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New Freelance Writer Business Marketing Strategies

Written by on July 18, 2009 – 7:04 pm

I love finding new freelance writer business marketing techniques to try out. When it comes to making a living as a writer, it is important to market the business any way you can. Well, within reason. You don’t want to turn into a spammer or use shady marketing tactics because that can hurt your reputation and do more harm than good.

So, these tactics may not be new to you, but they’re new to me and I’ve found them to be helpful. I’ve only been doing these for the past few months or so. Some of these may look obvious. Frankly, I’m baffled that I didn’t start doing them sooner.

Freelance Blog and Portfolio Site

Okay, well this blog has been around for a while. It’s the portfolio aspect that actually still needs to be complete. I don’t currently have a writing portfolio online which is rather embarrassing. I still am not sure which tactic I’ll use to create the portfolio. Sometime in the next few days I’ll put something temporary up on this site.

For your blog, I recommend reserving your name for the domain. (Hey, someone’s gotta do it - it may as well be you. Trust me. You want it to be you!) Then, use the blog as a way to share news, thoughts, and helpful advice to your audience. You can also add a contact form so potential clients and your readers can get in touch with you.

Promote Your Blog

These days, it isn’t enough to simply start your blog and hope for the best. This should go hand in hand when starting a blog. I do promote this blog now, but once I put my portfolio up I’m going to do so more aggressively to spread the word about my writing. The main strategy I’ll use is article marketing.

Setup Profiles on Social Networks

For the longest time, I only really used three sites to do all my social networking.

Plurk

Twitter

Facebook

But that all changed as of this week. I made a list of all the places I have a profile and I spend a little time each day working on them. My networks on those three are pretty established so I work on them every day. But I only work on 1-2 more each day. I go down the list and make sure to visit the rest once a week or so.

Get Offline and Promote Your Business

Never underestimate the importance of networking offline. I just started doing that this year and have already landed a job because of it. When I first started, I felt like a fraud saying I’m a writer. But I learned something - when I tell people I’m a writer, people are genuinely interested in learning about what I do. So I tell them. No one thinks I’m silly or crazy or anything. In fact, most people that we’re around would benefit from their spouses taking on a portable career because anything else is impractical.

I’ve heard other writers say that you don’t need a business card. That’s not true. I have a card with my name, email, and website. It has a typewriter on it (but doesn’t say “Writer” on it). When people ask what I do I hand them one of the cards so they can check out the site. It’s so simple, why haven’t I been doing this all along?

Most of these freelance writer business marketing tactics are not new to me, but I’ve just started doing them. There are so many things you can try in terms of marketing that a few are bound to slip through the cracks. What tactics could you try to boost your writing career?

For some additional ideas, I recommend Turbo Charge Your Freelance Income. Some of the tactics are so simple, but they really do make a difference.