How To Ensure You Don’t Become A Poor Communicator On Your Way To Freelance Writing Success

By Dan Smith

In the coming weeks, I’m going to be working from home almost exclusively. I’ve decided to drop the salaried role I’m working in and focus primarily on my writing career.

I’ve been working from home more and more lately and although it took a little while to get used to (no matter how much I thought I would love it straight away), I’m finally beginning to see just how beneficial it can be in every respect.

My problem is — and I’ve said this before — I’m not naturally a massively outgoing person. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the shy and retiring type, but I won’t naturally go out of my way to converse with people just because I haven’t spoken to anyone in a while.

Working in an office, this problem wasn’t that large, as I would see people all day, every day.

Working from home, however, I regularly jump on the computer at 8am and with the exception of showering and making some food, I could easily be working right through until 8pm without talking to anyone other than my fiancé.

And it’s because of this why I’ve started to make an effort to not effectively hibernate away all day, as I know all too well that when I do, although I get a lot of work done, my face-to-face communication skills and general confidence takes a hit.

Therefore, to ensure I don’t become a poor communicator — which is probably easier done than most in a similar position believe — I tend to follow a bit of a routine, with these three points summarising it perfectly.

1. Speak to someone in person every day

And I don’t mean your Other Half!

It doesn’t have to be anyone in particular or for any length of time, but every day of the working week — Monday to Friday — I make an effort to talk to someone in person.

Sometimes it’s the guy behind the counter in the coffee shop. Other times it’s someone in the supermarket. They don’t require any major discussion to take place, but I’ve found that just having a short conversation with someone ensures I don’t get into a habit of not talking to people — or not wanting to talk to people.

It’s simple, but it works for me.

2. Don’t rely solely on e-mail

This is arguably my biggest personal problem — I love e-mail and rely on it A LOT.

Sure, as freelance writers, the majority of our work can be carried out by e-mail, but it can make you so reclusive, as when you don’t need to speak to someone face-to-face and give them an immediate, on-the-spot answer, you can become somewhat au fait with your replies, something you can’t really do when speaking in person.

Therefore, although it’s not something I do every day, I try to make a phone call occasionally, either instead of or to supplement an e-mail.

Again, simple, but it helps me to feel confident that I can provide an answer to a client irrelevant of whether they want a reply by e-mail or they want me to go and meet at their offices.

3. Consider taking a step out of your comfort zone

This is something that I tell everyone — family, friends, colleagues, new freelance writers. Everyone.

As happy as we might be in our own little worlds, earning an income and enjoying life, we can so easily fall into ruts where we do the same things each and every day and become far too comfortable doing so. And when we do, we very rarely learn anything new.

Look at joining a local networking group. Try and setup a client meeting where you can do a presentation. Perhaps do a sales pitch.

Whatever you do, you’ll find that you only benefit from it — even if it goes horribly wrong, you’ll learn from it and know what went wrong, what went right and how you can improve for next time.

Whenever I do anything outside of my comfort zone, although I admittedly get a little nervous beforehand, the feeling afterwards is almost always one of increased confidence — succeeding at something you don’t normally do can be an extremely exhilarating experience.

This blog post is essentially nothing more than information I’ve used to ensure I don’t become a reclusive freelance writer, something I truly believe would be very easy to do.

Over the last few months in particular, I’ve been required to spend more and more time meeting clients and talking about writing, blogging and business development. Although I believe I could have done this without any personal development, I do think that the fact I’ve taken the time to ensure I can communicate effectively away from the comfort of my office has really helped me considerably.

PS — I’ve just bought a Mac and I’m still getting used to it, so if there are any misspelled words or formatting issues in this blog post, I do apologise!

Image: Malingering (Flickr)