Top 5 Free Ways to Promote Your Writing Business

Yvonne Russell May 9th, 2007 Business & Marketing

Top 5 Free Ways to Promote Your Writing Business

five

Advertising is expensive. Promotion doesn’t have to be. As you develop brand “you”, try these strategies to help grow your writing business.

1. Look for great websites which could do with a rewrite. Approach the webmaster or owner to swap web savvy or products for writing savvy. You may end up with a long term business client. Similarly, you may come across brochures, flyers or other business documents put out by local businesses and community groups.

2. Help out your local school or non profit community or church group. This is a positive way of both getting known and giving back to the community.

3. Have a blog or website that showcases your writing and professionalism, but also reflects you as a person. People want to deal with people they know and trust.

4. Include a business card with every business mailing including suppliers. Make it different and make it say something useful. You want them to look at it, preferably to keep it, and at best to act on it.

5. Network face to face and on the net. Network with other writers and with anyone and everyone. You never know who knows who and where your next client will come from. Remember networking is something you do with people, not to people. Don’t be what I’ve heard referred to as a “networking mongrel”.

This post is part of the Problogger Top 5… group writing project.

Business & Marketing

53 Responses to “Top 5 Free Ways to Promote Your Writing Business”

Mihaela Lica May 10th, 2007 at 7:40 pm

What can I say? I am really glad you’ve started blogging more often. You really kept me waiting in the past. Great list. I think the same rules go for online PR. Too many companies need it and they don’t know it.
Yvonne Russell May 10th, 2007 at 8:57 pm

Thanks Mig I agree that there is a big crossover with online and offline PR e.g. instead of a business card online,
some businesses (including writers) have their logo and tagline in their emails… as part of their branding, rather than just a “vanilla text” email.
Lillie Ammann May 11th, 2007 at 3:10 am

Great advice, Yvonne. I’m a big advocate of your #2. Writers are always complaining about being asked to work for low pay but needing clips. Doing volunteer for your church or cause you believe in makes a valauble contribution and helps you build your own business.
Yvonne Russell May 11th, 2007 at 4:06 am

I agree Lillie. Even if you run a business, not everything can be about money. Sometimes you need to be part of the community you live in. As you say, it all comes full circle in the end anyway, as people get to know you and what you do, even if that is not your motivation for contributing.
alicia May 11th, 2007 at 9:53 am

Your Top 5 is MUCH more beneficial to read than mine, haha. Let’s see, I’ve done numbers 1 and 3 and *kind of* done 5. Business cards cause the perfectionist in me to freak out and put it off, and I just haven’t gotten around to 2.
Yvonne Russell May 11th, 2007 at 10:03 am

The thing with business cards is having 5000 of the things sitting around - or does it just seem like that many ;). They seem to multiply and you never seem to “get rid” of them. I’m going for small batches next time, partly because I’m always tweaking and changing. Contact details can change too.

#1 is very high on my list of priorities. Thanks for stopping by Alicia.
Kristen Borrelli May 21st, 2008 at 8:21 am

Great ideas, I’m just starting out with freelance work and have been racking my brain trying to find ways to promote myself without going broke! I’m definitely going to try these.
Rob Wilson Sep 13th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

Great ideas for free publicity. I’ll already put one in to place thanks for that.

Rob Wilson’s last blog post..Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation
cmdweb Dec 4th, 2008 at 7:50 am

Hi, just found your website - llooks great and full of wonderful stuff. Your No 1 is a really good one. There are lots of websites out there that could really use a textual makeover.
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