The Pitch-Every-Day Freelance Writing Business Boost

Boost? Did I hear the word “boost”?

Okay, so the word “boost” is becoming almost as hackneyed as the word “slams” in headlines. But there’s only so much space up there in the title bar. Forgive me.

I was browsing Twitter and the blogs, as I’m known to do, and I noticed the usual advice for beginning writers:

Pitch every day.

Gosh, isn’t that great advice? Aren’t you glad someone told you one more time to pitch every day? Aren’t you glad you clicked on that link and read that?

Me neither. So why am I setting this blog post up with the exact same promise right up there in the damned title?

Because, my writer friends, I’m going to do something we writers should be doing anyway:

Show, don’t tell.

Yes, I’m going right beyond telling you to do it and I’m going to give you a bit of a roadmap to help you actually do it.

That’s a bit different, isn’t it? Well, I get a little exhausted tired of seeing someone give marching orders without first telling the troops where they’re going. It’s like telling your puppy to go fetch the newspaper when you haven’t shown her how to fetch in the first place. (Right, Cathy and Paula?)

So, let’s get to pitching every day. Since the best way to learn sometimes is by example, here’s how I do it. Feel free to do the same things or your own personal variation of one or more strategies:

Find one magazine idea a week. I start with reading the very publications I’m pitching to. Sometimes your story is in the unanswered questions you have. If I come up dry, I look for statistics or news in that industry. I’ll browse press releases, too. I’ve found tons of ideas in one really mundane, really banal release. It can be done. Just ask yourself what in that release stood out? Was it the headline? (doubtful) The news? (maybe) The company’s business? Pull out three or four ideas and then look for news on your ideas, or statistics that may back up that germ of an idea.

Schedule your social media interactions. Could be you schedule tweets or make an appointment with yourself to hit up LinkedIn. I head to Twitter at least three times a week. While I’m there, I have fun, but I have goals, too:

• Schedule a blog post tweet
•  Use hashtags to find and retweet my target audience content
•  Find something marketing-related to share within that same hashtag (they often don’t look outside their own orbit)
•  Find one more company/potential client/industry wonk to connect with

It’s not complicated (I hate complicated!). I just pick a direction (maybe one, maybe all of the above) and spend ten minutes sharing and reaching out.

Send out three letters of introduction. Depending on my workload or if the conference I attend is coming up, I may do this once a week or once a day. Since my goals have shifted lately to taking on fewer clients but higher-value ones, I don’t blanket the conference attendees with notes anymore. If you’re trying to really drive up your results, you may want to send out more. Seven a day often worked for me in the past, but you choose an amount you can handle because you will have to follow up. And you don’t want to spend eight hours following up with 134 LOIs you sent last week, do you?

In each letter I send, I ask for something. Not a sale, but a conversation. I want to build a bridge. The client and I may never cross it, but that’s okay. I now know one more person in the industry, which is great when you’re going to a show with 135 vendors and 10,000+ attendees.

Say hello to established contacts and clients. I did this two weeks ago and got this: “Your timing is perfect!” Don’t write them off because they’ve not called. They aren’t your old boyfriends/girlfriends. It’s not personal. Sometimes they are just busy trying to do exactly what you’re trying to do — build a business. Those contacts you had six months ago that amounted to nothing yet; why not reach out right now and check back in? You may hear back, or you may hear nothing. Does not hurt to try. I don’t do this as often as I should. I think we should be reaching out to at least one established contact per week.

Check in with editors. Sometimes the ideas come from the editors. I reached out to a favorite editor three months back. My idea didn’t appeal to him, but he proposed another idea and asked me if I wanted to take it on. Sometimes you don’t even need to contact them with an idea (though I tend to think it’s easier for them that way). Just say hello. Ask if they have any holes in their content this month, and if so, what do they need from you? Be the resource they come to count on. I find I’m working with at least one editor per month, and I’m hoping to increase that this year, so I’m going to reach out to one per week and see how it goes.

Writers, what do you include in your daily/weekly pitch plan?
What mix has worked best for you? What do you do when work thins out and nothing is on the horizon?