An important part of Internal Communication is really making sure that any content you put out feels authentic. Whatever the medium, be it a blog post or a tweet, if the writing is meant to have come from the company’s CEO it should sound as though it is from the company’s CEO.
So then where does the idea of ghost writing fit into this? How can something actually be seen as authentic when it was written by another person on someone else’s behalf?
Good internal communication pros with great people awareness and writing skills can make this happen. For example, let’s look at the relationship between an empathetic comms pro and their CEO. The CEO is a busy person, perhaps they spend a lot of their time travelling and it’s likely they won’t have time to sit and write something, especially if they need to do it on a regular basis.
The comms pro wants to write engaging content on the CEO’s behalf and to do this effectively they need the CEO’s trust and a simple and fast way for them to get in touch so that passing on any ideas and collecting sound bites and content to write up is not a chore. Social media at this point can really come in handy, if used in the right way.
At The Big Yak event, held by All Things IC, one IC professional gave an example of an internal Twitter feed used by their company CEO to give a voice to his opinions in short bursts – quite literally – due to the small number of characters available. Sequel Group’s own Charles Fenoughty discussed another example he knew of where a CEO could ring a private voicemail – usually while in a taxi on the way to yet another meeting – and reel off his thoughts concerning a topic. Free to ‘umm’ and ‘ahhh’ and make mistakes, his thoughts could then be listened to by a member of the comms team who could use this to maintain his style and manner while effectively writing his ideas into useable content.
Whatever the method ultimately it is down to the writer to ensure they not only write well and effectively for their audience but also that they write authentically using whatever means necessary to capture the style and personality of the person.