As a freelance writer, your job is more than just writing. Although the bulk of your work, and the way that you actually earn your money, is through writing, it’s not the only thing you have to do. In fact, you tend to wear many hats. From being the finance department and administrator, you also have all things sales and marketing to cover, too. And that can often make you break out in a cold sweat (I hear you!). But you have to become okay with it...at least until you can hire an assistant.
So if you’re ready to start pushing your business forward and make sure that you’re able to do it in the best ways possible, you’re going to want to start marketing yourself. As a copywriter or website writer, the bulk of your work is done online, so it’s also a great idea to market yourself online. You can do that using these eight methods.
With Your Website
The first thing that can act like a great marketing tool for your writing business is your website. So if you don’t already have one, you’re going to want to think about getting one. Your website can be your hub for samples of your work that can show prospective clients, listings of your awards, you blog and more. Here's more about building your website.
And Your Own Store
You may even want to go one step further and have a website that is transactional too. With the right kind of website, like Tank Prints setup for network marketers, you may be able to offer a streamlined services to your customers like package deals.
SEO
While we’re talking about your website, you’re then going to want to think about the SEO, too. If you’re not currently ranking too well in search listings, this is going to be something that you need to start working on.
Whether you choose to do it yourself, or work with an agency, you will find that doing your keyword research and populating your site should help you to gain more organic traffic and custom.
Here's an in-depth SEO guide to get you started.
Guest Blogging
Another side of SEO is also guest blogging, and this can also aid with your traffic too. If you’re new to guest blogging, then you’re going to want to come up with a strategy that you can work with in your own time. Again, this is something that you can choose to work on yourself or hire an SEO expert to help you with.
Social Media
advertising on social media for freelance writers
You’re also going to want to think about promoting yourself and your writing business on social media. This doesn’t always feel that easy to do, so coming up with a social content calendar can help you here. Not only should you look to identify what platforms you should work on, you should also try out different kinds of content to see what is going to work the best with your audience.
Advertising
Up next, there’s also advertising to think about. And when it comes to online advertising, you’re going to find that there are lots of different methods that you can work with. So, it may be in your interest to trial out a range of different methods. You may find that display advertising doesn’t give you as good results as PPC advertising. But you’re not going to know this until you try.
Affiliate Marketing
Then, you could also think about working with an affiliate marketing strategy. As a writer, it’s easy to see affiliate marketing as something that you should be making money from as a publisher. But when you’re a business, you can also set up your own campaign to help generate sales. This can be particularly relevant if you do sell your services as products on your site, or even if you have products such as ebooks and courses that you’ve created yourself.
Here's my ebook on how to become a successful freelance writer, step-by-step.
Influencers
Finally, you may also want to consider working with influencers. Influencer marketing is proving to be more and more effective in the online world - so why not get in on the action? You will find that there are influencers in your particular industry, such as bigger bloggers than yourself, that you can work with. This can often be a great way to promote your freelance writing business and harness the influence and audience of big players in the industry.
