Are you skeptical of social media and how it can help you grow your freelance business?
If so, you’re not alone. But you might want to explore the possibilities—especially given the current economy. Social media can help you find new markets, reach more potential clients, and help get your name out in front of more people. And why wouldn’t you want to extend your reach right now?
I talk at length about the benefits of social media marketing in a recent interview that I did with Heather Boerner, a San Francisco-based freelance writer and consultant, for her blog, Serenity for the Self-Employed. …read more

Good Monday morning readers!
Today, I’m shining the spotlight on Rachel C. Weingarten, a creative brand strategist and president of Octagon Marketing Group (Formerly GTK Marketing Group). Rachel also is the author of Career and Corporate Cool™, Hello Gorgeous! Beauty Products in America, and a contributor to Fortune Small Business.
Rachel’s comments on small business, trends, and marketing regularly appear in the Associated Press, ABC News, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Crain’s New York Business, and other top media outlets.
Most recently, she created a series on women entrepreneurs for CNNMoney.com, worked with internationally best-selling authors and directors, and appeared …read more

Have you ever hammered nails into a board with a banana?
Me neither. But yesterday, a Minnesota news station demonstrated that cold weather has certain unlikely advantages. Apparently, when the mercury drops to -13 or below, a banana will freeze so solid that you can use it to hammer nails into a board.
By now, you’re probably thinking—what on earth does this have to do with freelance writing?
Well, sometimes climate changes bring unexpected advantages—whether the changes are weather-related or economic. All the rules change when the temperature hits subzero temperatures—even bubbles freeze. And in an economic downturn, all the rules change too. …read more

I know many freelancers who would love to skip over the marketing and self-promotion part of this business and simply write and edit all day long. And I’ll be the first to admit that I used to fall into that camp.
But unless you get the word out there about your services and what you have to offer to clients, editors, and publications, no one will know about you and your business. And especially in an economy like this one, you want to make sure your name is the one that clients and editors think of first when they need quality …read more

It takes a twentieth of a second for Web surfers to make a decision about a Web site. So how long do you think it takes for an editor or potential client to form an opinion about you when your LOI lands in their inbox?
I’ve sat in the editor’s chair, and I’ll tell you: not long. On a busy day, you’re lucky if they even open your e-mail. Especially if their inboxes are flooded with a steady, unending stream of freelancers looking for work.
When you write an LOI, you don’t have long to make a good impression. So you want …read more

For weeks, you’re so slammed with work that you hardly have time to eat, sleep, or breathe. And then finally, there’s that feeling of sweet relief after you hit the send button on that last assignment. But suddenly, you realize your calendar has too much white space and you have no work assignments scheduled for weeks.
While you were busy cranking out all those stories and editing those articles, you shoved your marketing efforts to the back burner. Now, you are paying the high price of the feast-or-famine freelance cycle: no work assignments = no money.
Sound familiar? I have yet to …read more

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
When a potential client comes to your website (if you don’t have a website see You’re a Writer – You Need a Website!) nothing is more reassuring than a few testimonials, provided they are genuine. Ideally they will be accompanied by a picture of the person endorsing your writing. I’ll admit I haven’t gotten pictures, but my websites do have a few testimonials and I know they help would-be customers make up their mind to contact me.
The way I get the testimonial is two-fold:

First, I simply ask. I usually do this toward the end of the a project, often …read more

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
A little while ago I posted about claiming credit when you’re ghostwriting On August 22, Peter Bowerman of Well-Fed Writer fame talks about claiming credit for other kinds of work done for clients. In replying to one of this Freelance Commercial Writers who asks “Do you get permission (to post a piece) from every client…?”
Peter’s response is he doesn’t ask. In fact, he calls it a “non-issue.” He does go into more explanation, making it clear he’s careful not to post anything under a non-disclosure agreement and the like, but the basic message is he feels free to use most …read more

Do all professional freelance writers need their own blog? I’ve got one, and many of the most successful writers I know do, but not all of them. Does this mean you should have one?
I’m going to sound like a politician, but the truth is, it depends.
Blogs got started as journals but were soon recognized as potential marketing tools. Which means writers have two potential reasons to blog:

to journal in public, or,
to market themselves and their services.

While most freelancers – almost all, in fact – do need to continually market themselves, blogging may not be the best way to …read more

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’re probably at least vaguely aware I live in San Diego. Well, now that I’ve moved, I live in a town called National City, but it adjoins San Diego so it’s almost the same thing. Not only do I live in sublime weather now, I was born here, so I’m super spoiled.
Right now it’s raining… not hard, just enough to catch your attention. There’s something about raid that makes me want to curl up and read. I want to read mind candy, like the latest thriller. Or something fairly esoteric …read more