We recently connected with Kit Huffman and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kit, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Whether on the bus to a sports game, on the hallway floor during lunch, or tucked away in my bedroom, I always had my nose in a business book as a kid. You know, the normal kid things. The business world fascinated me: learning to lead teams, building company culture, communicating effectively, and creating products and services that positively impact our world. But, as a girl, I didn’t know about the wage gap, the loss of female leadership as ranks rose, or the unique challenges plaguing women in a business world still scarred and healing from a patriarchal mindset. I was also too young to recognize one thing: my favorite business writers were all men.

Now, today, as a ghostwriter, I specialize in helping executives share their ideas on leading, building culture, communicating, and creating impact through business – the same ideas that young Kit fell in love with the business world. However, this time, I slowly began to recognize one thing: most ghostwriters and ghostwriting clients are men.

When female voices are left unheard, it is a missed opportunity for progress and new perspectives. When male voices echo back other male voices, it blindly ignores half of the population’s perspective. When women are invited to sit at the writer’s table, whether to share their ideas or as a trusted advisor helping to craft a message, it opens an opportunity to create a more inclusive message that can resonate with wider audiences, creating even more significant impact.

That’s why I didn’t just want my seat at the table. That’s why I built my table by founding SENECA, an all-female ghostwriting agency.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

During my undergraduate studies, I accidentally sidestepped into the secret world of ghostwriting. Outside of my studies, I freelance wrote Instagram and Facebook content to make extra cash. A potential new client messaged me asking if I wrote LinkedIn content. I knew little about the platform, but I thought some Google searches could help me get by with the project. I accepted the job.

That client turned into another client, and then another client turned into another client until a writing team for a Fortune 500 CEO approached me to help with a project. I was in my final year of university and felt incredibly imposterous. Why should a seasoned Fortune 500 executive trust me, a young adult, to help share their ideas? I swallowed the fear and accepted the job, the first job that I was officially titled “ghostwriter.”

Over time, my self-doubt slowly faded as I grew in experience, self-confidence, and the realization that clients did not see as their scribe but as trusted advisor. As a ghostwriter, clients have confided in my professional struggles, told me that our conversations made them see their marriage in a new way, realized that their co-founder was not the best fit for their company, thanked me for hard and honest feedback, and leaned on me to craft incredibly difficult and exciting announcements.

Today, what I bring to the table with clients is my ability to ask more profound questions in a space that gives my clients the safety to explore their inner thoughts with me. I’m quasi-therapist, quasi-friend, quasi-diary. Because of this space we create, I can act as an objective 3rd party to help extract the best stories and most interesting ideas. Together, this allows us to create work that advances cultural conversations, presents new ideas, and shares impactful stories that resonate with global audiences.

In terms of traditional industry measures of successes, our LinkedIn content has been read by millions of people; our articles have been featured in New York Times Travel, Forbes, Fast Company, LinkedIn News; and our newsletters consistently have open-rates above 50%.

I’m proud of the work, impact, and results my clients and I have received, and I’m excited to continue to grow in this secret world of ghostwriting.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

While I have a smaller following, I have helped clients gain thousands of followers and millions of views, resulting in inbound leads, press opportunities, and rubbing virtual shoulders with key industry leaders. This is my exact formula for helping my clients achieve success LinkedIn:

1. Know your goal.
Narrow down exactly why you want to show up as an authority on LinkedIn. Is it to get more clients? Is it to build your professional network? Is it to build a marketing channel for your newsletter? Is it to leverage an audience to earn more speaking opportunities? If it’s “just because I should,” that’s not good enough; put your efforts elsewhere.

2. Know your audience.
With your goal in mind, think of who will help you achieve your goal. Who are your clients or decision makers for your clients? Who do you want in your professional network? Who do you want to read your newsletter? Who do you want to attend one of your talks? Write a list.

When you have an idea in mind of your target audience, take some time to research and reflect on the following: what are their challenges, what are their desires, what are their interests, who they trust, what sources they turn to for news, what content do they consume.

3. Know your topics.
Reflect on your personal and professional experiences. What topics can you speak on with authority? Write a list. From this list, what topics are related to the theme of your goal? Next, what topics are relevant to your target audience? While you can create content that colors outside of this list, it’s important to keep a general focus on the topics you post about.

4. Know your content buckets.
I advise clients to post in 4 buckets: valuable, emotional, conversational, and promotional.

– Valuable posts teach your audience something. It helps you establish authority in your space. These posts will get less engagement since they are specific to a certain audience.

– Emotional posts draw emotion out of your audience (frustration, fear, excitement, happiness, disappointment, etc.). It helps expand your reach and grow your following. These posts will get more engagement since emotions are universal.

– Conversational posts engage your audience in a conversation. It helps you build rapport and familiarity with your audience. These posts will get more comments and DMs.

– Promotional posts make an ask of your audience (read an article, book a call, check out the website, etc.). It helps you direct your audience where you want them to go. These posts will help you achieve your goals from your efforts.

5. Know yourself.
Consistency is the name of the game with social media. Ask yourself how consistent you can be with posting. It will be hard to see results if you consistently post multiple times per day for a month but then completely fall off. Building trust with an audience takes time, and consistency is a large part of this trust. I recommend my clients post at least twice per week.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Two things: exceptional work and agency partnerships.

I am fortunate enough to have most of my clients come to me from referrals. This is because my team and I consistently provide exceptional work. If you deliver on your promises to your clients and/or go above and beyond what you promised clients, they will do the selling for you. Even in the secret world of ghostwriting, great work speaks for itself – my clients do all the talking.

As a service-based business, build relationships with complementary service providers. For example, I have relationships with PR agencies. Often, we are tapped to write articles in collaboration with the PR agency and their clients.

I also build relationships with seemingly direct competitors. For example, I have relationships with several LinkedIn ghostwriting agencies with slightly different clientele than ours. When a potential new client isn’t the best fit for their agency, they will refer the client to us and vice versa.

I have found that working to build relationships with agency owners has been the best avenue. This is because when we are tapped for a potential client project from a different agency, we already know they are our target client and are interested in our services. This is significantly less work than marketing yourself to a broad group of your target audience, building trust, and hoping that one day they might be interested in your services and that they remember you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://senecaagency.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kit.huffman/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kit-huffman/