Struggling to find work happens to the best of freelance authors, no matter how good they are at writing and how confident they are in their own abilities. It can be hard to find consistency in work sometimes and putting yourself out there does not always bear fruit. This often leaves authors pondering what it is they are doing wrong and even questioning their writing career altogether. If this is a situation that sounds all too familiar, then it is important that you do not give up hope, as there are a number of effective marketing and self promoting strategies that you can adopt in order to take your career as an author to the next level. By doing these things, your name will travel throughout the industry and people will start to become excited about your services and what you have to offer. Authors need to start thinking more like a business and treat their writing as if it is a brand that they are trying to sell. Some of the things that authors can do to give their career a much needed boost include the following things:
Get yourself out there
Connect with people within the industry so that you become somewhat of a go to person for particular topics and services. To achieve this, you need to get comfortable with pitching yourself and your services to others. There are two really good ways of doing this, including participating in any community events and networking opportunities.
- Community events – getting involved in community events is a great way to build up your network and get noticed. To do this, look out for meet ups with other writers within the local area where you live or for writing conventions. At these sorts of events, you will have the opportunity to establish relationships either with other writers or with potential clients. When attending such events, it is important to remember that you take your business card with you. If you really want to show off your skills then participate in writing contests. Even if you are not successful, the work you produce can be added to your portfolio nonetheless.
- Networking – participating in networking events and opportunities is an important part of being an author. The more people that you can connect with within the industry, the better your chances of success are. One way of doing this is by building up a reputation for yourself as being someone that produces good quality work and is a nice person. If you do this and your clients are happy with your work, you are likely to be recommended when other people are looking for an author or writer. Stick to this and eventually, you will have people coming to you for work rather than having to go out and get it yourself.
Use social media and a website
Adopting digital marketing strategies need to act as a cornerstone to self promotion as an author. Doing things like posting content on social media and developing your own author website is an effective step in enabling clients to find you as a writer.
- Social media – being active across various social media platforms is a great way to market yourself. It is actually quite easy to make people aware of your services on these by using things like shareable posts, hashtags, and topics. You should not be afraid to link up with other writers and authors on social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn. You should also look for anyone who may need your services or who can potentially connect you with work.
- Website – although there is some up front cost to this, it is something that is definitely worth the investment. This is because with a website, you have a totally customizable platform at your fingertips that you can build to show off your portfolio of work. It is a link that you can give to clients etc. when touting for work. In order to get your website ranking high in search engines, use keywords throughout it – this is a technique called search engine optimization (SEO). Doing this will help to drive traffic to your website, thus making you more likely to get noticed.
Keep improving your skills
Despite your best efforts to market yourself, they will not be successful if your writing skills are not up to scratch. This is why it is just as important to put effort into honing your skills as it is in marketing them. After all, the better author and writer that you are, the happier that your customers and clients will be. You will also be more likely to be recommended to other people, this is especially true if you are open to receiving feedback on how to improve your writing.
Even the very best writers out there can improve what they do, so there is no shame in going to things like writing seminars or classes. You can go to these things even if you already know that your writing is good. Receiving constructive criticism is a great way to identify those areas that need improvement so that you can work on them in order to remain a top author and writer. Improving can be done with some practice, so keeping your writing skills refined and sharp by using them frequently is a great way of keeping you as a top quality writer.
The takeaway
By marketing yourself as an author, it helps to demonstrate the worth as a writer that you have and it connects you with other people who may be interested in what it is that you have to offer. By doing this, you will potentially find new opportunities for work and really give your career as an author a boost.
You should hopefully now be fully aware that finding work as a freelance author does not necessarily have to be a difficult task. You can learn to turn the passion that you have for writing into a full time job.
