IF YOU’RE A FREELANCER, YOU NEED TO READ THIS.
Blogging is KEY to a freelancer’s career. Why? Because it builds your credibility in your field. It won’t make you rich, but it will establish that you know your stuff and get you noticed. You have to be original, consistent and a decent writer. You will get better with practice. Just keep in mind that it takes a year to really establish a blog, so brace yourself if you’re only now starting.
WRITE SOMETHING!
Get up off your butt and write something! It’s the only way you will know if you’re any good, and there is a 50% chance that you’re a lot better than you give yourself credit for. Once you have written something, publish it online and share it with friends who are honest and critical, not friends who will tell you what you want to hear. Feedback is key – it will tell you where you are going wrong, and how to proceed.
WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW.
Content flow is important and must be relevant. This means that if you’re an experienced sales representative and you know nothing about fishing, don’t write about fishing, unless you’re learning and you’re sharing your experiences, and that is a totally different topic. Now if you’re like me and have experience in different fields, then by all means, write to your heart’s content; providing that what you’re writing is relevant to what you have experience in. You don’t want to write something you have no experience in, because then you’ll end up in some seriously hot water and your reputation as a blogger will be very hard to salvage.
WRITE WRITE WRITE!
Write often and write consistently. As a beginner, expects advise you should be writing at least a post a day. Why? Because at the end of the month you will have at least 30 posts to promote and use to gain traffic and practice, and by the end of the year, you’ll have about 350 posts. Set some time to write on that very busy schedule of yours – and STICK TO IT!
BE BRIEF!
The length is entirely up to you, but I advise doing short pieces. A short piece would be about 300-500 words, with a long piece being about 1000 words. You don’t want to make it too wordy, because then you lose your reader. I use Evernote to write because I can write from my phone or laptop, and it has a word count – BIG PLUS! Write, edit, edit, edit, edit, publish. Chop 1000 words into 500.
TAG TAG TAG!
Tags allow you to quickly categorize the post and group it among other articles which share the same tag. So, a blog post tagged ‘dog’ will show up in the ‘dog’ tag page. This way, readers who are interested in a particular topic can easily find more articles on the same topic. Don’t ever not tag your posts… ever.
DON’T WRITE WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE CRAP
I do not believe in writing when you’re not feeling like writing. If you honestly feel like crap, just go to bed. Leave the blog alone. If you’re feeling blocked or disenchanted, try reading some articles on the topic you want to write about. This is my method to resolving writers’ block.
In short…
Don’t give up and don’t forget! Blogging takes time and effort, but it’s so much more important than people give it credit for. Some blogs take at least a year to get recognized. Write what you know about, and write as often as you can. Make the time to write and tag your posts.
