But if it will serve as a good sample of your writing to your target audience, it can be invaluable. And obviously, the more prominent places you can blog, the better. Now that I’m blogging for Entrepreneur magazine’s Daily Dose blog, I can’t believe how much exposure and how many contacts it’s brought me.
I recently was approached by a major corporation in Canada about copywriting for them, which baffled me as I don’t apply for or seek gigs outside the U.S. You guessed it – they saw the blog and just based on that, decided I was the writer they wanted.
Personally, I’ve found blogging helps me keep the creative juices flowing, and allows me an outlet for my own opinions, which don’t usually get expressed in my copywriting or reporting work. I think it’s made me a better writer for my other markets and clients.
A big caveat: if you’re the kind of writer who really needs an editor to better organize your thoughts and iron out all your misspellings and bad grammar, a blog may not be your best showcase, since you’re usually serving as your own editor.
If you want to blog for pay for other people, obviously, having your own blog is pretty much a requirement. They’ll ask you for links to your blogs – it’s almost a part of your resume.
Another great strategy for blogging is blog some cogent comments on other people’s blogs. Great way to get started in blogging while you’re getting organized with your own blog.
Other tips:
• Find industry blog portals in your niche and ask if you can add your blog to their site.
• Try to blog on a regular basis, at least once or twice a week.
• Don’t blog about what your cat ate. Find a niche subject that’s the theme of your blog, and stick to it. Will help build your audience.
• Once you are blogging, use social media to draw more visitors to your blog. I’ve grown my traffic by about 50 percent in just a month or so through using Twitter.
• Once you have your own blog, when you comment on others’ blogs, put your blog address in your signature. This has significantly increased the traffic to my Web site.
• Think about ways to monetize your blog once you have some traffic. Just because you’re using the blog primarily to lure new writing clients doesn’t meant the blog can’t be another, ancillary revenue stream, too. I like Leo Babauta’s suggestion of offering book recommendations where you can get an affiliate fee if visitors go to Amazon and buy the books…planning to add that feature myself. But you can also put up ads if you think it won’t turn your audience off.