Freelancing

How I would pitch my social media services to prospective clients.

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social media fire hydrantI don’t offer professional social media services.

But if I were at a different stage in my career, I would. In fact, I would be all over social media.

Why? Because every successful freelancer fills a need on the client side. If you want to be a highly paid freelancer, you need to offer a service and skill set that companies desperately need. And right now I see millions of companies that desperately need help with social media.

Putting aside the tiny percentage of companies that are being really smart and successful with their social media marketing, I would address the other, much larger group.

These are the business people who feel like they are trying to drink from a fire hydrant. Information about social media and how they should use it is hitting them from every direction at an impossible speed. They feel battered and confused.

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Differentiate your writing services with an area of technical expertise.

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precise skill set working with watch repairIf you are a freelance writer or copywriter, you probably have a fairly broad skill set.

If I asked you what you did, you might say one of the following:

“I’m an online sales copywriter.”

“I’m an online content writer.”

“I’m a social media writer and marketer.”

There is nothing wrong with those descriptions, in so far as they describe a general area of expertise. Behind that claim you could have a ton of training and professional experience.

The limitation of describing your value in these broad terms is that you will find yourself lumped together with thousands of other people who describe themselves in exactly the same way.

For example you could be a terrific online copywriter. But when someone hears you describe yourself with those words, they might think, “Yep, you and a thousands of other people like you.”

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If fate doesn’t disrupt your career path, you should do it yourself.

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disruption in the freelance lifeI guess many people prefer at least the idea of a career path that doesn’t get disrupted.

I’m not one of those people. I’m a big fan of disruption.

Sometimes fate hands me a huge and unexpected change in direction, like when I moved from the UK to Canada.

At other times, when I grow tired of waiting for fate to step in, I engineer a dramatic change of my own…like when I shifted from being a direct mail copywriter to being an online writer, at midnight on December 31st, 1997.

When I look back, even to when I was a teenager, I was a big fan of stepping sideways at precisely the point when the direct way forward was most clearly illuminated. (Got a place at Cambridge University in 1975. Decided to get a job in a stone quarry instead.)

How come? Why do I insist on disrupting my “way forward”?

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When a freelance niche appears to be too narrow, but isn’t.

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narrow freelance nicheI’m a big fan of choosing a niche when you set up as a freelance writer or copywriter.

By that I mean that you should not set up as a generalist: “Hi, my name is Nick and I can write your direct mail, your social media, your White Papers, your video scripts and more…across every industry imaginable from the fashion world to industrial fastenings, and everything in between!”

If I did that I would be perceived as a generalist, a jack of all trades and master of none. How can people see me as an expert if I claim to be “expert” at everything?

It’s far better if you decide to become a true expert within a defined niche.

You can niche yourself by industry, “I serve companies in the consumer electronics industry.” Or by writing skill, “I write shareable content for the web and for social media.”

Do that and your prospective clients will know what you do, and choose you over other freelancers because you are an expert in your particular specialty.

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Your web content will be derivative and boring, unless…

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key to original contentMillions of new content pages are published online each day. Most of them are derivative and boring.

How come? Several reasons. But perhaps the biggest reason is that the environment of marketing online demands that we keep publishing new posts and new pages, at an ever-increasing rate. And photos. And videos. And slide shows.

If we don’t keep publishing, we look like we’re falling behind our competitors.

Plus, Google has made is clear that it likes “fresh’ content. And social media is driven by what’s new, and what’s happening now.

New, new, new. Publish, publish, publish.

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The power of vertical networking.

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networking for freelancersA while back I was interviewed for a book on networking. My first response was, “Hey, I don’t network. I hate that stuff.”

In other words, you won’t catch me dead shaking hands and passing out business cards at a local Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting. Nor do I cold call. Nor do I wander around conferences with my hand thrust out saying, “Hi, my name is Nick Usborne.” It’s just not part of my character.

I guess that was my view of “networking”.

But as I started writing, answering each of the interview questions, I realized that I network as much as the next person. I just go about it a different way.

The more I think about it, we all network, one way or another. If you think this doesn’t apply to you, just make a quick mental tally of the people you know in your industry. People you have worked with, exchanged emails with, met somewhere.

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