There’s one freelancing mistake I make more often than any other.
Almost every time Sarabeth and I get busy, I stop marketing our business. I double down on client projects and almost totally neglect putting my ideas out there.
This mistake matters less now than it used to. We (thankfully) now have enough recurring work and steady word-of-mouth queries to keep us going. But in the early days, I’d regularly run face first into writing dry spells because I formed the habit of only marketing when I absolutely had to.
I would scramble to find the next gig, which took almost all my leverage out of every negotiation. As a result, I did work I wasn’t excited about for lower rates than I knew I should be charging.
I was bottlenecking the business.
In recent months, I’ve been trying to give myself easier (and more fun) avenues for marketing so that I stay consistent.
For one thing, I’m more selective about how and where I market Lewis Commercial Writing.
Since many of our clients are from referrals, I’m open with clients about the fact that we depend on them. It’s in my email signature, so every client and prospect knows they’re welcome to introduce me to other relevant businesses.
Busy seasons are also when I focus a lot on content distribution instead of creation. I take content I’ve already written and find new places to share those ideas. This means I don’t have to spend the time to write long blog articles. Instead, I help old content spread to new people.
Sometimes this means answering questions for people on Quora or Reddit. Other times it means repurposing old articles into shorter forms that I can post on Twitter or LinkedIn.
My latest experiment is to build a newsletter. The way I see it, writing for 10 people requires the same effort as writing to 100,000. It’s a simple way to interact with people interested in my ideas.
It will also keep me accountable, since I’m committing to publishing to it every Monday. (Hold me to it, y’all.)
How do you handle marketing consistently?
