As a freelance writer, it’s not enough to set up a website and leave it alone. It’s not enough to set up a blog and post sporadically. With both websites and blogs, you need to keep them up to date. Even more important, you need to promote them. Promoting your website or blog is the only way that people will be able to find you. I have seen it work for me. I promote in a variety of ways on a number of sites. Sometimes people tell me how they found me. They say:
- I saw your Squidoo lens.
- I read your article on a site
- I searched for ghostwriters and found your site.
These are all things that have really happened to me and have really brought me work. This means two things for freelance writers.
First, time spent on promotion is not wasted time. As writers, we often feel guilty when we’re not writing. But think about it this way. Successful companies with international brand names still promote aggressively, trying to get new people to use their products or to keep old ones from going elsewhere. If it works for Coca Cola, why not for us? Promoting gets new people interested in our work and keeps our existing clients happy that they are with the best writer for them.
Second, you should do something every day that gets your name out there. When you have deadlines to meet, you may not be able to take a day off and promote but promoting yourself could be as simple as:
- commenting on a blog in your niche
- offering a guest post to a blogger in your niche
- bookmarking some of your content on the social sites
- making a comment in a forum related to your niche.
If you have more time, then you can set up a hub, a lens or a minisite and use that to promote yourself. And if you’re running out of ideas, try following Darren Rowse’s 31 Days To Building A Better Blog project. There are tons of great ideas from Darren and others.
Today, I have promoted by writing a couple of blog posts and by linking to one of my new articles on Garden and Hearth. How have you promoted your writing services today?
hi this is informative. yes we need to promote ourselves every week week if not daily
Great advice! It’s hard to remember to self promote when you are busy but I’ve been trying to do something to promote or related to self promotion first thing every day. It takes only a minute or two and can have big payoff!
Thanks for reading, Pervara.
It is amazing how little time it takes to do something to promote yourself, Dana. Even stuff that you did a long time ago can bring benefits.
Thanks so much for this post! We so often feel that time spent doing anything other than actually writing or researching our articles, blog posts, etc. is wasted time. It’s great to be reminded that time spent in promotion is time well spent.
So glad to have found your site!
Regards,
Jeanne
I have actually set aside 15 minutes a day to work on promoting my writing. It doesn’t sound like much, but over the course of a week, I get a lot done.
Thanks for this timely reminder of the importance of promoting ourselves.
Thanks, – and thanks for giving me a new writing blog to visit.
Thanks for the reminder that it’s not just a matter of knowing how to write, but also letting others know you know how to write.
The more you promote, the easier it becomes for people to know what you do and to find you, Michael. Thanks for your comment.
Other than related to my job, I have not written in years. I am wanting to return to my first love, writing. Thanks for the help. I have to learn how to set up a website and how to blog. Yes, I am probably older than many of you. My first dream was to write a book, not write on/for the internet. I must adapt to new ideas. Thanks for the help. Judy
Hi Judy, thanks for dropping in. I wish you good luck in getting your writing career started. There’s lots of advice scattered around this blog. Check out the series at the top of my features page to get started.