If you are a fiction writer, online writer, or magazine writer, you need to be able to promote yourself.  Unless of course you’re big enough to have an agent that does all of that for you.  But the majority of us are web writers and the only people we can depend on to promote us are ourselves!  It is a vital element to any web writer that wants to be successful.

Thanks to the Internet, there are many ways that we can promote ourselves.  You can get your name out there and share samples of your work at the same time.  Choose a good mixture of promotional techniques to get the best results and reach the widest audience possible.  Many of them are no cost options so take advantage of them.

Social Media

Obviously, I put a lot of emphasis on social media.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+ and bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon can help you reach a wide audience.  I know some of you like to keep your Facebook profile private.  That’s fine.  You can still create a Facebook Page.  You can share articles you’ve written, blogs you’re writing for, ideas, thoughts, and so much more.

Interaction is always going to be important when it comes to social media promotion.  You can’t just get out there and talk about yourself.  You need to be ready to help people, share information, and develop relationships.  Without the interaction you’re just a big ol’ spammer. J

Here’s a tip for Facebook Page owners. 

You can comment on other pages as YOUR PAGE instead of your profile!  Just go to your page and look to the right.  You’ll see a link that says, “Use Facebook as (your page name)” – click that.  Then find pages that you like and “LIKE” them.  Then participate in the conversation as YOUR PAGE.  You’ll get more likes to your page, which means more exposure!

Your Website

I’ve talked about this before.  You need to have a website that is complete and professional.  Treat it like the reception area of your office.  It should be clean and tidy.  Clients should have access to someone to contact (via your contact form or another means).  You should have basic info that they will be looking for and then you can direct them to your blog, which gives you the opportunity to kind of sit down and have a chat with them.

Blogging

If you don’t have a blog, why not?  If you have a blog that is sitting there growing weeds, why?  A blog is not rocket science.  You’re writing articles for clients every day so why would you not take some time to write for yourself?  Think of it this way, your blog is your office.  It is where you can provide people with information, you can sell your services, and you can demonstrate your knowledge.  Why wouldn’t you take a couple hours a week to develop your business?

And while you’re blogging great stuff, don’t forget to share it on your social networks!

Reviews & Testimonials

When people use the Internet to find a service or a product, they often start by looking for reviews first.  They don’t want to just know what you have to say about you; they want to know what others say about you.  They want to know what you are good at and they want to know what actual clients have to say!  You can start by getting clients to give you a testimonial that you can place on your site or blog.  If you have a Facebook page you can ask clients to come and like the page and leave a comment about your services.  If you have a site or blog there are review sites that special in reviewing.

Forums and Groups

What better way to demonstrate your knowledge and promote yourself than by helping people?  And forums and groups are great for that.  They can especially be helpful if you have a specialty.  Your specialty likely has a Yahoo group, a forum, or a Facebook group connected to it.  Join it and participate.  Look for the chance to answer people’s questions.

And don’t forget that many forums let you attach a bio or a signature.  Make use of this!  If you use a signature, make sure it is something catchy and appealing.  If it is a bio fill it out completely.  If you’re on Google+ (and you should be – it is growing!) make sure your Google profile is completely filled out.  It’s a sales page and people will read it so don’t miss out on this chance to promote yourself!

Article Marketing

Do you think that since Panda came along article marketing is out the window?  It’s not.  There are still sites that are doing well and article marketing gives you a chance to share your knowledge and get valuable links back to your site or blog.  Write great stuff and always make sure that your profile is filled out completely.  People can’t find you if you don’t tell them where you are.

Guest Posting

You can’t get everyone on the Internet to your blog.  But you can go to where other people are.  Guest posting has the advantage of allowing you to reach a targeted audience that is just sitting there and waiting for you to show up.  Well, not necessarily you.  But someone.  And if it isn’t you it will be someone else.

Follow some great blogs and study them.  If you have a specialty, you’ll want to look for blogs in those niches, obviously.  But if you’re not sure yet, follow blogs in a niche that you’re interested in and can write about.  Observe how their blog posts are structured and the tone of the writing.  Then write something great for them and contact the blog owner and offer your guest post.

This Isn’t a Waste of Time

I hear writers say all the time that they don’t want to waste time on social media or don’t have time for guest posting.  All these things are not a waste of time.

They are good business!

Every business needs to promote.  I don’t care if you have an online business or a bricks and mortar business.  You can’t just rely on drive by traffic to keep your business profitable.  You need to promote.

Think about it – if you’re not promoting yourself and using some of these techniques, you are wasting your time being in business for yourself.  You’d be better off to go and get a retail job IMO.

Are You Using These 7 Important Tools to Promote Yourself as a Writer? is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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You have all the makings of a successful freelance writer: talent, professionalism, and a can-do attitude. Stellar writing samples? Check! Killer website? Check! LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook business pages? Check, check, and check! So, why aren’t clients beating down your door?

Easy. You haven’t gone out to find them yet.

As with any business, if you want to succeed as a freelance writer, you’re going to have to do a little (a lot) marketing to build your client base. Unfortunately, marketing alone isn’t enough. You have to know where to market, who you’re marketing to, and how to negotiate the process once you have a fish on the hook. Sound daunting? It doesn’t have to be, but there are plenty of things that could be hurting your marketing efforts without you even realizing it. Here are 8 of the most common mistakes.

Mistake #1: You’re not marketing yourself enough.

You made 50 phone calls and placed 10 ads on Craigslist. Great! What else? If you don’t have an answer to that question, you probably aren’t marketing yourself nearly enough. It takes time to find clients, and one single burst of effort isn’t going to cut it. You’ve barely even scratched the surface. Keep sending emails or making calls. After you’ve done that, gather a new list of prospects and do it all over again.

Set a weekly goal, and stick to it. If you plan on sending 5 emails a day, do it.

How many contacts do you need to make before you start seeing results? That depends, and it’s different for every writer. Some will get lucky and start landing gigs after the first week. For others, it can be a much longer process.

A simple answer would be: keep doing it until you have enough work to stay busy. Then, continue doing it (albeit, at a slower pace) to make sure you stay busy. Rest assured, if you keep doing it enough, you will see results.

Image via CrunchBase

Mistake #2: Your marketing efforts are not targeted.

While it’s true that almost any company could benefit from professional writing help, some make better prospects than others. The main things you should consider when choosing who to target are the industries you have the most experience writing for, and the size of the companies you want to contact.

The way to get started is to stick with what you know. Were you in the insurance biz for 10 years? Great, write insurance articles or offer to write brochure copy for insurers in your area. Did you go to school for veterinary assisting? Contact vet clinics, pet stores, and dog food makers.

The size of each company is also important. Very small businesses often do not have the financial resources available to hire writing talent, while very large businesses usually have writers on staff. You want to start in the middle. These companies usually don’t have the money to keep writers on payroll, but they do often have a large enough budget to pay freelancers on an as needed basis.

It’s also a good idea to deal with companies that are older than the Internet. These businesses were around before SEO and $3 articles. They know the value of good content, and they are willing to pay for it. That’s not to say that all newer companies will try and low ball you, but aiming for more established businesses will lower the chances of being offered $100 to write an entire ebook.

Don’t miss part 2 and part 3 – coming soon!  Subscribe to the feeds so you don’t miss anything.

Are These 8 Marketing Mistakes Hurting Your Freelance Writing Career? – Part 1 is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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I’m a big believer in social media marketing.  You all know that.  I think that social media is the new search engine and studies are starting to show that more and more people look to social media for information on topics, rather than the search engines.  Will search engines like Google become obsolete?  Not likely for a long time.  But social media is going to just get bigger.  So it is important to know how to use it.

Facebook is one of the biggest social  media venues that we can use for marketing but many just don’t know how they are supposed to use it.  I get a lot of questions about Facebook and whether we should use a profile or a page.  And if we use a page, what should we put on it?

Well, for those of you who are fairly new to Facebook marketing, I’ve found the perfect resource for you.

Check out FansBridge.com – a blog that is all about Facebook marketing.  It is owned by Faissal Alhaithami, a young blogger who loves Facebook.  He’s actually also a past FamousBloggers/CommentLuv/IBlogZone contest participant and came in 5th in the Traffic Generation Blogging Contest so I have to give him props for that.  His whole blog is pretty awesome though.  There is loads of Facebook info to be found there and you could literally be there all day if you wanted to learn everything there is to learn about Facebook marketing.

But most of us don’t have all day long do we.  We need to learn the most important stuff right away and then move on to the more complicated stuff later.  And Faissal knows that so he put together The Facebook Marketing Secrets Guide for those who need to get going with their Facebook Pages now (there is a sign up form right near the top of the page – get the ebook and the free email newsletter at the same time).  This ebook is long enough to provide some true value but short enough to get through in an hour of concentrated reading.

Some of the things you’ll find in this ebook include:

• Creating a landing page
• Getting fans
• Inspiring conversation in your fans
• Page settings
• Making money
• Facebook advertising

And this isn’t just the same old regurgitated info you’ll find in other place on the net (although getting it in one ebook saves you a lot of time).  You’ll also learn about the double lead strategy, how to SEO your page, and how to use games to get your fans involved.  And perhaps one of the most important aspects that people often forget about – how to track data!

For a free ebook, Facebook Marketing Secrets provides a lot of value.  The ones that will benefit from it the most are new Facebook marketers but those of you who have been around the Facebook block a few times will find some helpful tips in here, too.  I did.

Facebook Marketing Secrets: A Great Start for New Facebook Marketers is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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I know there are a lot of writers out there that are new and really just don’t know where to start.  There are many writers who are not new but aren’t sure how to move away from the content mills to more private clients.  There are many writers who just need a few tips to take them to the next level.

And for those writers, I’ve put together a little ebook (well, not totally little) with some of my best blog posts.  But it isn’t just my already written blog post – each post has additional information and a TO DO list to help you put the advice into action.  And yes, there is some totally new information in there, too.

And what will it cost?

No money – just a tweet or a Facebook like! Just click the button below:

Freelance Writing Tips for New Writers is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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There are a few different ways that you can expand your freelance writing business. Most people usually think that taking on more clients is the best way to expand, but offering different services and expanding beyond just writing is a great way to make more money and not have to take on a lot more writing work.

Here’s the thing, even if you are just a writer and think you don’t have any other services you can offer to clients, you are most likely wrong. If you know how to set up a website or install WordPress on a site you have skills that most small business owners don’t. If you know how to tweet or you have a Facebook account those are other skills that you can utilize as well.

Here is a step-by-step process of expanding your freelance writing business by offering to build websites for small businesses.

Finding Potential Clients

If you have a problem with cold calling or emailing people, then you will have to get over that in order for this work for you. In the beginning you may find that you are sending out several emails or making several phone calls but once you have built up a portfolio of your sites you will find that it is easier to land clients. Also, you will find that word of mouth referrals will grow your business as well.

The first thing you should do is to narrow down a specific niche you want to pursue. There are several of them to choose from and you may want to go with one that you are familiar with. Some of the niches you may want to pursue include landscaping companies, dentists, electricians, handymen, artists or homemade crafts, real estate agents, and travel agents.

There are two main places to find small businesses that need a website. One is Craigslist and the other is the good old Yellow Pages book.  When you have your niche simply look through the ads in the “Services” section of Craigslist for your city. Check out the ads to see which ones don’t have websites in the ad and have emails addresses listed instead. For the Yellow Book you can go through the ads and call the different companies and ask them if they have a website or you can check online to see if they have a website before calling the company.

Be sure to keep a record of the companies you have called or emailed along with contact names so that you have the information handy and you don’t end up contacting the company twice.

Selling Your Services

Since you are writer it shouldn’t be that hard selling your services to them. Come up with several reasons why the company or owner needs a website. Make sure to mention things like how many people search online as well as how much business they may be missing out on by not having a website.

If you are sending an email you can use a form letter but be sure you personalize it as much as you can. Use the owner’s name if you can find it as well as the name of their business and how you found them. You should have a phone number they can reach you at as well as your email as some people feel may feel more comfortable talking on the phone to know you are a real person.

If you are going to go with cold calling then it is a good idea to have a script written out that you can refer to help you through the phone call.

It is up to you how much you want to charge for your services. Try to determine how long it will take you to set up the site as well as write the content for the site and then divide that by how much money you want to make an hour. You can also charge by the hour if you want but a lot of the time a flat rate fee works better in landing clients.

When you do set up the site, a simple WordPress site should be enough unless they want something outrageous and then you should definitely charge them a lot more and then outsource the job to a website designer you can trust. For a basic site you should include the home page, about page, contact page, and you can add anywhere from 5-10 articles about the business or articles related to what the business does.

Image by Adam Holloway via Flickr

Added Bonuses

There are some potential extra added bonuses that you get when you follow this method. One of them is actually a great way to make some extra passive income along with your writing.

If the client doesn’t have a website they are going to need to purchase a domain name as well as website hosting. There are two ways that you can approach this. The hand-offs way is to sign up for a website hosting affiliate program (I recommend Hostgator.com) and then have your client buy their hosting through your affiliate link. You then get the commission every time one of your clients pays for their hosting. You can also buy a reseller hosting package and have the client pay you to host their website on your hosting plan. This does gets a little more involved and costs you more money upfront for the reseller hosting package.

Another bonus is the fact that you can easily get more work from these small businesses if you offer other services. For example you may offer to write them 5 articles to be posted on article directories to get their site some backlinks. Or you may offer to set up a Twitter or Facebook account for the business as well. You can even offer to maintain their social media accounts for a monthly retainer fee. You can also do this with a blog on their site as well. Offer to write 2 blog posts a week for the csite for a monthly fee.

If you follow this process for expanding your freelance writing business you may just find yourself making more money than you thought you could and actually working less. Get enough clients and you may even be able to make more passive income from affiliate commissions than you did for writing for clients.

Unique Way to Expand Your Freelance Writing Business is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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It’s another Sunday and there have been some great blog posts out there worth reading.  Do you do your blog reading on a particular day or do you read throughout the week?  One of the reasons I like to try to do my blog reading on Sunday (sometimes on the weekend in general) is because then I don’t worry too much about what I’m missing throughout the week.  When I see something I want to read I just bookmark it (or star it in my Google RSS Reader) and go back to it on Sunday.

Here are some great posts from this week:

Freelance Writing

• 5 Tips for Handling Client Complaints Gracefully – It’s always hard to deal with complaints but it can be done gracefully.
• Writing for Residual Income Tomorrow: What are You Writing Today? – If you’re not writing for residual income yet start planning today!
• Do You Find it a Struggle to Secure Writing Jobs In Your Specialty Areas? – It isn’t always easy to find jobs in the niche we want to write in and Dan has some thoughts.
• Six Common Writing Excuses (and How to Overcome Them) – Keep making these excuses?  I know #2 is a big one for me!

Social Media

• Getting Back To Basics with Social Media – whether you’ve been doing social media marketing or are brand new to it, this post will get you on the right track.
• How to Charge for Social Media Services – if you’re a freelance writer and you want to add value to your services, offering social media services can be a great way to do that.  You can upsell when the opportunity is there, too!
• 10 Productive Tasks You Should Be Doing on Google+ Right Now – If you’re still not sure what the heck you’re supposed to be doing on Google+ this should help.
• 25 Google Tips and Tricks – And if the one before didn’t help this one should!

Other Stuff

• 7 Morning Hacks to Start Your Day – I don’t know about you but getting started is usually the hardest part of the day and these tips should help.  I will start implementing these tomorrow!

Sunday Reading #16 is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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If you have been reading this blog for awhile, you might remember me talking about the cool kid that I wanted to get the attention of.  If you don’t remember that read about it here (it will open in a new window so go read it).

Well, I was looking at that post the other day and I thought that I should give you an update.

What happened? Well, I did indeed get the attention of that cool kid.  He gave me the input that I wanted about my blog.  We’ve chatted a few times.  And he’s now one of my clients!

Image by caribb via Flickr

How did that happen?  Well, I like his page on Facebook and one day I saw that he was putting up a new request for a writer on ELance.  I don’t use bidding sites because I’ve never had good results from them.  They aren’t my thing (of course, I know that they do work so watch for a special guest post in the next few weeks from a writer who IS getting results).  I asked him if he’d consider letting other writers apply and explained that I don’t use bidding sites and he said for sure and that I should contact him through his site contact form and he would send me the specs and I could put in a bid.  He sent out the specs and…

I panicked!  I really wanted to impress him and I just got scared.  So I put it off for a day or so and then he contacted me and asked if I was still interested and that he’d like to pick someone for the writing job very soon.

I got my act together and put in the bid and 15 minutes later I got a reply back from him saying that he wanted me to do the job and he loved my proposal.

Well, I was so damn excited I broke out in tears!  I laughed and I cried and my husband didn’t know what was going on.  When I finally told him about the writing gig he was like, “Ya so?” because he didn’t realize that this was the COOL KID!  The COOL KID was going to hire ME!

I finally calmed down and replied that yes, I would love the job.  I did an ebook for one of his niche sites and he loved it.  In fact, he actually mentioned me in a blog post as the writer of his ebook and of course, I very quickly took a screen cap to add to my testimonials page!  :)  But then I started getting emails like crazy from people who wanted me to write for them because I’d written for the cool kid.  It was really crazy for awhile.

I’m working on my second project for him now.

So, I’d say I got his attention.  Am I going to tell you who it was?  No – you have to guess!  or maybe he’ll stop by here and out himself.  Who do you think the cool kid is?  Is it you?

What Ever Happened to the Cool Kid? is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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Google stories have been around for some time now but I don’t see a lot of people doing them.  I think they are a fun way to showcase the things you want people to know about you.

If you are a freelance writer you can draw attention to your site, the places you can be found online, searches that people can use to find you, and more.  I even used this one to draw attention to one of my testimonials that I think is very impressive.

Make your own Google story by going to http://youtube.com/searchstories and see how easy and fun it is!

Have You Created Your Google Story Yet? is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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If you are using a Facebook Page to market your freelance writing business (and you should be!) you need to make the most of it.  Getting people to like your page can be difficult but having a friendly welcome page that says a little bit about who you are and encourages people to like your page can help.

There are a lot of ways you can create a nice Welcome Page for your Facebook Page but most of them are pretty hard if you don’t have any skills in graphic design.  Or, you can hire someone to make one for you but that can cost a lot of money.  Me?  I like to find ways to do things myself that are not typically how they are done.  I use the skills that I already have to think outside the box.

One thing I am good at is making nice PowerPoint slides.  And I can make a picture of them using the Snipping Tool that comes with my computer.  Once you  have that, it is just a matter of storing it somewhere and knowing the code.

If you’d  like to try it yourself, check out this video:

Create a Friendly Welcome Page for Your Facebook Page is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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I’ve done two days of the 31DBBB book so far.

The first day was about elevator pitches.  This one wasn’t too hard for me because I’ve done it before.

My short elevator speech:

I help freelance writers find their way in a social media world.

My long elevator speech:

Many of the freelance writers that I talk with want to find more private client and the best way to get in touch with private clients is through your networks – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. I help people utilize their networks in social media so they can expand their business.

I think these things accurately describe what I do here a The Social Freelance  Writer.

The second part was to write a list post.  I’ve done several of those in the past and I actually really like list posts.  My favorite list post that I have written is 50 Reasons Freelance Writers Should Be Using Social Media – I think that this is a post all freelance writers should read if they aren’t already using social media. I also really enjoyed writing 20 Ways to Promote Your Professional Freelance Writer site.

But I didn’t think it was fair to skip  out on this lesson just because I’ve done them before so yesterday I wrote 5 Ways Freelance Writers Can Use Social Media to Increase Their Web Presence.  And that post is a good lesson in how you can use list posts in the future.  Increasing your web presence is one of the points that i mentioned in 50 Reasons Freelance Writers Should Be Using Social Media.

Tomorrow and maybe the day after that I’ll be working on promoting a blog post!

31DBBB – Elevator Pitches and List Posts is a post from: The Social Freelance Writer.

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