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Marketing yourself
Paying attention to business

Freelancers can write or edit stories all day and still feel as though their careers are stuck in neutral. A measure of innovation may be required to move things forward.

To start, it helps to master social media — Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Quora, Twitter, etc. — the fastest-growing form of communication. Story sources and editing clients may prefer one of these venues to share basic information, pass along content changes and stay in touch (although phone calls are still the most meaningful form of direct communication, apart from face-to-face meetings).

Being active in social media also is essential for self-promotion, although it takes considerable time and care to develop it for that purpose. In the book publishing world, the informal time-management rule for authors nowadays is “80/20” — they should spend 80 percent of their time promoting themselves and 20 percent actually writing their books. This large percentage devoted to promotion includes such activities as presenting at workshops, speaking at conferences or seminars and working with other authors and editors to develop their craft.

Granted, an 80/20 split may not be right for most freelancer journalists, given that their success depends largely on volume. Nevertheless, a nod toward innovation can boost potential and expand your reach in the marketplace. Having an active presence in social media can get you known for your skills and found for assignments.

Freelancers are their own bosses — the greatest perk of the business. They’re also entirely responsible for their own failures. Extensive care and planning, and the willingness to innovate, will go a long way toward minimizing failure.

Take a look at how you find assignments and clients. If you’re waiting for them to come to you, rather than aggressively going after new projects, you aren’t being businesslike about your freelancing. A social media presence can help, but it takes more than that. Social media activity is still essentially a passive way to generate new freelance work.

Look at how — or if — you’re marketing your skills and business. To develop a constant flow of work, freelancers have to market their skills all the time, even when on deadline or immersed in a major, long-term project. If you aren’t spending any time and energy on marketing, it’s time to make that an active element of your freelance business. Doing traditional research into potential markets, followed up with queries to those markets, can move you from the passive to the active in building up your freelance business.

It also helps to assess where your assignments came from over the past six months to a year, and how much you actually earned on each one. That information will help you figure out where to spend more effort, and which — or which kinds of — clients to drop because they require more of your time and skill than they’re worth.

We may be artists of the word, either written or edited, but we still have to be businesslike about our freelance efforts in order to succeed. That means promoting ourselves, assessing our successes and marketing our businesses.

Contributors: Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, David Sheets

Resources:

• Blog posts on marketing at An American Editor

Last updated: February 2015

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