Freelance Writing

5 Tips to Create a Killer Freelance Writer LinkedIn Profile

Most people don’t put in much effort while creating their LinkedIn profiles and freelance writers are among these people. A fully optimized and well-created profile will open a lot of avenues for freelance writers and help them utilize the site to its fullest potential.

Create a well-optimized LinkedIn profile to market yourself and your professional services as a freelance writer and gain clients and a nurturing community while doing so.

In this article, we will show you how to create a killer freelance writer LinkedIn profile that can introduce you to your potential clients, employers, recruiters, and organizations on this renowned site for professionals.

Here are 5 tips for you to follow and implement while framing your LinkedIn profile:

Attract clients with your headline

Your headline is the first thing that people notice in your LinkedIn profile so make sure to frame it effectively. And just as you write job specific resume, you should frame your profile headlines, specific and precise.

Be very particular about what you do and what you can provide as a professional writer. And make sure to mention the word ‘freelance’ to distinguish yourself from full-time job seekers.

Use keywords that can strategically describe who you are and what you do to attract clients in your niche while also making it easier for prospective clients to find you through keyword searches.

Describe your value by mentioning your area of expertise and how it can contribute to the higher goals of an organization. Specify your work experience to add value to your professional profile title.

For instance, if you are a freelance writer who writes on subjects related to tourism, you should mention that specifically in your headline.

Example: Freelance Tourism Writer

Provide your professional headshot

To achieve 9x more connection requests and 21x more LinkedIn profile views, you should provide a professional profile photo.

Considering that LinkedIn is a site for professionals to connect with each other, the profile photo you showcase should also look professional.

One may wonder what a professional headshot should look like and the answer to that is simple. Provide a headshot that has a solid background or something that is not too loud or flashy.

In addition to that, you can update your LinkedIn background picture to reflect your interests or simply highlights your profession as a freelance writer.

Gain recommendations

Get yourself endorsed by gaining recommendations from your clients, employer, colleagues, or friends with whom you are connected on LinkedIn.

Recommendations from others are the testimonial of your professional reputation as it throws light on your worth. It can enhance your profile by making you stand out.

An easy way to begin is by offering to endorse someone you have worked with and asking them to return the favor by endorsing you back.

Make sure to time this endorsement-for-endorsement at least a few months apart as simultaneous endorsements would look fishy and decrease your credibility.

Compose an impactful summary

Give a deeper insight into your professional field by composing an impactful summary for your LinkedIn profile. Make the best use of this feature to describe your profile title.

Your profile summary should give a clear picture of how your professional services can help a prospective client as soon as they land on your profile. It should help them recognize your value.

So, be clear with what you can offer to help them further their business or organizational goals.

Meanwhile, keep your target audience in mind while framing your LinkedIn summary so that you can get across what you want them to know about yourself as a professional freelance writer.

Highlight your work experience

Today a well-created LinkedIn profile works as a substitute for a resume. Some clients even prefer to judge the candidacy of a person by evaluating their LinkedIn profile instead of a run-of-the-mill resume as it provides far better insights that a 1-2 page resume will never fit.

Keeping this in mind, it becomes imperative that you highlight your relevant professional experience in your profile.

Your experience validates the fact that you have the knowledge and expertise in performing the services you are offering.

Any work related to your current profile should be mentioned so that your potential as a freelance writer can be recognized by those interested in your professional services.

Try to use relevant keywords to describe your work as it can help your profile stand higher chances of appearing on search results of others.

Your profile title as a freelance writer in itself is a keyword and using this to describe your work can help your profile pop up when people type for words related to ‘freelance writer’.

While doing so, avoid clumping too much information that may make your professional experience statements seem like a huge heap of unnecessary details.

Keep your professional statements brief and specific and highlight only the most relevant details to showcase your potential.

Key Takeaways

With the end of our article, given below are some points that need to be remembered at all times while creating a killer freelance writer LinkedIn profile:

Mention the accurate profile title that reflects your freelance writing skills to attract clients in your niche.
Provide a professional headshot that reflects your professional background and interests.
Collect recommendations from your connections to build credibility and stand out among other professionals.
Compose a brief and precise summary of your professional experience and skills to give an insight into your potential as a freelance writer.

Author’s Bio:

Aditya Sharma

A resume tactician, Aditya lives and breathes Hiration — an AI-powered online resume builder and platform to help professionals seeking to land their dream job find their way in today’s competitive job market.

Crafting a Writing Portfolio That Will Build You a Dedicated List Of Clients

“Be specific to attract your ideal client” – Wendy Nicole Anderson

So you’re finally ready to take the plunge and work as a freelance writer full time? Congratulations! You are in for an interesting and, hopefully, rewarding journey.

One thing that can save you a lot of stress, money and time is getting the right type of clients. And this is something that can happen before you even talk to a potential client. It starts with how you present your work: your portfolio.

But if you’ve never made a portfolio before, you probably have questions. How much do your clients need to know about you? How open and general can your topics be? This post will answer all that and more, and help you create the perfect portfolio to catch the ideal client.

Crafting the perfect writing portfolio can mean a huge difference in the clients you get and the money you make. It manages not only their expectations of the type and quality of your writing, but can also inform them how you work, and what you expect from them.

1. Determine Your Why

Writing is all about self-motivation. So think about what keeps you motivated. Having a clear idea of where you want to take your business from the start will help give your career a clear direction. When you have determined what drives you in your business, think about your ideal client. They should align with your goals. Who are you trying to help, and how will you help them?

2. Building A Flexible Portfolio

Specializing allows you to make more money and make a name for yourself by writing in a particular field. Choose no more than two specialties to highlight at one time.

Though specializing can help you make a name for yourself, it’s essential to keep your portfolio flexible. Ideally, you’ll always be working to find new areas of income. Some of your subspecialties may connect to your specialty, but they don’t have to.

Maybe you’ve got several years experience in finance writing, but you’ve always had an interest in travel. You could add some pieces which reflect your interest in finance, combined with a love of travel, with topics about how to invest so you can spend more time traveling. Or, you might choose to create multiple portfolios, for different client personas. Keep these small, simple, and not too disconnected from each other.

3. Getting The Details Right

Professionalism in writing means clear, concise writing, no typos, grammar, or spelling issues to worry about. Familiarize yourself with common mistakes. Brush up on your grammar and spelling and always read aloud to fix clunky sentences, repetitive words, and typos.

You want the writing in your portfolio to reflect your best. You’ll also want to spend some time thinking about templates. You need something simple and streamlined, with an easy-to-read font and layout. You’d be surprised how much design comes at the cost of quick and straightforward readability. Keep your font at least 12-point, in something simple and readable.

4. Find The Right Portfolio Service

The great thing about our online, interconnected world: it’s easy for clients to find you. There are plenty of portfolio services available to choose from, and what you choose depends on your specific needs. Here are some general considerations to help you make a decision:

You want to find a place that allows you to highlight your writing, without leaving it dull on the page. It should be easy to navigate and reflect your writing voice. If you’re a technical writer or copywriter, you might want something more streamlined or modern. If you’re a ghost blogger who writes relationship and mommy blogs, you might want something more approachable or playful.

While you’re looking for a hosting service, don’t forget to consider the practical elements. How much space will you need? How many unique emails? Will you add multimedia components? Is it easy to navigate social media, add newsletter sign-ups, and other forms of promotion? What are you willing to spend? Remember, this is a client’s first look at you, as a writer, and a business.

5. Get Personal – But Don’t Overdo It

Your portfolio’s About Me section is where you can get personal. Use a tone consistent with the pieces you select. Talk about your hobbies and interests, but be mindful of your audience. This is where you can afford to get a little more informal. But don’t get too personal.

Talk about how long you’ve been writing, but not your age. Talk about your childhood interest in an obscure topic you love writing about, but less about your childhood hopes and fears. Keep the tone positive and upbeat. But stay away from anything cutesy or quirky. Using text talk might be okay in your private messages, but the About Me on your website or portfolio is still all about what you can offer potential clients. So keep it polite, professional, and focused on your work.

6. Get Some Feedback

As a writer, you’re mainly working in a vacuum. You procure your own clients, produce your own pages, and you hit that submit button, and read all those rejection letters by yourself. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need anyone, or even that you have to go it alone.

Get some feedback. Find a mentor, or writing partner friend who can help you choose the right pieces to fit your writing goals, and the type of projects you’re looking to tackle. Get a trusted editor to check your portfolio or website before it goes live, for readability. If you have a friend who knows coding or graphic design, talk to them about how to create something simple and unique, and how to maintain it. There’s plenty of help out there when you need it.

7. Keep Updating

The most important part of being a professional writer is to remember to write! Running a business for yourself can be tough, and it’s easy to lose sight of your goals. Updating doesn’t have to mean a big overhaul every few months. Instead, take regular stock of what you’re working on, what you’re excited about, and where your goals are. Make it a habit to check in with yourself. Don’t be afraid to take pieces out of your portfolio as they’re no longer relevant to your personal goals.

8. Include Your Pricing And Terms

This is a little more controversial than other elements you might want to include. Many writers don’t like to publish their prices before they talk to a lead, as it can differ per project what they charge.

That said, being completely transparent about your pricing and terms can save you a lot of negotiation time and, if you’re like me, having to discuss that icky “money” thing. It can also ward off anyone looking for a “good deal”, and prevent any misunderstandings around payment and delivery terms.

So if possible, state your pricing and terms on your portfolio. You can offer different packages to cater to the different types of projects. And the last piece of advice on this: ask for (partial) upfront payment. It will take the sting out of worrying about getting paid after your work is done.

An excellent writing portfolio can elevate your career. It gets you the right exposure, to the right people. This is the difference between taking the jobs you actually want and scrambling to keep yourself afloat with one bad client after another. Build a portfolio that filters your leads, and start your business right with an ideal set of clients.

Do You Have What it Takes to Write from Home?

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post written by Sally Keys, a freelance writer in the fields of business and finance.

In my decade as first a writer and then a content manager, I have seen many people who think they can be writers. They love the idea of calling themselves a writer, bigging themselves up, and working from home. Many are stay-at-home parents, English literature students, and the long-term unemployed looking for a quick buck.

However, there are several aspects which mark out a good writer from a bad one, and it’s not all down to skill. A large part is actually down to attitude and mentality. If you have what it takes to survive as a freelance writer, then you need both of these.

The Writer’s Work Life

Most newbie writers underestimate the amount of work that goes into writing and the diversity of the writing jobs they must complete. They also fail to anticipate the time pressure put on many writers to get work done.

This is not just in terms of deadlines but also the amount of work necessary to make an decent living from writing. In some cases, this can mean pumping out multiple 400-word articles in an hour, including research and editing time.

The biggest challenge of for those who write from home is discipline. This means setting aside time and distractions, being well organized, and keeping to a strict schedule to bring the work in on time and on quality.

On the plus side, if you have that discipline, you will have the flexibility to work half days, to change from day-to-day when you work and how you work. As you write, you will gain more knowledge and more experience in each type of writing, and you will naturally speed up.

This brings in another con to consider: complacency. Shortcuts, cheats, copying, and accidentally writing the same thing again and again are common errors alongside not reading job briefs properly and being bland.

The Work-From-Home Lifestyle

Most online writers today work from home. This can be in a designated office, a dining room, a bedroom, or, like Roald Dahl, a shed at the bottom of the garden. As noted above, working from home has its own distractions. Bosses will be on chat and email instead of in your face, as will colleagues, but you can tune them out more easily.

However, now you have a TV in the house, as well as a phone, Internet access, a fridge, and maybe a noisy family. Working from home can also be lonely, as it’s difficult to build new professional relationships and you won’t have colleagues to go out with.

Despite these drawbacks, the drawbacks of writing from home are offset by the many benefits: you can work in comfort, wear what you want, take the kids to school, and go out for lunch without a time limit.

Key Takeaways

The Writer’s Work Life

The Work-From-Home Lifestyle

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