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If you want to make six figures.
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As a writer, the Wall Street Journal says to try ghostwriting. Actually, so does Business Insider and Inc. Magazine and cnbc.
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So what is this new secret industry.
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Called social media ghostwriting? And how are 20 somethings charging upwards of $700 per hour writing social content for business owners, founders, and C level executives? Well, I can tell you, because I was One of those 20 somethings when I was 26 years old, I was making over $20,000 per month ghostwriting social content for Silicon Valley founders, publicly traded companies, even billionaire investors. And no, I didn't have some huge audience. I didn't have tons of testimonials. I didn't even have air conditioning. I was just a hungry, passionate writer living in a rundown studio apartment downtown Chicago, capitalizing on this new secret industry called ghostwriting.
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And in this video, I'm going to.
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Show you step by step how you can do the exact same thing. I'm going to explain exactly what social media ghostwriting is, why writers who offer.
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This service are so in demand right.
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Now, and how, just like me, you can go from making $15 an hour churning out blog posts on upwork, to making upwards of $10,000 per month traveling around the world, working from your laptop, living the dream. And at the end of this video, I'm going to give you the same content strategy I used with all of my clients that you can use for literally any client in any industry to keep them happy and paying you month after month after month to write their social content. And no, you don't need a college degree to get started. You don' years of writing experience. All you need is to be passionate about writing and excited to ask smart people thoughtful questions. And the beauty of ghostwriting is that after you get off your weekly content call with the client, you get to.
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Send them an invoice.
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So it's like getting a master's degree in business, except instead of going into debt, you make six figures.
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But money isn't the only reason why.
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Writers are jumping into ghostwriting. In fact, the money isn't even this career path's biggest benefit. Ghostwriting also pays you in these other seven ways.
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And many of these are actually more valuable than cash.
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You get paid to learn. You get paid to practice. You get paid to build your network. You get paid to follow trends early and be ahead of the curve in your industry. You get paid to live different lives through the different clients you work with. You get paid to learn how to write in different voices, which is only going to make you A better writer. And you get paid to write about things that you would never be able to write about yourself because you don't have the credibility, but your client does. So what is social media ghostwriting? It's where you help someone take all.
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The stories and insights they've acquired over.
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The course of their career and you scale them online. And I can show you better than.
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I can tell you with a very simple example.
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I have a framework that I've been using for years called my Irresistible Offer script.
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I wrote a long form piece about.
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It on X and it performed pretty well. Almost 30,000 impressions. Not bad.
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Now, this is a digital writing strategy.
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I talk about all the time, but.
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When something performs well, you don't want to just say that thing one time.
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You want to say that same idea a hundred times.
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So first I had one of our.
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Ghostwriters internally help me turn that long form piece into a YouTube script.
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And that YouTube video ended up becoming.
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One of my highest performing videos with over 100,000 views.
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Then I had another one of our.
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Ghostwriters on our team help me turn that same piece into and that same framework into a paid newsletter for our substack right with AI. And that newsletter became one of our highest performing paid newsletters to date. So do you see how this works?
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I already did the highest leverage part.
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I created the framework. But ghostwriters can help me scale the lower leverage work.
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Right, by taking my thinking and turning.
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It into more new text based assets.
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Which is how I'm able to be.
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Everywhere all at once. So what does this mean for you?
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If someone has a podcast or a.
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YouTube channel, you can help scale them by repurposing their video content into X threads or medium articles. If someone's written a book, that book.
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Probably has a thousand short form posts.
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Buried inside of it. Like I wrote this book, the Art and Business of Ghostwriting.
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I've turned this entire book into all.
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Sorts of social content all over the Internet.
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If someone's a keynote speaker, their presentation decks can be turned into LinkedIn carousels or Instagram graphics. So if you're sitting there wondering who.
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On earth would need to hire a ghostwriter? The answer is everybody. Everybody trying to build a personal brand.
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Everybody trying to create content on multiple.
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Platforms, everybody trying to generate organic leads for their business.
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The smartest, most successful people in the.
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World are too busy building their companies.
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Launching their products, hosting their podcasts or YouTube channels. They don't have the time to sit down and rewrite the same stories and.
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Insights over and over again in different.
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Formats on different platforms.
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But you do.
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You have the time. And soon you'll have the expertise, which is why they will happily pay you.
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A premium to help scale them. It's time for an objection. But, Cole, what do I do if.
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The client doesn't have any existing content to pull from?
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It's a great question. I knew you were smart.
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If a client doesn't have any existing content for you to pull from or.
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Repurpose, then the way you extract the.
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Client'S knowledge is through recorded phone calls and zoom interviews. And when I say interview, I don't.
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Mean some formal professional sit down interview. I just mean you get on the phone, you ask the client questions, they.
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Talk, you record the call, because they're.
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Going to say a bunch of smart things you're not going to write down quickly in the moment.
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And then you take the transcript of that call and you turn it into.
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A piece of social content, turn it.
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Into a thread or a carousel or.
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A week's worth of short form posts.
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And by the way, this is the exact process I used inside my own.
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Ghostwriting agency because the vast majority of our clients had never written anything on the Internet before.
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So our entire content creation process was based on these recorded conversations. And we did this with hundreds of clients and grew our ghostwriting agency to.
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Dozens of employees, ghostwriters and editors, and millions of dollars in revenue. So I've explained exactly what social media ghostwriting is and why writers who offer.
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This service are so in demand right now.
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Because literally any creator, entrepreneur, investor, or.
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Business owner who wants to build their business in the digital world needs a.
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Personal brand, which means they need social content. So now I'm going to walk you through how you can get started as a social media ghostwriter and how, just.
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Like me, you can go from the.
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Slums of upwork and fiverr to working with some of the smartest, most interesting people you've ever talked to in your life. As a ghostwriter, you get to ask them any question you want, and then at the end of the call, they pay you. It's pretty cool.
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So here's my simple five step roadmap.
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For getting started as a social media ghostwriter. Step one, Be your own case study. Your fastest path to landing social media ghostwriting clients is for you to write on social media platforms yourself. So if you want to ghostwrite viral threads for people on X, you should.
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Be writing viral threads from your own account.
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If you want to ghostwrite carousels for people on LinkedIn, you should be building.
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Your own audience on LinkedIn and creating carousels for yourself. Whatever type of service you want to provide as a ghostwriter, you should be practicing on yourself.
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You want to be your own case study. You're going to get better faster by practicing on yourself.
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You're going to build an audience. It's only going to help you, right?
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It's not going to hurt you.
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And clients who enjoy your writing will.
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Want your help and your help only with their writing.
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Now, a question I get asked all.
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The time is, can you land ghostwriting.
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Clients without having an audience of your.
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Own or being active on social media? The answer is, of course you can. But everything is easier when you're your own case study. Because imagine this. A client sees your writing and they reach out. You hop on a sales call with them. They ask you, so how do I know creating social content is going to help me land more clients or sell more customers? And all you have to say to them is, well, how did we end up on this call? Right now they're going to say, I read your social content. And then you just say, exactly. So step one, you be your own case study. Step two Comments as consulting now let's get into how to attract and land social media ghostwriting clients.
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The first thing about sales you need.
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To understand and you should write this on a note card on your desk and stare at it every single day.
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The client or customer has to care about the problem before they can care about the solution. Which means the entire secret to landing.
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Ghostwriting clients isn't to pitch clients on your services and what you can offer them.
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That's the solution. First, you need to educate them on a problem. And it's either a problem they don't know they have in their business or. Or a problem they know they have but just haven't gotten around to solving.
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So how do you educate them on the problem? Well, you can DM them, you can email them, or, and I love this strategy, you can do what I like to call comments as consulting.
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So exactly what you would educate the.
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Potential client on via DM or email.
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Just say it in public. So here are a few things you can comment.
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You can point out how to improve.
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The formatting or the hook of the.
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Piece of content that you're commenting on. You could point out a problem with their cta. Maybe they don't even have a cta.
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Or maybe their CTA goes to a page with a weak offer or a page that doesn't load on mobile.
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You could point out something in their bio.
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Maybe their bio leans clever not Clear.
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Maybe there's no CTA in their bio, or maybe there's just not a relevant pinned asset underneath their bio. Now, you might be wondering, but Cole.
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If I tell the client they're doing.
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Something wrong, won't they get upset? No.
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This is literally what you would tell.
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Them if they paid you as a consultant. They would pay you money to point out problems or mistakes they're making and tell them how to fix them. So why not just tell them the answer for free? And why not do it in public.
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So you either get their attention or the attention of someone else just like.
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Them, who could also use your help. This is such an effective and easy strategy for getting clients.
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That's step two. Make a list of 50 to 100.
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Potential clients in your niche on X or LinkedIn. And once a week, twice a week.
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Engage with something they've posted and give.
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Them a little comments as consulting. Step number three, Pitch in public.
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Now, this is the advanced version of comments as consulting. So instead of just commenting something helpful.
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On one of their posts, what you can do is create a piece of content that publicly pitches the prospect. So let me show you what this looks like. And this is something we train all the ghostwriters in our program on, as well as even employees on our team, like Daniel here is on our team. Okay, so this is something I encourage everyone to learn how to do because it's so incredible, incredibly effective.
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If you were to pitch someone via.
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DM or email, eventually you would educate.
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The prospect on some sort of problem in their business.
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Because remember, the client can't care about.
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The solution you offer until they first.
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Care about the problem.
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But educating each client individually, one at a time, behind closed doors, isn't very scalable, is it? So instead, what you can do is.
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Take everything you would educate the prospect on, but turn it into a piece of content you pitch them in public.
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Now, there's three reasons why this is so effective. First of all, it gets their attention.
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Anytime I see someone write a long form post about me, I read it. So very high likelihood that they see your pitch.
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Second, it allows you to keep building.
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Your own content library.
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So this format actually becomes part of your content strategy as a social media ghostwriter. But third, and this is the real.
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Benefit, is that it's no longer a one to one pitch.
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Now it's one to many. So even if the client you're pitching in public doesn't respond or doesn't want.
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To work with you, there's a good.
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Chance that another prospect will see this.
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And think Man, I actually have that.
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Same problem in my business. Prompts them to reach out to you. You should add this pitch in public format into your content strategy as a ghostwriter.
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It's an amazing triple dip. Step 4 follow up until they call the cops.
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Now if you want to know where.
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So many ghostwriters go wrong, it is right here. They start writing social content, building themselves into their own case study. They do the comments as consulting on a weekly basis. They even write up really valuable pitch in public content once or twice a week. They get the attention of a couple clients, they pitch them and then they don't follow up. And I'm telling you, all the money.
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Is in the follow up right now.
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I guarantee you have five people in your DMs, your email, or your network that would love to pay you. As a social media ghostwriter, the reason they're not paying you is because you haven't followed up. And here's the secret. When I say follow up, I don't just mean, hey, bumping this up in your inbox, okay?
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You will get way more juice out.
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Of your follow ups if you come.
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Back to the client over and over.
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Again with something helpful. So here are some of my favorite follow up. Hey, by the way, I was thinking.
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About your business and another idea came to mind.
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Or, hey, I saw you just launch this new product. You know, I think we could use.
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These launch emails to create a ton of social content. Or hey, I saw your company just put out a job post.
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You know what would be amazing to attract high quality candidates is to write.
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Some social content about how you think.
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About hiring or what questions you ask.
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In the interview process or what you look for in new team members.
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The secret here is to constantly show the client, I'm thinking about your business.
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I have another idea. Another idea.
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I can help you with this. I can take this off your plate.
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If you do this, you will land.
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More clients and make more money. Period.
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Now the big question.
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How often should you follow up? And I mean this very literally, until they call the cops. This is the advice I give every ghostwriter I mentor.
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Until the client says directly to you.
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I will never buy anything from you, ever. Please stop contacting me. And if you do contact me, I will call the authorities. You have every right to follow up.
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And you should follow up with them over and over and over and over and over again.
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Okay?
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And your default frame for everyone you.
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Talk to should be, they're gonna buy from me eventually. I just don't know when. So step four, you follow up until they call the cops. Which leads to step five, Anonymous case studies as content. Because of the nature of ghostwriting, you.
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Typically can't share who your clients are.
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Or what you do for them. But that's okay.
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Honestly, testimonials are very overrated.
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I built my entire ghostwriting agency to.
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Hundreds of clients and millions of dollars.
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In revenue without using a single testimonial.
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But what you can do instead is.
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What I like to call anonymous case studies as content. So let me show you what this looks like.
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This is Matthew Brown, who is one.
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Of our biggest success stories out of our premium ghostwriting academy.
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He now runs his own ghostwriting agency.
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And does around $60,000 per month in revenue.
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And he uses this strategy to write about his clients anonymously, but in public.
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Now, what are the benefits of this strategy? Well, first, it's anonymous, so you basically get the benefit of a testimonial without needing a testimonial.
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Second, it's a format that you can.
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Repeat over and over again, which means.
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This can actually become part of your weekly content strategy as a social ghostwriter.
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But third, it's shared in public, which.
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Means it can attract the attention of other potential ghostwriting clients who probably need your help or want to achieve similar results for themselves. So even though you don't need testimonials to land clients, this can be a great way to talk about the work.
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You do and keep building your content library at the same time.
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So that's the five step roadmap I.
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Tell every beginner social media ghostwriter to follow in order to start landing clients.
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And capitalize on this new lucrative industry.
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Be your own case study comments as consulting, pitch in public, follow up until they call the cops and anonymous case studies as content. Now, before I give you my personal.
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Social media ghostwriting content strategy, the same.
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Strategy I've used with hundreds of clients, I'm sure you're probably wondering, Cole, how much can I charge as a social media ghostwriter? Well, whenever I'm mentoring ghostwriters, this is the quick offer stack and pricing I.
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Encourage them to aim for. First, I encourage you to specialize either on just x or just LinkedIn. You can offer both, but I would.
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Encourage you to specialize if you Choose X. Target 2 Short Form Text posts per day, Monday through Friday, and two long form threads per week for each client.
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If you specialize on LinkedIn, you should.
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Target one short form text post per day, Monday through Friday, and one to two long form text posts or image carousels per week.
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And for this, without any Other fancy bells or whistles. You can easily charge three to $5,000.
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Per month, which means you don't need.
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To target every industry or every niche.
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You don't need a thousand clients, you need like three clients and then poof, you're making 10 to 15 grand a month.
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So to make sure you over deliver.
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For your clients and keep them paying you month after month after month, I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite frameworks ever. I call this my social Ghostwriting Content Generator. There are three steps. Step one, use three proven content buckets. So after ghostwriting for hundreds of different people across hundreds of different industries, I can tell you that these three content buckets work for pretty much every single client.
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The first is futurism, so making predictions.
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About the future of their industry and where things are headed. The second is the founder story, so.
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Sharing lessons that they've learned along the way.
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And the third is actionable advice, so.
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Explaining how to do something specific related to their niche. Now, there's a fourth content bucket that.
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Can also work for pretty much every.
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Client, and that's news.
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But the reason I don't recommend you use it is because it actually makes your job a lot harder As a ghostwriter. Newsy topics have very short life cycles.
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And by the time you come up.
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With an idea, you get the client's.
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Thoughts, you write up a draft, you.
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Send it to them for feedback, and.
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You ultimately hit publish.
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That news story is probably outdated, so instead I encourage you to just focus on futurism, founder stories and actionable advice. Because these are evergreen, they're more timeless topics. So that's step one.
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Step two is use proven formats within each content bucket. So this is another one of my favorite writing frameworks.
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I call it the 10 Magical Ways to Expand Anything.
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So all nonfiction content can be talked about in these 10 different ways.
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But if you go a layer deeper.
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These 10 ways can actually be organized.
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Into the three content buckets I just gave you.
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So for futurism, you can write about.
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The future of the client's industry by using stats.
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Here's some data. Or here's a new trend that backs up my prediction. Benefits. If the industry goes in this direction.
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Here are the good things we can expect to happen.
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Reasons Here are the reasons why I.
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Think the industry is going to move.
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In this new direction, or the reasons.
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Why the industry will take a turn.
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If we don't move in this new direction. And questions. Here are some questions that you, dear reader, might be asking yourself about the future of this industry. Or about this industry.
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See how all these different ways make it easy to come up with topic.
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Ideas for this content bucket.
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Okay, let's do the next one. For founder stories, you can use mistakes.
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So here's some mistakes I made along.
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The way so you don't do the same.
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Or lessons. Here's some of the biggest, most important.
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Lessons I've learned to shortcut your own learning curve.
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Personal stories here's something crazy that happened.
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Or here's how we raised our Series A. Or how we dodged bankruptcy. Or how we turned our first product failure into a billion dollar startup. Founder stories are all about passing along.
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The mistakes and the lessons.
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And then the last bucket Actionable Advice.
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So this is how to so tips.
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For hiring your first CTO or firing your first employee, or paying vendors internationally.
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Or running paid ads. Right? Tips on how to do all of those things. Steps. Here's how to set up an international.
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Bank account step by step.
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Or here's how to buy your first rental property step by step.
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And then examples.
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Here's an example of how this works. Here's a case study. Here's a success story. Actionable advice is all about educating the target reader on how to do something. So that's Step two is filling in.
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These three proven content buckets with these different topic prompts. Step three Multiply the client's topics by these three content buckets. So this is where things get really cool. Every client you work with is going to want to talk about multiple things. For example, if you're working with a marketing agency, they're probably going to want to talk about marketing in general, but.
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Also maybe a specific niche inside of marketing.
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So email marketing or paid ads. But also if you're ghostwriting for the founder or business owner, maybe they want to talk about entrepreneurship or what it's.
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Like to run their own business.
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So what's the content strategy? You take these three topics, you multiply.
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Each topic by the three proven content.
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Buckets, and then you now have multiple.
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Ways to write about each topic inside.
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Of each content bucket. So for example, let's just do this for one topic because this creates dozens.
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And dozens and dozens of ideas.
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Let's say the client wants to talk about marketing in general.
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Well, we can talk about marketing inside.
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The content bucket of futurism.
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And in one post we can share stats about where marketing is headed.
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In another post we can talk about.
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The benefits of where a certain marketing trend is headed. In another post we can share reasons why marketing trending in this new direction.
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Is good or is bad.
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In another post, we can answer questions.
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That people commonly ask about this marketing.
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Trend and where the industry is headed.
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But we can also talk about marketing inside the content bucket of founder stories.
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So we can share marketing mistakes that they made in their career.
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We could share lessons learned having worked on multiple different marketing campaigns over the years. We could share personal stories about working in marketing over the past decade. But we can also talk about marketing.
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Inside the last content bucket of actionable advice.
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So here are some tips for launching.
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Your first marketing campaign or getting hired.
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At a marketing agency.
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Here are some steps for setting up.
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Your first paid ads funnel.
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Here are some examples of marketing agencies that have scaled to over $100 million. You see how this works. Once you have these three content buckets and these 10 magical ways organized inside.
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Each one, you could literally take any topic, industry, niche or idea that the client wants to write about and generate.
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Dozens and dozens of different ideas.
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And this works for any client in any industry. And I promise you will never run out of things to write about. So that's how the Social Ghostwriting Content Generator works.
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And I hope this video helped you.
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Understand exactly what social media ghostwriting is.
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Why writers who offer this service are.
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So in demand right now, and how, just like I did, you can make.
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Upwards of $10,000 per month traveling around the world, working from your laptop, living.
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The dream with just a couple social ghostwriting clients.
Podcast Summary: "New Secret Industry: What Is Social Media Ghostwriting? (Beginner Walkthrough)"
Podcast Information:
In this episode, Nicolas Cole delves into the burgeoning field of social media ghostwriting—a lucrative and often overlooked avenue for writers seeking to elevate their careers. Cole shares his personal journey from earning a modest income on platforms like Upwork to generating over $20,000 monthly by ghostwriting for high-profile clients, including Silicon Valley founders and billionaire investors.
Notable Quote:
“I was making over $20,000 per month ghostwriting social content for Silicon Valley founders, publicly traded companies, even billionaire investors.” — Nicolas Cole [00:10]
Social media ghostwriting involves crafting engaging online content for individuals or businesses without taking public credit. This content can range from blog posts and social media updates to comprehensive content strategies tailored to enhance a client's digital presence.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
“It's where you help someone take all the stories and insights they've acquired over the course of their career and you scale them online.” — Nicolas Cole [02:01]
The demand for social media ghostwriters has surged as more professionals recognize the importance of a strong online presence. Business owners, founders, and executives rely on high-quality content to build their personal brands, engage with their audience, and generate organic leads.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
“Everybody trying to build a personal brand. Everybody trying to create content on multiple platforms… they don't have the time to sit down and rewrite the same stories and insights over and over again in different formats on different platforms.” — Nicolas Cole [04:15]
While financial rewards are a significant motivator, social media ghostwriting offers additional benefits that contribute to a writer’s professional growth and personal satisfaction.
Benefits Highlighted:
Notable Quote:
“Ghostwriting also pays you in these other seven ways... you get paid to live different lives through the different clients you work with.” — Nicolas Cole [01:50]
Nicolas Cole outlines a comprehensive five-step roadmap for aspiring ghostwriters to establish and scale their ghostwriting businesses effectively.
Start by developing your own social media presence. By practicing on yourself, you not only hone your skills but also build a portfolio that attracts potential clients.
Actionable Steps:
Notable Quote:
“Your fastest path to landing social media ghostwriting clients is for you to write on social media platforms yourself.” — Nicolas Cole [06:36]
Engage publicly with potential clients by offering constructive feedback on their content. This strategy showcases your expertise and demonstrates immediate value.
Actionable Steps:
Notable Quote:
“You can point out something in their bio. Maybe their bio leans clever not Clear... it's an effective and easy strategy for getting clients.” — Nicolas Cole [08:44]
Elevate your pitch by presenting it within your content, making it visible to a broader audience. This not only grabs the attention of the targeted client but also attracts other potential prospects.
Actionable Steps:
Notable Quote:
“This is something we train all the ghostwriters in our program on… it's incredibly effective.” — Nicolas Cole [10:25]
Consistent follow-ups are crucial to converting leads into paying clients. Cole emphasizes the importance of continuous engagement until a response is received.
Actionable Steps:
Notable Quote:
“You should follow up with them over and over and over and over and over again.” — Nicolas Cole [13:09]
Leverage the success stories of your clients without revealing their identities. This approach builds credibility and serves as indirect testimonials.
Actionable Steps:
Notable Quote:
“This is Matthew Brown, who is one of our biggest success stories… he uses this strategy to write about his clients anonymously, but in public.” — Nicolas Cole [14:10]
Cole provides a strategic approach to pricing social media ghostwriting services, encouraging specialization to maximize earnings.
Pricing Strategy:
Notable Quote:
“You don’t need a thousand clients, you need like three clients and then poof, you're making 10 to 15 grand a month.” — Nicolas Cole [16:06]
To ensure a steady flow of high-quality content, Cole introduces his proprietary framework—The Social Ghostwriting Content Generator. This tool helps ghostwriters consistently produce diverse and engaging content tailored to each client’s needs.
Framework Components:
Three Proven Content Buckets:
Proven Formats Within Each Bucket:
Topic Multiplication:
Application Example: For a marketing agency client, topics could include general marketing strategies and specific niches like email marketing or paid ads. Using the content buckets, a ghostwriter can produce:
Notable Quote:
“Here’s how the Social Ghostwriting Content Generator works… you will never run out of things to write about.” — Nicolas Cole [21:33]
Nicolas Cole wraps up the episode by reiterating the immense potential of social media ghostwriting. By following the outlined roadmap and leveraging effective content strategies, writers can transform their careers, achieve financial success, and enjoy the flexibility of working remotely with prestigious clients.
Final Takeaways:
Notable Quote:
“Understand exactly what social media ghostwriting is, why writers who offer this service are so in demand right now, and how, just like I did, you can make upwards of $10,000 per month traveling around the world, working from your laptop, living the dream with just a couple social ghostwriting clients.” — Nicolas Cole [21:43]
Key Takeaways:
By following Nicolas Cole’s expert advice, aspiring ghostwriters can navigate the complexities of the industry and establish a thriving, financially rewarding career in social media ghostwriting.