As I work more and more with both freelance writers and small business owners looking to build up their blogs, I find these two groups have the same problems. Their blogging journey generally develops like this:

• Start a blog. All excited!
• Write a few posts.
• Write a few more posts.
• In the case of the businesses, they sometimes hire me at this point to write more and better posts.
• Soon, frustration sets in. They start to wonder why nothing’s happening — why they don’t get many readers, comments, or subscribers. And why, ultimately, they don’t get customers — either new business clients, or paid blogging gigs, or eBook sales.

I find this happens because of a basic disconnect people have about blogging.

Here’s why nothing’s happening with your blog:

When you write a blog post, you have created a tool. It’s like you’ve built a bullhorn for broadcasting what you know, who you are, and what you do.

But if no one picks up the bullhorn and talks into it, what will happen?

Nothing.

If you haven’t properly built your bullhorn, and it isn’t strong and sturdy and useful, what will happen?

Nothing.

No one is surprised that a silent bullhorn doesn’t accomplish anything. But people continue to be shocked when their unpromoted blog doesn’t make them an overnight millionaire.

What is the missing element in so many blogs?

Someone has to use the tool.

I know — blogging is so much work by itself! But it is actually just the first step in the process of using your online articles to draw people to you. Once you have that bullhorn,  you’ve got to pick it up and start talking into it. Do that enough, and some people will notice and come on over to visit the blog.

As we saw earlier this week with one blogger’s bafflement about Twitter, many writers (and companies, too) don’t understand how to promote their blog. They aren’t using social media. They’re not sending out an email newsletter with their blog posts in it. So no one is discovering their posts. I’ve actually had clients sending out newsletters…but without including any links to their blog posts!

Another example: I had one client hire me to do two posts a week for two months, for instance. After six weeks, they hadn’t even bothered to read, approve, and post all the pieces I’d written. No one at the company was tasked with regularly promoting the posts in social media. So naturally, they were ready to pull the plug because “it just isn’t monetizing the way we expected.”

They expected their bullhorn to shout by itself. No surprise that didn’t work.

How to make something happen on your blog:

The good news is, you can fix this. The skills needed to succeed in blogging are not hard to learn. There are four basic elements you need:

1. Spectacular content that works online
2. Great design that delights and engages visitors
3. An understanding of social-media marketing and a commitment to promoting your blog regularly
4. Workable monetizing strategies for turning your growing audience of readers into buyers

More good news: Two Webinars coming up will teach you exactly these four skills. The first one coming in March, 30 Design & Content Secrets to Skyrocket Your Blog, will deliver critical insight into how to get your blog ready for company. I’m co-presenting this 90-minute, interactive event with blogging expert Judy Dunn of Cat’s Eye Writer — another Top 10 Blogs for Writers winner! Important thing to know: The first 30 next 10 registrants for this Webinar only will get their very own blogs reviewed during this event! It’s a chance to get expert feedback on your blog at a ridiculously low price. We asked you what you wanted to know to improve your blog, and then designed this class to deliver exactly what you need.

Once your site is whipped into shape, you’re ready for the second one in April, Secrets of a Money-Making Blog, which will lay out how to market your blog and turn it into a source of income. I’m presenting this one with longtime successful blogger Anne Wayman of About Freelance Writing.

Want to make something happen on your blog? Now’s your chance. Pre-registration opens today, and we’ve got a special, limited-time deal for bloggers who sign up early.

Register for both Webinars by President’s Day and pay just $65.99 — 20% off the $83 regular price for buying these one at a time. Learn more about 30 Design & Content Secrets Webinar. Learn more about Secrets of a Money-Making Blog. Or just sign up now.

Recently, I peeked in my mailbag and spied an urgent email from a reader of the blog. She was having trouble getting any traction in promoting her paid blogging gig on Twitter:

I write for this site, and most of the hits or “recommendations” stories get are from the writer’s social media and personal website followers, as well as friends and family. So mine don’t get a ton of hits comparatively, which makes me very nervous about my position on the site.

I signed up on Twitter a little while ago and followed who I could, but still only have like eight followers. I linked Facebook too I believe … And yes, I still need to make a web site for myself.

But otherwise, do you know a way to get followers fast for Twitter, to bump up the hits for my stories on a site? Most visitors aren’t just going there because of the site as much as the writers they already know.

I guess I dread social media but I know it’s essential. I don’t think I’m entertaining enough to tweet enough to get a following about anything. It’s the last thing I enjoy doing

I took a look at her Twitter profile, and this is what I discovered: No one is following or retweeting her because in the world of Twitter, she is no one.

She has no bio filled out, no URL link, her Twitter handle is not her name, and her image is that lame egg graphic Twitter hands out as a default. She had sent a big 25 tweets, and they all seemed to be links to her own blog posts. She was following 16 people.

This experience reminded me that only about 8 percent of people are yet on Twitter. Those of us who’ve been cranking along on it for a while tend to forget that not everybody understands how Twitter works yet.

It’s worth taking the time to do that, because Twitter can be a powerful tool for spreading the word about what you’re doing, and for meeting great, useful new people. I ended up guest-posting on Copyblogger from promoting my blog posts on Twitter, and meeting a $2-a-word assigning editor at a high-profile website who’s still giving me assignments.

So here is a 15-step crash course in how to win on Twitter as a freelance writer:

1. Get a useful handle. If your name is already taken (this reader’s problem), maybe you have a cool branding thing you could do, like my tweep Stefanie Flaxman @RevisionFairy, or my franchise-consultant friend Joel Libava @FranchiseKing. Or you could put an underline in your name like @Carol_Tice. Takeaway: You can put key words about what you do right into your handle, like mine: @TiceWrites.

2. Fill out your profile completely. Really, it takes maybe five minutes. And it’s so, so important. Why? People search on words they’re interested in on Twitter, and if you have them in your profile, you will appear in their search results. Stuff it with key words about what you do, up to the limit of what it will accept. Mine includes: freelance writer, copywriter, journalist, Top 10 Blogs for Writers winner, writing, helping writers earn, business. If you want to connect with people in your town, include your location.

3. Provide a link to your Web site. If you do not have a writer Web site yet, link to your LinkedIn profile, or your ZoomInfo profile, or your Facebook page. Something — anything! Profiles with no links people can follow to learn more are ignored. There really is no excuse for not having a writer website these days, when you can have a WordPress site for $99 from the National Association of Independent Writers & Editors (NAIWE) up and running in about the next 10 minutes. But whatever you do, get your clips organized somewhere and post a link to that site on Twitter.

4. Put up a photo. Preferably, a good little photo of you. Or maybe a fun cartoon gravatar of you. But kill off that egg — spammers all have those (I actually just blocked three of them this evening), so you’re giving your profile a very bad connotation sticking with the egg.

5. Don’t use robots to get followers. If you search on “get Twitter followers,” you will find lots of offers of products that promise to automatically get you hundreds of followers overnight. Don’t use them. Why? These followers are useless — they don’t really want to follow you, and won’t retweet your links.

6. Search for influential people in your niche, and follow them. There are thousands of people this reader could be following on Twitter. You’ve never followed “all you could.” Many of the top people automatically follow you back if you follow them. Identify the key people and start building a list.

7. Stop constantly marketing yourself. Twitter isn’t a channel to constantly blare about what you’re doing — it’s just considered bad form. You’ll need to mix links to your own blog posts in with other useful information from other sources in your niche. Once you’re following thought leaders in your topic, you can just scan down your Tweetstream and quickly find things to retweet. Or use SmartBriefs to find interesting articles, or Google Alerts. Presto! You are interesting enough to get followers now. But stop making it all about you, because that’s why no one is interested.

8. Watch your follower/following ratio. Once you start to accumulate a few hundred followers, it’s time to cut back your list of who you’re following. That’s because just like the ratio of good to bad cholesterol, your ratio of followers to people you’re following is important. When you have substantially more followers than you do people you follow, it tells people you’re interesting. You don’t have to follow people to get them to follow you. That attracts more followers.

9. Promote other people. Thank people (with a link to their Twitter name) for retweeting your content, RT their links and rave about them…and you will find new friends.

10. Use hashtags. Know how to help your content get found by using hashtags. For instance, if you’d like other writers to see your link, you might post it on #WW (Writer Wednesday), or if you’d like to flatter someone else by promoting them you could mention them on #FF (Follow Friday). People search on these hashtags for content they might be interested in, such as #writer, #business, #blog.

11. Use lists. One great way to stay connected to people without having to follow them is by adding them to your lists. For instance, I have probably 800 writers on lists, and 150 thought leaders that might be good future story sources in a “gurus” list. Many people are flattered by getting into lists, so this is another weapon you have besides following.

12. Get a nice background. People who really operate on Twitter take the time to at least grab a free, unique Twitter background to spice up their site. The really together people have pictures of their products, website logos, and other cool stuff.

13. Understand how other forms of social media work. When I read “I linked Facebook too I believe,” it leads me to suspect that you don’t understand how other social-media channels work, either. Since coordinating your work in several social-media channels can save you time and help accelerate the level of help you get, you’ll want to learn how Facebook works, too.

14. Social media — love it or leave it. If you loathe social media, I’m going to put on my fortuneteller’s hat here and predict that you aren’t going to be successful using it. If you really hate it, do in-person networking or send email to people you want to come “recommend” your blog posts. If you hate it, people will pick up on that, and it won’t be a useful marketing channel for you.

15. The secret of being a writer on Twitter. Let you in on a little secret — umpty-million people on Twitter want to connect with writers! Especially journalists. If you say you are one, you will start to get followers rapidly. At this point, I follow very few people back…because I don’t have to. You should be able to fairly effortlessly achieve a good ratio with more followers and fewer following.

To sum up, take social media seriously and learn to have fun doing it if you can…it could really help your career. I’ve had a couple of Fortune 500 companies hire me through my LinkedIn profile — take a look at all the key words I’ve stuffed in there.

Need to learn more about how to market your writing? Join my learning community Freelance Writers Den, where high-earning pros answer your questions. There are e-courses, live events, private forums, and much more.

Photo via Flickr user Rosaura Ochoa

Social media — is it getting you gigs? If not, let’s take a look at some possible reasons. Social media takes a pretty substantial time investment, so if you’re putting in the time, it darn well better bring you some real business. Or you should send direct-mail letters instead.

Social media is not rocket science. Once you know the basics, you can do this.

I’ve only had a serious focus on social media for a couple of  years, and it’s been delivering solid results all this year. I recently did an analysis of my social-media wins so far in 2010, which included connecting with editors on Twitter and LinkedIn who gave me lucrative assignments and a great guest-post blogging opportunity. Yesterday, another new editor cold-called me after viewing my LinkedIn profile, and I signed a new client who found me on a Google search for writers (in part because of the prominence of my social-media profile pages in search results).

So social media works, if you work it.

Where might you be going wrong in social media? Here are 10 common problems:

1. You’re unknowable. When I scan daily through the dozens of email notices I get from new Twitter followers, I’m blown away by how many of them have no listed Web site, no photo, and an utterly blank bio. Really, how hard is it to fill that out?
2. You’re uninteresting. You’re tweeting or updating your LinkedIn status to say you’re at the dentist’s, or going to sleep…or other random stuff that’s useful to no one. Your blog posts are dull and full of typos. Make your posts funny, informative, thought-provoking, or uplifting.
3. You’re always selling. Every blog entry you write ends with, “So call us today!” Every tweet is about your company, or your clients. Zzzzzz…. Social media is just not about that.
4. You’re not very social. Even at well-funded companies, I find blogs with no social-media buttons, and company Web sites with no social contacts on the home page. Make it easy for others to spread the word about you, and they will.
5. You’re mysterious. Do your social-media profiles contain every key word a prospect might search on when they want to hire someone like you? If not, stop hiding from clients and go fix that right now. It might seem retarded to you to put “freelance writer, blogger, journalist, and copywriter,” but those are all different search terms a prospect might use to find me.
6. You don’t visit. Drop by some of the busiest sites in your industry, and see what they’re writing about. Subscribe to their blogs so you know what’s happening. Now and again, leave a comment on one of their blogs or forums. It’s fairly easy to get known as an authority voice in your industry this way.
7. You’re not helpful. People ask questions in social media, both across social-media sites and within specific forums and groups. Are you providing answers? It just takes a minute to share something you know, and people truly appreciate and remember it.
8. You’re not questioning. Social media is a fantastic place to learn, especially about all things new-media and Web. Don’t be afraid of looking dumb. If you don’t know how to put images in blogs or which print-on-demand publisher has the lowest fees, ask and find out.
9. You’re not a joiner. If you’re not participating in industry-specific groups in social media, you are missing the party. My main hangout is LinkedIn Editors & Writers for building my blog and ebook audience, but I have a half-dozen others as well. There are fewer people in each group than on the whole of LinkedIn, but they’re exactly the people you want to know. I’ve already made some great new friends in groups who I’ve talked to in the 3-D world.
10. You’re invisible. A little in-person networking where you meet a few of those tweeps live really helps cement those connections and turn them into real relationships. If you can’t get to a big event like BlogWorld — which I can’t manage this year — at least get out locally and meet some of the people you’ve connected to on social media.

If you enjoyed this handy checklist of social-media mistakes, get the Make a Living Writing blog free via email. Don’t miss any tips for earning more from your writing.

Photo via Flickr user webtreats

Are you in a job-ad rut? I hear a lot of complaints from writers that there are no good jobs advertised online.

What writers who say that often mean is they keep going to the same two or three online job boards every week, or even every day. The jobs are all super low-paid junk from Craigslist…and they’re getting depressed.

If that’s you, I’d like to gently remind you that insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing every day but expecting a different result. If you don’t think you’re seeing quality job listings, it’s time to shake up your online job-search routine.

Some different places I look for writing jobs:

• Niche sites. Since I’m kind of a financial dork, I get great leads from Gorkana alerts, which seems to attract a lot of financial publications. I got my new gig blogging for BNET through Gorkana, and I did not see that job anywhere else. Somewhere, there’s a site for an industry specialty you have that might list related writing jobs. Find it and bookmark it. Realize that employers are sick of getting bombarded with 200 resumes when they place an ad, and they’re seeking out smaller-circulation places to put out the word.

• LinkedIn. If you haven’t looked for jobs on LinkedIn, check it out! It’s a growing, busy place for listings, and has a sophisticated search engine so you can filter jobs a number of ways. While I don’t see a lot of freelance gigs on LinkedIn, I’m impressed by the number of writing-sector full-time jobs I see on there, every day.

• Indeed. This is a powerful job-oriented search engine that searches across many other portals. It has interesting statistical capabilities too, and can tell you trends in job listings. Great way to toy with search terms and turn up jobs you might otherwise miss. Want to cheer yourself up? Look at this chart for jobs with “writer” in the description — and you’ll see ads have stayed fairly constant straight through the downturn!

• Twitter. Search on twitter for “writer jobs” and take a look at the number of sites that are streaming their job offers on there! Build yourself a nice list where you can look at your customized jobstream — or just follow my list if you like.

• Your desktop. I don’t often go on job-search sites anymore, because I’ve dragged most of the sites with jobs that interest me onto my desktop through RSS. Great way to save time and get to the jobs you want as soon as they’re posted.

• Industry association job boards. The Society of Professional Journalists is among the professional writers’ organizations with their own job listings. When’s the last time you checked them out? The National Writers Union has a job hotline for members that enforces decent-pay standards.

• Morning Coffee. I just discovered this list recently, and it’s one of the ones on my desktop, along with Writer’s Weekly. Morning Coffee seems to have a more extensive range of writer jobs than I find on many writer-job sites. I found a smokin’ hot lead for me this week on Morning Coffee that needed my insurance expertise and was offering up to $60 an hour.

Of course, as regular readers of this blog know already, I find the best jobs aren’t waiting for you on an ad on the Internet. You get them by prospecting — getting out and meeting new people, sending query letters, or however else you reach out in the real world. Don’t forget about in-person networking and cold-calling, as they can’t be beat for meeting new clients. But if you are looking for jobs online, think about new ways to approach your search if you’re not seeing quality leads — they’re out there.

Photo image via Flickr user szlea