Dude, Your Website Needs a Blog

Remember when I told you that your freelance writing business needs a website? Well that hasn’t changed. You need a web presence. You need a place where potential clients can learn more about you because they WILL want to know more about you than your name and that you’d like to write stuff for them. You need a place where you can put your best foot forward. You need a website.

But here’s one more thing I’d like to say about your website: it needs a blog.

A blog on your website can serve a number of purposes. First of all, new content on your site gives you more Google juice than a site that never changes. And while that doesn’t mean that when someone searches “freelance writer” your site will be first, it does mean that you’ll rank higher than if you didn’t at all. If you’d like to distinguish yourself from the 30 other freelance writers named Sara Smith in your city, this can help. For a long time, people who searched for P.S. Jones got a bunch of public schools and a poet named Patricia Spears Jones. I changed that and blogging on my website was a part of that. (By the way, Patricia Spears Jones selfishly bought www.psjones.com before I could because she was unfairly born over twenty years before I was. And quietly waiting for her to die so I can scoop up her domain name takes a lot more patience than I can muster.)

Another–perhaps even more valuable–benefit is that you can communicate directly with your clients and prospects. You can share information about your industry to the people who will really care about it. On my site, I’m planning on doing a whole series on the different definitions that some of my less savvy clients might not be familiar with: copywriter, ROI, solopreneur, etc. If editing is a big part of your business services, then you should be talking about grammar and voice. If you’re a grant writer, you’ll talk about funding issues and topics. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel but if your clients can get information from your blog, you’ll establish yourself as an expert.

And finally, it’s a platform where you can talk about your accomplishments and news without any filter. Will you be attending a networking event? Let people know that you’ll be there and you’d love to meet up with new contacts. Did you just win an award? Brag about it. Hell, if you were nominated for an award, you should talk about it. It’s also a good place to talk about your projects. Imagine when a potential client who needs content for a beauty website goes to your site and finds a post about your recent work with ABC Beauty Spa with details about what you’ve done and a testimonial from the owner. If you didn’t have a foot in the door before, you’ve certainly got one now.

Don’t overthink this. No one says you have to update this blog every day or even every week. Just posting a couple of times a month gives you a leg up over static sites. You also don’t have to spend all your time promoting it or encouraging comments or interactions. Sometimes, just providing new, useful information frequently on your own website can grow your brand like nothing else.

Do you have a blog on your business website? What do you write about? Leave me the link in the comments below so I can check it out.

Princess Jones

Princess Jones is the evil genius behind Diary of a Mad Freelancer and P.S. Jones Communications. She blogs about freelance life, copywriting and being self-employed. She can usually be found tweeting away or rambling over on Google Plus.

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Google Plus