TERMS OF SERVICE

Ghost Works is a boutique blog management service. We run company blogs in collaboration with communications teams and brand marketers. Our objective is to help you reach blog bliss℠!  

We don’t have contracts or long-term commitments (unless you love us so much that you sign up for an annual contract!). So these are the terms that define, guide, and govern the service we provide. These terms are in effect throughout our engagement and extend beyond that time wherever noted. It’s important that you understand these, as all Ghost Works clients agree to these terms.

FYI: “You,” “your,” and “yours” are used interchangeably to refer to our client, or the person engaging Ghost Works on behalf of themselves or their employer. We may also use “the Company” or “company” to refer to the Client and their employer.

LAST UPDATE: May 1, 2019

What you get from us

We use our brand journalism approach to deliver compelling content consistently. When you engage us, you get everything promised under your chosen plan on our pricing page. Each plan promises a set number of articles each month, with a maximum of 1,200 words per article. We also collaborate on your content strategy, via your own editorial calendar where we track articles from start to finish. 

With your input, we brainstorm ideas, research topics, identify stakeholders, craft the angle, write the story, edit the article and submit for your approval. We can even publish to your CMS if you’d like!  

Our plans are priced monthly. This means that you get a set number of articles each month. With 52 weeks in the year spread out over 12 months, that’s 48 articles per year. Our non-publishing weeks are usually: the week before Memorial Day, the week before Labor Day, the week of Thanksgiving, and the week of Christmas. Depending on client needs, these weeks can and do shift. While there won’t be an article submitted during those weeks, we’ll be back with a vengeance the week after!

Confidentiality

Loose lips sink ships! Every aspect of your engagement with us is confidential. Any written, verbal, digital, or physical information we receive as part of our engagement is confidential. We will never divulge this information during or after our engagement, unless required by law or with approval from the Client. This confidentiality survives any termination of services with Ghost Works.

We have set up our workflows and processes to restrict access to only the managing editor and brand journalist assigned to your account. The company executive in charge of accounts and client success also has access. 

In the course of our work, we often receive proprietary company data. We keep this data fully confidential and only use this data for creation of content for the company that provided it.

All first-party data provided by your company is completely confidential. We hold that information in strictest confidence. Project boards which include such data are only available to the managing editor and the brand journalist assigned to your account, as well as the company executive in charge of accounts and client success.

If you’re satisfied with our service, we would be honored to showcase your logo on our homepage. If you’d rather keep the ghost as your secret weapon, we get that too! After all, the ghost works for you

Contractors

Ghost Works is an independent contractor. We are not a Company agent, and therefore the Company is not liable for any employment taxes, such as worker’s compensation, that may be required by law.

Sometimes we will represent the Company in communications with potential interview subjects or other persons in connection with creating content for the Company blog. In any communications on behalf of Clients, we will disclose our relationship. Unless otherwise arranged by the Client, all communications come from the Ghost Works domain.

Ghost Works also hires contractors as part of providing its services. These contractors are governed by an agreement with Ghost Works and must abide by these Terms and all related Confidentiality.

Workflow

Our workflow is what fuels the blog pipeline. We integrate a variety of third-party tools to make the magic happen. 

By engaging Ghost Works, you agree to use these tools (see Privacy Policy) as much as feasible with your existing company processes. You also agree to make a valiant attempt to allow our team access to any relevant tools on your end that help streamline our collaborations. 

We also will do what we can to integrate and adapt to your internal processes. We want Ghost Works to be as seamless as possible, so it’s easy for you to work with us. We’re here to make your life easier, not harder!

Mutual co-operation

We agree to use our best efforts to fulfill and exceed your expectation on the deliverables listed in our Scope of Work.

You agree to aid us in doing so by making available to us needed information pertaining to your company’s operations, priorities, roadmap, and general expertise, and to cooperate with us in expediting the work. We know how busy life can get, so we cannot be held responsible for timeline delays due to delayed responses, feedback, or missing information that we need to be successful. Timelines are essential, and meeting deadlines must be accomplished together!

If article edits are not received within 30 days of submission, we will assume that the content has been approved without edits. 

Compensation and expenses 

Payment is due in advance of the services. At this time, we only accept credit cards or US banks transfers. This is due to the subscription nature of our service. We will automatically bill your account on the same day of the month that you first signed up for the service.

We can provide invoices upon request. If you have questions on payments, please reach out.

We also offer a discount of 10% for any annual contracts paid up front. For those larger amounts, we can provide an invoice for your procurement team to process as a bank transfer. Our bank is located in the US, and we will pay any related fees on our end. You will be responsible for any fees from your bank.

Any sales tax or other duties are in addition to our posted monthly service fees.

Additional services for clients

We believe that the blog is the heart of the brand. All messaging should flow from there. As the foundation for brand marketing, the blog is one of the most important pieces of a marketing strategy. Our perspective at the center of the company gives us an advantage when it comes to additional services. There’s little to no ramp-up time, and we know your brand.

As such, we provide additional services only to Ghosts Works clients. We do not solicit business elsewhere, and will rarely take business from non-clients.

For ad hoc work, our rates start at $85 per hour, adjustable depending on what type of services are required. Some services, such as strategy sessions, video, livestreams, and podcasts, may be billed at a higher hourly. We will also provide estimates that are project-based rather than hourly. If you’d like to discuss additional services, please just let your brand journalist know.

Requests above and beyond the the set number of articles the Client signed up for may be considered out-of-scope. If such requests are made, we will let you know and offer to create a standalone proposal for your review.

We want you to see us as your content partner on tap for any of your creative needs!

Cancellation

We are confident in the value we provide, so Ghost Works requires no contracts or commitments. Cancel anytime!

When you cancel, you will lose access to your account within 5 business days. Please remove any pending drafts that you’d like to use. If they are not company-specific (i.e. using proprietary company data), any ideas in the brainstorming/ideas phase may revert back to the Content Pool. Refer to our IP sections for more information.

After 5 business days, all data will be removed from our systems. Some of these systems are third-parties, such as Trello and Slack. We do not control how often these services fully delete data from their services. However, we will no longer have access to any of your data after 5 business days. Privacy is essential when it comes to client company data, so we wipe it all.

There is no account archiving! Please cancel responsibly. We will have to start from scratch if you want to restart Ghost Works.

To cancel, email your Ghost Works team. Or you can also email cancel@ghost.works. We are working on an automated cancellation process so that you can be assured of a painless process. We reallllyyyy hate companies that make it hard to cancel a subscription! 

Ownership of IP: Articles vs brainstorming

You retain all rights to any content created by Ghost Works, its employees, and its contractors. This includes both completed articles (published to a blog and unpublished) and drafts in production. If an article is completed, and you ask for a full re-write that significantly/completely alters the article’s premise and content, then the content is considered substantially different and Ghost Works retains ownership. An example of this: we create an article for you and your feedback is beyond edits; you want a new article. In that case, we retain ownership of that original article.

When it comes to brainstorming, there may be overlaps in themes and general concepts between clients. This is due to the fact that trends and developments in a given industry are shared across all participants — even competitors. So we cannot guarantee intellectual property ownership of ideas that remain in the brainstorming phase. There are always overlaps, and clients make no claims to ideas.

Please remember that broad concepts, industry trends, data and other commonly shared information cannot be owned — unless it’s proprietary research, company-owned data, or  specific analysis on that information. So you might see some overlaps between content created for our clients — this is normal, expected, and actually quite important. Thought leaders must comment, reflect, and offer insights into their chosen industry through the lens of current trends, data and other happenings.

To the best of our knowledge, any materials or intellectual property created are original and do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others.

Ownership of IP: Company data

In the course of our work, we often receive proprietary company data. We keep this data fully confidential (see Confidentiality section), and only use this data for creation of content for the company that provided it.

In fact, data-driven content is the backbone of any successful company blog. Company data provides the foundation for unique insights that only your company can provide. This is the best way to show how intelligent and forward-thinking your brand is. These data-driven insights are fully singular to your company.

Again, all first-party data provided by your company is completely confidential. We hold that information in strictest confidence. Project boards which include such data are only available to the managing editor and the brand journalist assigned to your account, as well as the company executive in charge of accounts and client success.

To the best of our knowledge, any materials or intellectual property created are original and do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others.

Ownership of IP: the Content Pool

Ghost Works may offer what we call the Content Pool. This is an area of article/topic/headline ideas that may be shared across clients.

Once an idea has been selected by a client to pursue, it is removed from the Content Pool. Any subsequent draft content is owned by the client. If an idea is dropped and not pursued, it can be returned to the content pool for another client. If another client then picks up that content idea, and its developed into an article, that client owns all IP associated with it.

Broad concepts, industry trends, data and other commonly shared information cannot be owned — unless it’s proprietary research, company-owned data, or specific analysis on that information. So you might see some overlaps between content created for our clients — this is normal, expected, and actually quite important. Thought leaders must comment, reflect, and offer insights into their chosen industry through the lens of current trends, data and other happenings.

To the best of our knowledge, any materials or intellectual property created are original and do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others.

Analytics and content performance

In order to track and measure content performance, we request direct access to your company’s blog analytics. This is generally through a third-party plugin such as Google Analytics.

This data is confidential and will never be attributed to your brand publicly.

We do aggregate anonymized client data to track and improve our services. We may share this anonymized aggregated data on our Website and/or blog for marketing purposes. If you wish to opt out of anonymized aggregation, please just let us know.

Access to company blog

In order to effectively deliver our services, we request direct access to your company blog’s Content Management System. Usually, this is WordPress. 

We ask for an admin account only so we can most effectively do the work with minimal intrusion on your time. At the very least, we require an account so we can get the articles ready for review. We prefer publishing rights, but if that’s too much access, Author rights will do. We just want to make it as easy for you with just the right amount of input and involvement. This ensures that using Ghost Works gives you more time for other priorities. That’s what blog bliss℠ is all about!

Libel and liability

You are responsible for all content published to your blog. We employ editorial best practices to vet and verify the accuracy of any included quotes, statements, research, statistics, and data. To the best of our knowledge, any materials or intellectual property created are original and do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others.

That being said, the buck stops with you. All articles are created on behalf of your company and are owned by you. We will only publish approved articles to your blog. Your approval of the content is the green light that you and your company are aligned with it. Once an article is published, we maintain no liability for its contents, including but not limited to any libel or errors/omissions claims.

Please be sure to take the creation and approval processes seriously! These workflows are vital to the ongoing alignment and success of our blog management service.

Disputes 

We hate conflicts. The only person that every wins is the lawyer. So rather than paying a lawyer, we try to resolve everything directly.

If necessary, we are governed by the laws of the State of California in the United States.

Changes to the Terms of Service

Sometimes we update our Terms of Service, so please keep an eye out for any changes. Latest date of changes is at the end of the policy.

Contact us

Should you have any question or concern, holler: hi@ghost.works.

LAST UPDATE: May 1, 2019