Marketing yourself as a budding freelance writer
BIZCOM – No matter what kind of work you do, there has to be a way for you to generate business. If you work for someone else, your employer does so on your behalf, such as when a car company advertises its products and creates demand for the work of the people who build the vehicles.
But when you work for yourself, you have to create that market yourself. Your skills may be second to none, but they’re not going to make you any money if no one knows that.Freelance writing is a perfect example. There are thousands of people out there competing for the same work that you want. You have to be good to compete, but you’ve also got to be visible to compete.There are a number of factors involved in the process of putting yourself out there and marketing your skills as a freelance writer. You can work through several platforms to do it.
Writing a blog
One of the earliest forms of widespread communication online was the blog. Despite the advance of social media and other techniques, it is still widely used today for a number of purposes.Essentially a blog is your own free space to write whatever you wish. You can review restaurants, talk about your childhood, or opine about the state of political discourse in the United States. Your choice.Of course, your goal is to have that blog seen by people who can provide you with work. As a result, it needs to be secure, operating from your own server so that you can monitor security and maintain the domain yourself.This platform is like an online resume for you, popping up in search results or linked from other blogs.
And a bonus: You can generate some ad revenue that will help you bring in a little more money.
Working with social media
It’s no surprise to see this still makes the list. While blogs are great for providing examples of your writing style and shining a light on the topics you know best, there is still a lot of value in just being seen.Properly-managed social media accounts are essential. Countless career connections are made every day just because people are registering on the right networking sites, joining the right Facebook groups, or using the right hashtags.That underscores the importance of using the right social media techniques. There are countless other would-be freelancers on every platform, and no employer is willing to wade through those thousands in hopes of finding you. So you have to set yourself apart with those targeted strategies in the last paragraph. In addition, you should write well on your accounts. Very, very well. If there are spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors on even a well-managed post, it will not help you at all.
Maintaining a portfolio
Of course, even a meticulously-written social media post isn’t enough to land you the work. You still need examples of what you can write in compliance with someone’s requirements.The first and most important thing to do is to keep copies of paid work that you do, as long as it is permissible to do so. Then store your metrics; see how many hits it has gotten with the publisher and see what other information you can gather.But don’t forget about your rejected work. It’s important to remember that something isn’t a bad piece just because it wasn’t published. It may have been off-topic, too long, too short, too controversial–or not controversial enough.Keep everything! Organise it, tag it, save it, and back it up on that server you bought for your blog. That way, when someone responds to one of the feelers you have put it, there’s something for you to give them.Freelance writing can be a very satisfying and lucrative career. But unlike traditional jobs where you get hired and then show up to wait for instructions, you must be hired for every single task you accomplish. If you want to have success with that type of work, you have to do a great job of marketing yourself and your work to everyone who may take interest.