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When Ignorance Is the Ghostwriter’s Friend
Top 5 Freelance Jobs from the Job Board
Freelance Freedom #191: Rushed Expectations, Part 2

When Ignorance Is the Ghostwriter’s Friend

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 05:30 AM PST

credit: Helga Weber on Flickr

What you do not know — or pretend not to know — about your client’s business, product, or service can be one of your greatest assets as you help your client communicate with employees, investors, customers, or prospects. Even though you have been hired to write in your client’s voice, it can be a mistake to write completely within your client’s mindset.

You may be crafting an important address that a company executive will be delivering (live, printed, online, or recorded) to motivate employees to adopt new practices and adapt to new conditions. You might be introducing a new product or service to the sales force, with the hopes that they will be able to effectively communicate the benefits of the new offering to prospects and customers.

Whatever the specific task, very often the main challenge to delivering the message with impact is not the client’s lack of communication skills, but their failure to look at the message from the perspective of the audience.

The people whose messages are at the heart of the communication, whether top management, internal experts, or product team members, have been wrestling with the topic for so long that they begin to assume that key points, new directions, and essential elements that they have developed over a period of time will now be instantly obvious to anyone.

A Language Lesson

Let me illustrate this with an analogy from quite a different field, namely, language learning. As teaching Irish Gaelic is an avocation of mine (see Gaeltacht Minnesota), I have worked with any number of students to help them put on workshops or get local study groups started.

One of the mistakes they usually make is to look at their little group of students and assume that the best Irish speaker should lead the group. For a workshop, they assume that if they can find a highly capable or even fluent speaker, that person should be in charge of the event.

Unfortunately, many fluent speakers are poor teachers. Why? Various aspects of the language come so easily to them, with all their experience, that they cannot understand why beginning students struggle with these concepts. And because they cannot see where the difficulties arise with their audiences, they cannot effectively communicate paths to overcoming these difficulties.

I have seen exactly the same problem with internal corporate communications. When it is time for a new product to be launched, the programmer explains the software, the engineer explains the equipment, the clinician explains the treatment. They go into excruciating detail about features that would fascinate another programmer or engineer or clinician.

But their audiences never grasp the benefits that the new products bring to the customer. Because the in-house experts have not been able to put themselves in the position of someone less knowledgeable, someone trying to figure out why they would consider the new product, no one learns to speak the language needed to attract prospects and convert them to customers.

Be the Audience AND the Communicator

One good way to put on your communicator hat is to make sure you are wearing your audience hat. Why should the audience listen? Why should they care? Is the information in the message too detailed, too specialized to have an impact?

Among the most valuable services you can offer clients, as you write their messages, is to play the role of the person who is not already immersed in the subject, who is not already an expert on the product, who is not already fascinated by the details.

Playing the role of “audience advocate” will not only help you craft a message that echoes the client’s voice, loud and clear. It will make sure that message is heard, loud and clear.

Photo credit: Helga Weber/flickr

Top 5 Freelance Jobs from the Job Board

Posted: 24 Jan 2011 08:00 AM PST

Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.

Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in technical writing, senior web development, graphic & web design, WordPress development and more!

To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!

Freelance Senior Software or Web Engineer, .NET and Front-End Needed

Tribe9 Interactive is a small Chicago-based interactive firm working on a number of internal Big Ideas. Formed by a few ex-agency creatives, we have some of the best design and creative talent in the online space today. We need a talented freelance Sr. level developer with front-end and back-end (.NET/SQL/JQuery) to take over on a few existing projects as well as help start on new ones.We are looking for someone with at least 3 years of agency experience. We are a very flexible company and you don’t have to work on-site (although we may have occasional on-site meetings for reviewing work and brainstorming). We need a reliable person who will not bail out on us and will not vanish for days (or weeks) at a time. We expect good communication on project deadlines and work status.

We are willing to pay $45-$75 per hour depending on experience, talent, and availability.

Learn more & apply!

Technical Writer

We are in need of a technical writer that can write articles pertaining to telecommunication and computer market. This is a yearly position that will provide on going projects that will be used in social media, web content, newsletters and press release. This can also expand to a ghost writer position for our other clients. Please provide any sample material that we may consider before a phone conversation.

Learn more & apply!

Graphic Designer to Create Comps for Site Redesign

Work with our founder and our front-end developer to refresh the look and feel of our new website. Wireframes have already been created and we just need someone with a designer’s eye to to turn them into Photoshop comps. No coding required.

Learn more & apply!

WordPress Developer

We are an Internet Marketing company that specializes in Search Engine Optimization. Web design is one of the services we provide for our clients and we need skilled designers experienced in creating custom Wordpress themes or the ability to customize an existing theme. You must be flexible and able to handle our project request overflow.

Learn more & apply!

Freelance Web Developer

San Francisco-based print & digital design agency is looking for a talented, reliable, and experienced freelance web developer for upcoming and ongoing projects with a good eye and deep appreciation for design, as well as a broad range of coding skills.

Learn more & apply!