over time, as they develop a deeper understanding of your expertise, industry, and voice and tone. This growing familiarity produces faster project turnaround, more nuanced content creation, and enhanced strategic content planning. A side benefit many clients mention is that the discipline of articulating their thought process to the ghostwriter forces them to refine their thinking on industry trends, business strategy, and professional insights. Like journaling, the practice provides clarity.
Not at all. Delegating content writing to a professional ghostwriter is no different from hiring a marketing strategist, executive assistant, or design team to support your brand. Founders and executives are expected to be prolific thought leaders, but that expectation rarely aligns with the demands of running a business. Ghostwriting is a strategic extension of your voice, not a shortcut or form of deception.
What matters is the authorship of ideas, not the pair of hands on the keyboard. If the concepts, philosophies, insights, and stories are all yours — developed through your experience and expertise — then the writing process becomes a form of articulation, not deception. Ghostwriting is smart leverage. You're scaling your voice, your influence, your impact.
This is one of the most common ethical concerns, and it’s important to distinguish between fabrication and collaboration. When a ghostwriter faithfully represents your ideas, beliefs, and tone, they’re helping you express your thoughts more clearly and consistently. If the resulting content truly reflects your experience and values, you're not lying (well, unless you emphatically deny having a ghostwriter).
Many high-profile figures, from business moguls to bestselling authors to politicians, use ghostwriters precisely because they take intellectual ownership of the completed content. Transparency is also contextual. If you’re writing a technical manual or policy paper, attribution might matter. But in thought leadership and brand storytelling, readers care more about the authenticity of the message than the mechanics of creation.
Time is the most precious commodity for high-performing leaders. Most founders and executives don’t have the hours or mental space to write deeply researched, well-crafted articles, between meetings, strategy, hiring, product development, and managing teams. Yet, they’re still expected to contribute regularly to their brand’s visibility and authority.
The ghostwriter helps you meet your many content demands without pulling you out of your zone of genius. Professional ghostwriters offer not only writing expertise but also structure, accountability, and content strategy. They are thought partners who help you sharpen your message, extend your influence, so you can stay visible in a very competitive digital landscape.
Yes, if they're good. An experienced ghostwriter will immerse themselves in your voice, tone, and communication style, based on interviews, reviewing your past content, recorded talks, social media posts, and any other material you’ve created. Your writer will listen for word choice, sentence rhythm, humour, and even the natural way you tell stories.
It's a relationship that develops, and the goal isn't to impose their own writing style, but to take on yours. Accomplished ghostwriters produce content that even close colleagues and friends can't differentiate from you. It’s not mimicry; it’s precision storytelling in your authentic voice. The ghostwriter isn't writing "like" you; they become you.
Not unless you tell them, and even then, most readers won’t care. Some of my clients openly share that they use a ghostwriter because they value clarity, consistency, and strategic output, while others prefer to keep the collaboration private.
What matters most is whether your content adds value, tells the truth, expresses your insights in your voice, and builds trust with your audience. If it does that, nobody will care who typed the words.
For technical, thought leadership or opinion articles, you don't need to write — just talk. I begin projects with a kickoff interview and ongoing conversations (via Zoom or in person) to extract your ideas. If you feel more comfortable with some time to think about the answers, or there isn't enough time to squeeze in a meeting, I'll ask questions in advance and have you voice-record your thoughts during commutes or downtime. Other times, I'll work from transcripts, recorded speeches, email exchanges, slide decks, or podcasts.
I'm experienced in sifting through all of this raw material and turning it into refined, publish-ready content. I help you stay productive by shaping what’s already in your head into a strategic, well-structured narrative.
For edu-taining (educational and entertaining) articles relating to products or services, I'm typically given a list of upcoming topics, which I'll research and write about in the order provided. After a few weeks of working together, it's quite common for clients to leave the topics, research, writing and scheduled publication of the educational posts and articles completely in my hands; one less thing they need to think about.
In today’s multi-channel world, ghostwriters typically act as content architects, helping busy leaders maintain a consistent and strategic brand voice across all platforms. Ghostwriters support a wide range of content types.
I specialize in:
Other ghostwriting might include:
You have total control. You are able to approve everything before it goes live or to print. It's a collaborative process: your ghostwriter brings structure, writing chops, and polish, but you provide the direction, feedback, and final sign-off. I build revision time into our workflow to ensure your standards and message are upheld.
Think of it like working with a designer or brand consultant; your feedback shapes the outcome. As your ghostwriter becomes more familiar with your preferences, revisions typically become minimal, and trust builds over time. Over time, many of my longstanding clients will only have a quick look at the content I create for them, perhaps every few weeks.
Like any professional service, the quality of ghostwriters varies.
The main risks include:
These risks can be mitigated through a clear vetting process. You're looking for a ghostwriter who asks deep questions, shows curiosity, and understands both storytelling and business strategy. An experienced ghostwriter will show case studies of their work on their website. It's important to note that much of their best work may not be available as a portfolio piece due to restrictions in a non-disclosure agreement.
Fortunately, online content is editable, even after publication. I offer an "I will until" guarantee. In other words, I'll make edits to the content I write for you until you are fully satisfied.
Costs vary widely depending on the ghostwriter’s experience, the type of content, and the depth of the collaboration. The best pricing will usually be for a content idea that's recreated across multiple platforms. For example, if you have a long-form LinkedIn article written, and 2 uniquely different re-writes for both the company blog and Medium, plus short-form social media posts on Facebook, Instagram and X, that makes 6 touchpoints based around the same idea, interview and research. Packages that leverage each content idea are the best value.
Here’s a general breakdown of industry rates:
Rates also depend on whether your ghostwriter provides strategy, ideation, SEO, interviews, or publication support. In other words, a professional ghostwriter who comes up with the article idea, schedules interviews, conducts extensive research, searches for and purchases stock images, writes a unique, '100% human' article (with validation), then creates and publishes the blog post on your website, completes on-page SEO and writes the XML rich snippets schema code, is far more valuable than a Fiverr 'writer' who bangs out an AI article in under 5 minutes by entering a prompt into ChatGPT, then fires it off to you by email.
That being said, investing in a seasoned full-stack ghostwriter is often more cost-effective than producing content in-house, particularly if you're doing it yourself at executive rates. (I began ghostwriting articles for a magazine way back in 1987.)
You should, and they should earn that trust. Most ghostwriters will sign NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) and are used to working with confidential materials. Confidential materials may include early-stage product details, internal messaging, or sensitive leadership topics, and it's important that your writer clearly understands what is "your eyes only".
Side note: Confidentiality should always be a given, but making a provision for your ghostwriter to include work completed for you in their website's portfolio in the NDA, will encourage better pricing. Using you as a reference and showing examples of the work done for you has promotional value. It reduces your ghostwriter's marketing costs, and that has value as you negotiate the price.
In most business and thought-leadership settings, ghostwriters are not credited; it’s standard industry practice. Some clients choose to offer a discreet “editorial support by” mention or co-authorship credit, particularly in books or academic work. Ghostwriters generally expect to remain invisible unless otherwise agreed. Your ghostwriter's focus is helping you shine; not being in the spotlight.
As addressed in the answer above, anonymity has a cost. Therefore, allowing your ghostwriter to include you in their portfolio has considerable promotional value. Even though you don't acknowledge their contribution publicly, allowing your ghostwriter to list you as a client, with some case study examples, can be a strong negotiating tactic.
For educational long-form LinkedIn and blog articles that don't require interviews, reviews and edits, an experienced ghostwriter can typically research, write, edit, proofread and publish a 100% human-written piece within 48 hours. For a thought leadership or opinion article, requiring a Zoom interview, and 1 – 3 reviews by you, with requested revisions, it can take 1 – 2 weeks for one piece.
That being said, once I understand your voice and workflow, the process becomes highly efficient. On a monthly retainer — which is how I complete all of my client work — I can deliver long-form 100% human-written LinkedIn and blog articles, with short-form social media posts once or twice a week, and perhaps a monthly newsletter, at a steady pace.
There are many freelancers now offering 100% AI-generated "ghostwritten" content, or AI that's been "humanized" (it's received a very light edit to remove the most glaringly obvious machine writing). They copy and paste a prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, and have a finished AI article in under 3 minutes. Bam! 3 minutes work vs several days… it should cost you WAY less.
According to a 2025 Neil Patel Digital study, in which they tracked 744 articles on 68 websites, with 50% human written and 50% AI output that was "humanized" somewhat by editing, traffic for the AI-generated content fluctuated from month-to-month, while the human content showed steady increases over the 5 months. By the 5th month, the human-generated content had 5.44 times the traffic of the AI-generated content every month.
Every human writer has a unique energy signature. Your readers want something fresh, sharing your real beliefs, real feelings, with vulnerability and transparency… unsanitized, unedited and straight from your heart. A human ghostwriter can learn to give them that, essentially becoming your clone. But at this time, AI lacks originality, empathy, context and soul.
Hiring a ghostwriter isn’t about faking expertise, but rather, it’s about amplifying it. In today’s digital landscape, being everywhere your audience is — not just once or twice, but consistently across multiple platforms — is critical to building trust, amplifying your message, and staying top of mind. Ghostwriters help busy leaders like you stay present in the conversation, articulate your thinking, and build a legacy of thought leadership that aligns with your brand voice, values, and goals.
Cole Wiebe is a veteran content strategist and writer of 36 years, writing ad copy and editorial content in the magazine industry for ten years before moving to the web. Cole helps brands earn search engine rankings and traffic.