Ready To Move Up The Ladder? It’s Time To Kick Start Your Marketing Efforts

By Dan Smith

First of all, I hope you’ve all had a very Merry Christmas. However you celebrated the season, I hope that you’ve had a fantastic break and are feeling fresh and revitalized (and not too full of chocolates and alcohol!).

In my post from October, titled ‘It’s Time To Give Something Back To The Freelance Writing Community’, one of the regular commenters here at Get Paid To Write Online, Christina Crowe, asked:

A simple and straightforward question, this is arguably the most popular question I get asked.

Everyone wants to know how they should be marketing and promoting a freelance writing businesses, as simply put, the more marketing you do of any product or business, the more successful you’re likely to be.

The problem that many find with marketing their freelance writing business is not that there’s a distinct lack of opportunities for marketing and promotion, but that they don’t know which routes to take.

Do you place an advert in a business telephone directory telling everyone you’re a freelance writer?

How about taking out an advert on the front page of your local newspaper, promoting your article writing services?

Pay for a few links to your blog on high traffic websites, perhaps?

Maybe a stint with Google’s Adwords?

Understandably, it can be confusing trying to market your freelance business and many writers tend to put their marketing efforts on the back burner, thinking they’ll give them another shot in a few weeks time.

If you’re ready to start 2011 with a bang and want to give your marketing efforts a kick start, have a read through the following five points — they should all help you market your freelance writing business in a simple and effective way.

1. Start thinking you’re a freelance writing business

The very first thing you have to do is stop thinking that you’re just a jobbing writer, someone who’s going from project to project, without any real direction.

If you think and believe this, it’s going to make your clients wonder just how serious you are about writing and they’re going to think twice about hiring you — no one wants to be working with someone who’s supposed to be offering a professional service but who’s acting as though they’re providing a favour to a friend.

Businesses like to operate with businesses — it’s a simple fact. They’re a business who can be trusted and so they’d prefer to spend their money with another trusted business, knowing that they’ll get back a product that’s of the quality they deserve for their money.

If you can get over to potential clients that your not just one of the many new writers out there who is looking for work but are in fact an established freelance writing business, it’s not only going to put you in a more professional frame of mind, but you’re going to find you receive more interest from high paying clients.

2. Have a professional website

Once you’ve got it into your head that you’re now operating a freelance writing business and you aren’t just a writer who works on the occasional freelance project, you need to have a professional website to showcase your talents.

You don’t have to get a company in to design a website especially for your business, you just need to have a separate website or blog that you can use solely for business.

The simple reason behind this is that perception is everything and impressions count for such a lot in business.

For example, if a potential client came across your website, would you prefer if the website was one that combined your personal and professional lives, displaying your freelance writing rates alongside your holiday photographs or one that did nothing but showcase your business side, from your resume through to your previous clients?

3. Get yourself known in the community

You could be the best freelance writer out there, but if no one knows you’re available, how are they supposed to hire you when they need a freelance writer?

Getting yourself known in the freelance writing community isn’t difficult and you don’t have to spend hours upon hours every day contacting everyone directly — you’ve just got to start commenting on blogs, posting in forums and contributing or helping people out in groups, such as those on LinkedIn.

Your contributions to the blogs, forums and groups don’t have to be amazing or lengthy, either — as long as you’re saying something useful and relevant, you’ll soon find your feet in the community and you’ll be surprised at just how fast you grow in confidence and how quickly you become known within the community.

4. Start networking

I love networking. I love meeting new people and I love learning about them.

It’s because of this adoration for meeting new people and learning new things that I’ve got a particular fondness for one of the most importance aspects of marketing — networking.

When you mention the word networking, a lot of people shy away from the idea, believing that they have to sign up to in-person networking events where they go along every month and chat to other likeminded individuals, a process which they think is of no benefit to them.

The truth is that you really don’t need to be networking in this sense and I’ll be honest here, I haven’t been to an offline networking session in a long time. I know from colleagues that they’re a great way to meet new people, including potential clients, but I’ve always found them to be a little too corporate for my liking. Or at least the ones I attended were.

I find the best form of networking for me is to simply get in touch with other writers. Follow them on Twitter, read their blogs, e-mail them directly — I’ve met some fantastic people by simply dropping them an e-mail to say hey, introducing myself and striking up a conversation.

It doesn’t matter how you do it, whether you go to a weekly offline networking group or you start talking to some of your fellow writers online, but just make sure you’re meeting new people regularly — the people you meet might not be able to offer you any work directly, but there’s a very good chance they’ll pass on your details next time they know someone who’s looking for a freelance writer.

5. Give something away for free

Everyone, without exception, loves things that are free.

Those complimentary mints in the cafe always taste better because they’re free; your hair always looks better if your hairdresser gives you a free styling because the boss is away and those two bars of chocolate you get on Buy-One-Get-One-Free tastes that much better because you’ve only paid for one of them.

When you have something that’s free, you tend to keep going back for more, whether it’s still free or not.

You’ll head back to that cafe because although you remembered it for the complimentary mints, you realise you had a great meal there; you pay extra for a better styling next time you go to get your hair cut as it made you feel better about yourself last time and you buy that chocolate again and head back to the same shop as you enjoyed how the chocolate tasted.

Transfer this to a freelance writing business and if you’re to offer something on your website for free, whether it’s an ebook, a white paper or a template of some form, you’ll find that once people get word of your free offerings, they’ll tell their friends and colleagues, who’ll then tell their friends and colleague, who’ll then tell…

Word of mouth marketing — it’s the oldest but one of the best forms of advertising you can utilize.

How you market your freelance writing business is really up to you. These five steps, however, should make the process a lot easier than you might have first thought.

Just a word of warning — don’t carry out any marketing efforts if you aren’t entirely sure what you’re doing. I’m a massive fan of Google, but I’ve worked with far too many clients who’ve been using Adwords and seeing next to no return on the money because they just don’t know how to use it properly.

Image: Rude Cactus