Holy hell. It’s September. How did that happen?
More to the point, how are you situated for ramping up your freelance writing business? Have you been good about marketing all summer, staying in touch with current clients, and reaching out to network with those would-be clients?
If not, fear not. While it’s not ideal timing to be hitting up would-be clients with your letter of introduction or social media connections, if there’s a need, the timing is going to be perfect.
Now might be a great time to try stretching your wings a bit and approaching new areas that touch on what you do already. Let’s look at this example:
A writer saw on LinkedIn that a university’s Office of VP Research was looking for a freelance writer or writers. This writer decided to look on the college site. She found that the university did research in many areas: bioscience, immunology, gene editing, physics, AI, machine learning…. How do you write a cover letter not knowing where to land?
What this writer didn’t do was the usual cover-letter screwup that far too many writers make — point out a strength, then go into how they can write about anything, really. They tell clients what they can do.
Ah, but the winning strategy? Showing what you can do. And you, my brilliant writerly friend, have the capability to do that right now.
[bctt tweet=”Show, don’t tell applies to client intros and cover letters, too. #freelancewriting” username=”LoriWidmer”]
Especially in a case where you have no idea what strengths your audience is looking for, opt to go narrow. The writer in our example did, and it netted her a reply and potential future work.
How she did it:
She stuck to her own background.
Because the university mentioned above was all over the place with research areas, she decided to convince them that she already knows how to handle research topics — but not by telling them that. Instead, she pointed out 12+ years of experience writing in a particular science field, what she’s doing now in the manufacturing sector, and examples of corporate writing from her international client list.
Within 27 minutes of emailing her cover letter, she received a response. And damn if they weren’t looking for someone who could write in the particular science field she has expertise in.
But what if it’s you? What if you want to write for the technology industry but your background is in finance? Here’s what I do in cases where the client’s industry differs, even if they don’t give a thorough explanation of what they’ll need from a writer:
I show them I’ve done similar things already.
I once was hired to write about retirement benefits and investing. What the hell do I know about that? Nothing really.
Except that wasn’t quite true. I have written about corporate finance and how it pertains to a company’s risks. I’ve also written a number of human resource pieces, and those would sometimes contain mentions of company benefit packages, of which retirement is often one. I wrote about risk. I wrote about companies saving money. And damn if this retirement benefits group wanted the content to be company-facing. Their audience was the employers. Boom. My background suddenly fit. Generalists, you may have an easier time of this than those who specialize.
Let’s see how you can get the same results.
Look at your own background.
This applies to you too, generalists. Dig deeper than your subject area. You write about agriculture, sure. But what topics do you write about most? Pesticides/herbicides? Weather-related damage? New agricultural technology? Cannabis? Water conservation planning? As you write more in your specialty, you see topics repeat. Those are your stepping stones into new areas.
Showcase transferable skills.
I think it was 20 years ago that I wrote my first white paper. It was a proper one, too — 15 pages, plenty of research and study results to display, charts and graphs that outlined a specific issue in the corporate security realm. I used that clip to get the next one, which was a white paper, but in the technology industry. From there, I got a few more and hey, pretty soon I was writing in new-to-me areas. All because I showed up with a clip that showed I could handle the task.
Avoid the “I can write about anything” line.
That one really is the kiss of death. No, you can’t write about anything. I can’t. I’d never take on jobs that required excellent math aptitude, for example. I had a client not long ago whose subject matter was new to me. I was reluctant, but they talked me into trying. Turns out the amount of time spent on learning each product and company nuance (and there were far too many nuances) negatively impacted the amount of time I had to put into the gig, and I decided to end things. The point is to never be over-confident in your assurances to prospective clients. It’s not worth it to be paid for work that you have to struggle to complete (and eventually end up hating).
Writers, how have you approached those clients and gigs that are outside of your area of expertise or interest?
What’s the strangest gig you’ve secured or maybe the strangest way you’ve won a client over?