Susan Harrow

By Susan Harrow

When you’re asked how your freelance writing services help clients, do you have a ready answer?

Here’s why you need one (and not just for going to a networking meeting or taking a prospect’s Skype call).

In this new age of media 2.0, the media is more often searching for experts when they have the need rather than poring over hundreds of useless press releases that don’t have information that is relevant for their audience.

So even if you haven’t sent out a press release, you could get that important call from the media – if you’ve positioned yourself correctly on the Internet.

On the flip side, did you know that now with YouTube and Time Machine, what you say could haunt you forever?

Once a video of you is posted or something you said shows up on the Internet, there’s no way to take it back.

With the advent of technology, what you say will stay around in eternity and anyone can access it at any time.

This is why it’s so important that you pay attention to what you say and how you say it.

That’s right, your reputation, your credibility, your brand, your livelihood could disappear with one bad Q&A on a blog post, one article, or one TV appearance gone south.

But it doesn’t need to be so. Don’t make these five mistakes:

1. You waffle

Many people I media train have a tendency to waffle.

They meander off into a tangent or blurt out a thought that just came into their head in the heat of the moment, instead of carefully planning their messages and delivering them.

I just saw the movie Fair Game, about the Valerie Plame story. When Plame spoke to one of her contacts overseas from whom she wanted information she was firm as a mountain, soft as breeze, fluid as water.

She was never harsh, but she got her way. She knew her facts so when she spoke to one of her own team members or someone whose cooperation she wanted she quietly, but firmly repeated her request.

You can do the same when someone asks you a question. You calmly assert your pre-rehearsed answer no matter how many different ways a reporter, host, or networking contact asks you a question to elicit a different response.

Know what you want to say and stick to it. Stay firm as a mountain, soft as a breeze, fluid as water.

2. You don’t quote leaders or competitors

It might sound counter-intuitive to quote your competition or other high-stature people in your field, but it shows that you are on top of what’s happening in your industry.

In an Inc.com article titled 10 Tips for Giving an Important Speech by Alyssa Danigelis, anthropologist, filmmaker, and National Geographic explorer Elizabeth Lindsey said, “The more we talk about the things that matter to us, and less about our achievements, people breathe a collective sigh of relief.”

When we focus on what’s important to us in a sincere way, it translates to our audience. They get it.

Quote people you admire whose philosophy resonates with your own to help get your ideas across in a novel way.

They often say things that give a different point of view, given we are all entangled in our own perspective. It’s a way of broadening our own views and the views of our audience.

3. You don’t tell how you’ve helped people

The most potent way to persuade people to buy, or buy into you, isn’t for you to talk about your achievements, but to tell a story about a person you’ve helped.

I recently media coached a client who said he wasn’t a good storyteller. As a doctor, he preferred to cite facts so he would be more authoritative.

But the human warm fuzzy factor was a bit lacking. It’s important to use facts and stories to build trust. And it’s also necessary to tell stories that reveal our effectiveness human to human.

Facts show you have knowledge, and personal and professional stories illustrate your understanding — how you do what you do and how well your methods work. I suggested that he tell dramatic or funny stories about people who came into his office with an acute problem whom he helped quickly recover using both his doctorly intuition and the product he was promoting.

In our next media coaching session, he did this beautifully in preparation for an NPR interview. Giving your audience a story about how you helped another person is the closest thing to giving them an actual experience of you.

4. You don’t transform your wounds into wisdom

Your hardships are the mistakes that others don’t need to make. Your wounds make you loveable. We all have an Achilles Heel. Don’t hide it, highlight it.

Comedian Craig Ferguson said, “I think that sometimes fear is God’s way of saying paying attention to this could be fun. I’ve learned from people who are braver than I that fear is necessary, failure is necessary.

“When I talk to people and they tell me how well they are or how well they are doing, I think they’re crazy and they’re failing. I’m not saying that misery is more authentic than joy, I don’t mean that. But I do think that sometimes self-promotion can be tiresome as I sit here talkin’ about my book. Which is available reasonably priced from all good outlets.”

What I love about Ferguson is that he doesn’t wallow in any sentiment. He moves into the wound and then moves out of it with humor.

Aren’t you interested in his book just from reading this one quote? I was.

5. You don’t have your opinion ready

Thought leaders have opinions. They back their opinions with evidence or piggyback them with humor to soften a tough point of view.

Have your opinion ready. To become a respected thought leader, spend some time every week thinking about the issues in your industry. Consider some of the trends that are happening. Formulate your thoughts. Concretize them in writing on your blog, Facebook, or in an article.

When a reporter who had interviewed me before called and asked me my opinion of the new Conan O’Brien Show, I told her I hadn’t seen it, but I still had an opinion about it.

We laughed. Then I transitioned from what I didn’t know into what I did know – which was Jon Stewart. I watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and think he’s hilarious, smart and self-deprecating.

Even though he’s super smart he’s not a snob about it. She really wanted my comments about the future of the talk show format so I talked about that in relation to Jon Stewart.

As you can see, I got a paragraph at the end of her article — without knowing a thing about the topic of her piece — Conan O’Brien.

The important thing is to transition to what you know and make the connection so you are serving the reporter and her audience. Folk singer Joan Baez said, “I’ve never had a humble opinion. If you’ve got an opinion, why be humble about it?” Thought leaders aren’t afraid to voice a strong opinion.

Susan Harrow, CEO of PR Secrets, is a top media coach, marketing strategist and author of Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul® (HarperCollins) and Get a 6-Figure Book Advance. Clients include Fortune 500 CEOs, bestselling authors, and entrepreneurs who have appeared on Oprah, 60 Minutes, NPR, and in TIME, USA Today, People, NY Times, WSJ, and Inc.

P.S. Need to master your own sound bites? Learn how next Wednesday from Susan and me — and get what you want in business and in life.  It’s a FREE teleseminar / webinar and you can sign up right here: http://bit.ly/TiceC

Growing your network can be a great way to find more and better clients as a freelance writer.

But it’s come to my attention recently that not everybody understands how to do that.

There is some basic etiquette to know when it comes to connecting with brand-new people and getting them interested in helping you.

If you don’t do it right, you’re just annoying people.

For instance, I recently received this email (parens are my explanation):

Subject line:

“Introducing myself”

My name is _____, and I’d like to introduce myself.

I’m currently contributing to ___ and ___ (two mediocre websites), but am trying to branch out in order to meet new people, build relationships. My goal is to build a name for myself as an industry expert while giving back positively to the community with my expertise; I don’t need any payment or anything.

I primarily write about technology – either in education, mobile technology, or in the health community. My professional background is almost exclusively at startups, so my experience lends itself well to those topics.

I really respect your writing, so I thought I would contact you. Would you mind introducing me to whomever might be able to help me get started writing for (big national magazine you write for)?

Here are some samples of my writing:
(clips attached here)

Cheers,

- Anna

Follow me on Twitter @(her Twitter handle)

So.

Big thing to know about networking. Everybody engrave this on your forehead:

Strangers do not hand you gigs

Anytime your first interaction with a stranger is to ask them to help you get a gig, it is not going to work.

Not on social media. Not in person, at live networking events. Not on email.

Writers do refer gigs to other writers — but usually, to writers whose work and personality they know well.

Most referrals actually happen when a writer is offered a gig they don’t want to do or don’t have time for — then, we think about who we know who might be able to do the job.

They don’t happen because you ask some other writer out of the blue, “Hey, could you line me up some gigs?”

So step one in networking is getting to know other people. Not asking for work.

Where else did this email go wrong? Besides asking me to hand her a plum job on a plate without so much as taking five minutes to get acquainted, let me count the other ways:

• Sloppy writing. When you want a writing gig, it’d be good if sentence two of your pitch wasn’t an ungrammatical run-on sentence.
• B.S.-ing me. If this writer really wanted to branch out and meet new people and build relationships, then this email would be asking for a chance to meet me, maybe on a quick Skype call. But the rest of the email makes clear this writer has no real interest in meeting new people — just in harvesting their contacts so she can get gigs. Talk about a turnoff.
• Ignorance of how it works. When you tell me you don’t want to get paid to write, I wonder why you’re writing to me. If you’re offering free writing, there is no shortage of places willing to hire you! If you want paid work, my introduction will be less important than your ability to come up with fresh story ideas. If you’ve got those, you can read the magazine masthead, find an editor, and send a query — you don’t need an introduction.
• Exaggeration/lying. When you tell me you’re an expert in something, I expect you to tell me what qualifies you as an expert. “I’ve worked at startups” doesn’t really get that done. A little online research indicated this writer is a recent college grad and not an expert in much of anything.
• No research. This writer pitches her expertise as being in technology for education, mobile and healthcare, but none of those are the main topics covered in the business magazine where she’d like an intro. She doesn’t seem to have studied the publication at all. They also aren’t the topics in her clips, so there’s no proof she even knows those topics. She also doesn’t seem to have a story idea in mind for this publication, and seems to think if I introduce her to the right editor, she’ll be all set and assignments will fall out of the sky on her. See above under “ignorance of how it works.”
• Unqualified. Looking at her two clips, I found they were barely above content-mill quality — simple lists of how-to stuff we’ve all seen many places before. No interviews. A few quick research links thrown in. This writer doesn’t seem to have any journalism training, but would like entree into a top national magazine. She possibly seems to be angling for the sort of expert columns business magazines get written by Richard Branson or Guy Kawasaki, without understanding that she’s about a million miles out of their league. When you’re asking other writers to refer you, it should be for assignments you could execute. Otherwise, that referring writer is going to be mighty pissed.
• No pro marketing tools. In following her links to her published articles, I find her tagline has no writer website and not even a LinkedIn profile. It’s just “follow me on Twitter” and her email address. On one of the sites, she hasn’t even bothered to fill out her author profile. That doesn’t communicate this this writer takes her career seriously, and doesn’t make me interested in getting to know her, much less recommend her.

What networking is all about

This email made me feel sad that so many writers have adopted this sort of pushy, ineffective  marketing approach. They seem to want to skip over the essential first step in networking — meet and get to know more people.

Why do people want to avoid it?

Connecting with other people is one of the most rewarding activities in human experience. Having business friends to bounce questions and ideas off and to share your freelance journey with is also fun! I hope this writer tries it.

Then she’ll branch out and meet new people, and build real new relationships…and maybe even get some work referrals. For sure, she’d have more friends and a chance to enjoy this freelance journey more.

Seen any bad networking lately? Leave a comment and tell us what marketers are doing that annoys you.

Finding clients — especially good ones — seems to be the mysterious part of the freelance writing life.

People don’t write me asking, “How can I learn to write competently, so I can be a freelance writer?”

Instead, they ask questions like this one I got yesterday:

Right now the writing business is extremely slow. I’m finding the work isn’t there. Where are the new avenues or techniques to get writing work?

I usually reply by asking what the writer is doing to market their business.

The answer is nearly always, “I’m not doing any marketing right now.”

Why am I not shocked?

It’s a rare day when I meet a freelance writer who’s marketing their fanny off and doesn’t have clients.

If you want to earn well at freelance writing, you need to market continuously to insure a steady stream of client leads. It’s just a basic fact of business — and that’s what you’ve got. A business.

15 Ways to market your freelance writing

You want more leads because that allows you to pick and choose the types of projects you want to do. It makes you feel more confident asking for higher rates, too.

As it happens, there are a fairly limited number of ways most writers find paid freelance work. Here are the basic options, with a look at the pros and cons for each type:

1. Friends and family. That’s right — let the people in your life know you are looking for freelance writing clients. You never know who they might know. You could earn a little, or a lot.
2. Content mills. The pay is rock-bottom, but once you’re accepted, it’s so easy to grab assignments off that content mill dashboard.
3. Bidding sites. It’s a race to the bottom against every writer on the globe on oDesk/Elance/Guru and all their imitators, but if you’re selective and choose quality gigs few are bidding, you might do fairly well.
4. Revshare platforms. The effort you put in writing for Examiner and similar platforms will determine whether you earn pennies or thousands. I’m told you should post 1,000 articles in a short time to earn well.
5. Craigslist ads. These are so easy to find…and so full of scams and lowballers. Every once in a while a real client wanders on here because they don’t know its reputation, which keeps scads of writers checking Craigslist compulsively in hopes of finding that one gold nugget.
6. Place your own ads. Whether you get in the resource guide of your local professional association or place Facebook or Craigslist ads, you can spend a bit in hopes of attracting some new clients. This one’s real hit-or-miss, though with Facebook you’ll at least know how many people viewed it.
7. Inbound marketing. If you take the time to create a strong LinkedIn profile, blog and writer website, they could send you quality clients while you sleep. I’ve gotten several Fortune 500 clients this way that paid $.50-$2 a word.
8. Query letters. You don’t need connections if you know how to develop a stellar story idea and pitch it to the right publication. Pay at publications is all over the place, from $.10 a word to $2.
9. Letters of introduction. For custom publications (that hospital magazine, for instance) and trade publications (think Ad Age), emailing off a strong letter of introduction can open the door to a steady string of assignments. Most pay $.30-$1 a word.
10. Social media marketing. If you know how to do it, you can use LinkedIn and Twitter to connect with prospects of all sorts, from magazine editors to corporate publications managers.
11. In-person marketing. Grab some business cards and show up at a business event. Shop around until you find the meeting your prospects visit. You never know who you could bump into — I met the editors of Costco Connection and Microsoft Office Live at in-person events.
12. Cold calling. Reach out and touch marketing managers. Find out if they need freelance writers. Repeat as needed. Cold calling allows you to hit a lot of prospects in a short time.
13. Direct mail. Sure, you’ll spend to put together a slick postcard or marketing package. But it allows you to impress the heck out of big-money clients.
14. Referrals. If you have happy editors or business clients, either current or former, from either paid or pro bono work, they may tell their friends and send more gigs your way…especially if you tell them you need more clients.
15. Contests. I got my start winning two of these. The prize isn’t the money — it’s the connections you make with the editors who read your entries. I ended up writing long-term for both the publications where I won contests.

My free Marketing 101 for Freelance Writers series has a ton more detail on the best ways to do the types of marketing that get better results, but that’s a quick overview.

How do you market your freelance business? Leave a comment and tell us your approach.

It was 2009, and I was at one of my first in-person networking meetings, hoping to scare up some new freelance writing clients.

As the economy went down, nearly every editor I worked for either got laid off or the publication folded altogether.

The one big copywriting client I had, that was billing $2,000+ a month like clockwork, sacked my editor and decided to hire an agency to develop their content.

I needed to replace a big hunk of revenue, fast.

So I tried networking

So there I was, at an evening get-together hosted by my small-town Chamber of Commerce, drink in hand, trying to figure out this whole networking thing.

I went up to one well-groomed, middle-aged blonde who had on a killer business skirt suit and heels. She looked like she knew what she was doing.

We chatted about her business a while.

Then, she asked me a simple question that changed my life.

Here’s what made my worldview shift

“Who’s your ideal client?” she asked casually.

I knew immediately that this must be a standard networking question.  People you meet networking want to know who you’re looking for, so they can refer you (so that in return, you’ll love and refer them).

The problem was, I’d never really thought about it. I’d had a fairly serendipitous career up the downturn, mostly taking whatever gigs came my way.

Who was my ideal client, anyway?

“I don’t really know,” I stupidly stammered.

But when I went home, I started thinking about it.

I had plenty of experience and clips. Why was I at a tiny-town Chamber meeting, hanging out with solo accountants and people who sold Pampered Chef?

They weren’t my client. I had already written for national magazines and a $1 billion global company.

Aiming higher

From that day on, I set my sights higher. I hopped on the ferry and headed into Seattle.

I tried different networking groups, and paid close attention to what sort of businesses and publications I found there.

Eventually, I found good networking groups, where my ideal clients hung out. I met editors of huge-circulation publications, and editors for top companies’ websites. I got a client that sent me thousands of work over the next several years.

In short order, I replaced my lost income from that fired editor — and much more.

As I hung around better-quality clients, my mindset about earning started to change, too.

When I started, I figured if I was lucky, I could maybe replace my staff-writing income of $50,000-$60,000 a year.

But swimming in that higher-quality pool of clients, I started to see how huge and potentially lucrative the freelance-writing marketplace really is. Some of these larger companies had tons of work they freelanced out.

It made me realize something big:

Freelancers earning potential is unlimited.

I could earn more. I should earn more!

So I set a goal of earning more each year — and made it happen.

Hang out with better-quality clients, and you won’t just find better gigs. It can change your whole outlook on how big you could take this.

Who’s your ideal client, and where do they hang out? Leave a comment and let us know.

P.S. Need help finding great clients? If so, you might want to check out this course from my friend Ed Gandia on how to get clients the easy way (and yes, that is my affiliate link — I have viewed this course and highly recommend it):