Freelance Confidential - Amanda Hackwith [23]
Build Your Blog Into a Brand
Before we start, lets make it clear: chances are, your blog will likely never make you millions. However, if you are a writer who's built a popular reader base for your blog, small amounts of revenue can be generated from ad revenue, but also from things like affiliate recommendations, e.g. Amazon. Like many of our experts, Chris McConnell saw building his blog, FreelanceReview, as a natural extension of doing business:
The main thing we try to do is diversify. We don't consider designing to be the only aspect of our business. When you are a freelance designer working on projects for clients, you end up with a lot of extra ideas that go unused or knowledge that other freelancers or designers might find useful. What we did with all of that extra stuff was start FreelanceReview.net—partially as a way to store that information for ourselves and partially to make some additional money (both from ad revenue and from referrals generated by the site). In other words, we try to create secondary sources of revenue so that if a big client or project falls through, we won't be completely ruined.
Your blog can also introduce readers to your services and provide important credibility in your field. As we discussed in the Marketing chapter, you can generate more leads through genuine engagement and dialogue with your audience than you ever can through flyers and scattershot advertising.
Entire books have been written on the fine art of crafting blog articles and building a successful site, but I'll narrow in on some tips specifically for freelancers:
Know what the "story" of your blog is. Unless you're a brilliant narrator or humorist, most readers will only reliably return to your blog if it provides valuable content to them. This usually means having a specific area of content that fits a niche interest or solves a particular problem.
Pick topics that in some way relate to your industry and the services you require, but remember that you're not necessarily writing to your professional colleagues! You certainly don't need to "dumb down" your entire blog, but make sure a portion of your articles are relatable to non-experts and interested amateurs. Even your expert audience can appreciate real world examples and focused, direct writing.
If your blog is directly attached to your professional portfolio or business website, decide ahead of time how personal you want to be. Even professional blogs work best when there's a personal element and a sense of a person behind the writer, but you might not want to share about Fluffy's latest surgery or the argument you had with your sister.
Use humor, but use it well. Interjecting humor or a light-hearted article here and there is a good way to cultivate interest, but use it wisely. Remember that tone is difficult to read through text. That means sometimes sarcasm can come off as just angry or mean.
Never bad-mouth your clients. Ever. While we're on the subject of anger, never ever bad-mouth your clients, especially by name. If your blog is tied to your profession, the last thing you want is potential clients to get the impression that you'll be sour-mouthed or unprofessional to work with. If you want to write about a general trend or negative observation, apply it to a wider context and, most importantly, find a positive conclusion. If you're going to talk about a negative problem, readers love it when you can present a possible solution.
Be consistent. Just like we discussed in the Marketing chapter on social media, the key to building a content stream that users value is to make it reliable. Set up a general publishing schedule and stick with it. Everyone will understand a sick day here and there, but overall, have your content ready when readers expect it.
For more reading on building a successful blog for credibility and success, I highly recommend the Copyblogger website (http://www.copyblogger.com/), which is chock full of great articles on writing. If you are really serious about transforming a blog from more than just an online presence