Self Promotion for the Freelance Writer

Freelance writers soon learn that self promotion is the only way they’ll turn their writing into money. You can write 30 articles a day and publish them on popular sites, but if no one is aware that you’ve written them, no one is going to read them unless you’re lucky enough to gain rank on the search engine result page.

The most popular social media sites for self promotion are Facebook and Twitter. Both of these sites offer seemingly limitless opportunities to meet and communicate with strangers who share common interests.

The need for Facebook friends and Twitter followers is obvious. You’re looking for people who are interested in you and the work you do. These are the people who may just click on your link and read your article. If they like what they read, they might start following your work. They may even recommend your article to their friends.

If you’re lucky, you may even discover people who’ll become your mentors. I’ve found many fellow writers on Facebook who have not only clicked on my links and commented, but shared my articles with their friends.

The same is true with Twitter. As followers learn to recognize the value of your Tweets and links, they will retweet your tweets to their followers, greatly increasing the chances that someone will click.

When looking for Facebook friends and Twitter followers, be careful that you don’t limit your possibilities. You may have already identified friends and followers in the writing site forums where you publish. These contacts are very valuable as business contacts, but that doesn’t mean that they are actually interested in your subject matter.

You want to add Twitter followers and Facebook friends who are interested in the article that you write. If you write about history, you want to identify people who read about history. Check out history groups on Facebook and join them. Friend other group members. These are the people who are your intended audience, after all.

The same is true with Twitter. Use the hashtag (#) and run a search of history topics. Follow the Tweeters who tweet on the subject. They might just follow you back and each time you post a link, they will have the opportunity to follow it.

Grow your online social community, continue to write valuable content, self promote at every opportunity, and you may just be lucky enough to become one of the successful freelance writers on the internet.

Promote Yourself with Twitter Hashtags

Twitter is an important part of any social media promotion campaign and there are a variety of methods to get yourself and your articles out there. One of the best is the use of hashtags.

The Twitter hashtag, "#" is used like a keyword. The hashtag is a convenient way for users to categorize their tweets so that the tweet reaches a broader community.

If your Twitter account is public and someone who is not one of your followers does a search on the word you have preceded with a hashtag, your tweet will come up in the search results.

As an example, once I publish this article, I'm going to promote it on Twitter. The name of the article and the url will be shown in the tweet. Depending on the number of characters I still have available, I will add #freelance, #writer tips, #socmedia, #income or perhaps one of the writers groups I belong to. That way, if someone is searching twitterland for information on any of those topics, my tweet will show up with the link to the article.

Use of the valuable search and hashtag ability of Twitter is also a valuable tool in research. If you're working on a series of articles on growing trends, like living on a reduced income, search #frugal. This will bring up tweets of complete strangers who have tweeted about the subject. If you can identify a credible tweeter, you can follow the person (who will then probably follow you back) and often find valuable information to use in your article.

Don't use too many hashtags in your tweets, and don't use hashtags that don't pertain to your tweets. For instance, if I tried to lure sports fans to click my link by using the term #football, I stand to lose any credibility with my established followers. If there is room at the end of the tweet for several hashtags, focus on who you're targeting your article to, and what terms they may be searching for.