Actionable tips on how to land freelance clients.

I’m not going to start with a meandering intro about how I got into freelance writing, because, let’s be honest, you don’t care!

All you care about is making money as a freelance writer, and here’s how I do it.

LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has been the holy grail of lead generation for me. I don’t waste my time on job boards; I don’t trawl writing platforms; I focus all my time on LinkedIn.

Here’s the LinkedIn message (below) that led me to sign a monthly contract for four blogs paying £1,200. …

I love content that evokes a reaction — light-hearted content always captures my interest.

Many businesses think their blog, and their LinkedIn profile, should be serious and focus on spreading how serious they are about their business.

Whether it’s a personal anecdote or chatty tone, this doesn’t make your content less worthy.

Here’s an anecdote for you to get the ball rolling:

In school, I was told I should expand my vocabulary — advice I’m not discrediting. I completely agree you should widen your vocabulary. But this advice meant I crammed in unnecessarily long words into an equally flowery and…

Not a writer? No worries. You can still write a show-stopping blog post for your business.

How, though? I can’t string a sentence together.

Well, although I’m sure that’s a lie, you can become better at writing content for your own business. All you’re missing is a winning formula.

Firstly, let’s get this out the way: No one cares about your products.

Phew — glad that’s done. Weight lifted.

Although you might have a kick-ass product or service that you cannot wait to share with the world, sadly, as soon as you start pushing out those sales-focused blog posts, people…

If you’ve created a blog for your business website because you thought it was the done thing — this blog post is for you.

Churning out one blog after another because ‘you’re supposed to’ shouldn’t be your reason to create content. Creating content for content’s sake is not a strategy that will yield results.

Your content should address your audience’s search queries — their barriers to purchase, their pain points, and offer them genuinely useful and engaging advice and tips. Content filled with actionable or educational takeaways should be your primary goal — not simply pushing your products and services.

…

Do you match the search intent behind your chosen keywords? Here’s why it’s important and how you can create keyword-rich content for your small business.

What is keyword research, and what can it do for your small business?

Keyword research, although the phrase itself sounds technical, you can do it yourself for your small business. But it’s important to note that it is a process that is time-consuming but rewarding for your business,

As defined by Moz:

“Keyword research is a core SEO task that involves identifying popular words and phrases people enter into search engines -make in an attempt to figure out what to rank for. Researching keywords gives marketers a better understanding of how high the demand is for certain keywords and how hard it would be to compete for those terms in the organic search results, offering some direction to optimisation efforts.”

Why you should keyword optimise your site NOW

I have attended many networking events, and the running theme with small businesses is they’re receiving many word-of-mouth referrals and aren’t struggling for business leads right now.

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is not for failing…

Get yourself on LinkedIn

Decision-makers and business professionals are all on LinkedIn, just waiting to read your posts.

I’ve found it challenging to share my thoughts and opinions on LinkedIn — but it gets easier the more you do it.

To get in front of decision-makers, you need to take that first step and start creating your LinkedIn profile.

The free version is just fine for you right now.

OK.

Headline: essential and necessary to say what you do and who you do it for.

My headline currently looks like this:

I create blog posts & thought pieces for small businesses to help them…

Working from home is great — in fact, it’s the dream working scenario for many people currently tackling the slog that is 9–5.

There are many pros and cons to working from home. There are more distractions — washing-machine-wise — but less work-related distractions — phone calls, office chit chat and just generally being asked to juggle a million tasks at once.

Working from home means freedom, it means you can work to your very own personalised schedule. Want to shower at 11:00 am? No problem. Want a coffee every 5 seconds without judgement? Go for it.

And while having…

A big YouTube story hit the headlines last week, the chaos surrounded Brooke Houts, a YouTuber with over 300,000 subscribers.

The controversy was around an unedited clip of footage mistakenly uploaded to her channel, which appeared to show Houts abusing her Doberman puppy, Sphinx. In the footage, it appears Houts spits on the dog and grabs and pins him to the floor, applying force in the process.

I am not suggesting that Houts’ following would obediently follow her into animal abuse — but with a following of perhaps not epic proportions but a fair amount, her actions are viewed by…