If you’re a freelance writer, you gotta have a marketing strategy.
But before I get to this topic, let me just say, it was a beautiful day at the beach yesterday for Independence Day.
Adrian and I had the beach all to ourselves last evening.
Everyone else must have been off partying somewhere.
We couldn’t believe how peaceful and empty the beach was.
It was wonderful.
There were lots of ghost crabs out last evening, scurrying along the sand.
Some of them were pretty large, like this fierce guy!
I took pen and paper out to the beach with me last evening and as I relaxed and watched the tide come in, I created my marketing plan for the week.
Which leads me to this question (please answer if you’re a writer):
What’s your marketing strategy or plan?
Do you have a regular marketing plan?
Generally, here are the categories I suggest you include in your plan:
1. Editors and other contacts
These are the people you plan to call or email during the week.
This may include an editor you wish to query, or one you need to follow up with about an assignment or contract, or it could be an editor who requested a resume and writing samples and you need to get them out to that editor this week.
2. Job Boards or other job listings
These are sites you plan to view to see if there are any new job listings that interest you.
If you know certain web sites post new jobs for writers on Tuesday, then put that down on your plan for Tuesday.
If you don’t have a list of online job boards, then plan to spend an hour or so in the coming week searching for some.
Also, sign up for ezines for writers (that include job ads) if you don’t already subscribe to at least a few.
3. Promotional activities
You must constantly promote yourself and your writing in order to be a working writer.
If you have a web site or blog, updating it each week is part of this promotion.
If you don’t have a web site or blog to promote your writing, then you need to create one, so “start on website” or “create blog” would go in this category of your marketing plan.
Writing press releases about your business or for a new book you have coming out, or getting contracts to schools or other organizations that want to book you as a speaker, are other activities that come under this category.
Guest blogging might also be included here since these articles/posts will help promote you and your writing services.
4. Networking activities
This category is a bit different from contacts or promotional activities.
If you belong to any community organizations, or groups for writers, jot down how you plan on using these groups for networking this week.
You might plan to join a listserv for writers and then introduce yourself to everyone on the list this week, or you might want to attend your local business association meeting to let other business owners in your area know about your writing services.
You should also be promoting your writing services via social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Make sure you have at least a few plans for networking with other writers and/or businesses, either offline or online (or preferably, both) each week.
You can make your weekly marketing plan as general or as detailed as you like.
But once you have written down all your marketing activities for the week, you will know how much time you should have available to work on your current writing assignments.
Generally, working writers weave their marketing activities in with their writing activities each day.
But some writers prefer to do all their marketing on Mondays, so they have the rest of the week to work on assignments.
This is a good plan, but if you’ve applied for various writing assignments, you might get a response from an editor during the week and you’ll need to follow-up with him immediately instead of waiting until the next Monday when you try to do most of your marketing activities.
In a case like this, it helps to be flexible.
One of the big payoffs in consistently developing a weekly marketing plan and having a marketing strategy is that you will begin to receive more and more job offers.
In fact, sometimes you will receive offers for jobs you haven’t even applied for.
Editors will simply find your web site or blog and will call or email to see if you are available for an assignment.
When this happens, you will realize just how important a marketing strategy can be.
If you don’t have a marketing plan for this week, get busy and develop one.
You’ll be glad you did.
Have a great week!
Suzanne Lieurance
Read about book marketing via luxury hotels here!
