Five Tips for More Effective Blogger Outreach

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Blogger Outreach

Whether your blog is for commercial or personal purposes, business or pleasure, outreach to other bloggers is essential for building your readership and making lasting connections within the industry. Guest blogging can be a challenging and rewarding way to reach new readers and maintain relationships with like-minded individuals. These five tips will help lead you to more effective blogger outreach campaign.

1. Know your Targets

You may have some bloggers in mind already that have amazing blogs which you read daily, but finding bloggers that have a similar audience is the most important step in blogger outreach. Sketch out what your ideal blogger would look like if you had your choice. Decide what niche topics and broader topics you would like to write about and find bloggers in those areas. Websites like Technorati, BlogCatalog, and Alexa can be helpful in finding bloggers with a large audience that may cater to similar readers.

2. Be Genuine and Explain Your Purpose

Many larger blogs have experience with guest posting and solicitations of guest posting. Most blogs will have guidelines already established for guest posts. Make sure to read these guidelines carefully and follow them when sending correspondence or writing guest posts. Make sure that those you are reaching out to understand that your work will be totally original, and is not meant to be self-promotional. If their readers log on to read their work and find yours, the least you can do avoid making a commercial for your blog.

3. Build a Good Rapport

Remember that other bloggers are probably a lot like you. They will be able to see through attempts to stroke their ego just to get a spot on their blog. This is especially true if they have a particularly large audience and receive many requests for guest posts. They also know that your guest post will be more beneficial for you than it will be for them, so try and allow your writing to speak for itself.

4. Bring Your Best Material

If you write a sub-par article on your blog, you are going to be given a little more slack by your regular readers who are used to being thoroughly entertained by your words. First impressions are important and any writing done as a guest blogger needs to be top notch. Make sure you are bringing the best you’ve got. You want to give people a reason to come look over your permanent blogging home.

5. Maintain Relationships

Even after you have submitted and posted as a guest blogger, make sure to maintain those relationships. You never know when connections might start to pay off. While a guest post may help drive traffic to your site, it could also create opportunities for you in other ways in the future.

Hopefully these tips can assist in helping to build a strong network for you and other bloggers. Bringing readers of similar interests together is the goal behind most blogs. Hopefully collaboration using these tips can help to strengthen the community you are helping to build.

8 Tips to Help Bloggers Get Started on Pinterest

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Mashable.com recently reported that the social media website Pinterest brought more traffic to publishers than Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Google+ combined. In fact, the only social network to beat Pinterest’s success rate is Facebook.

This holds true for bloggers, some of whom report that Pinterest is often one of their biggest sources of reader traffic. Pinterest recently made it even easier for publishers to promote their writing by adding a new function for articles that are pinned: pinned articles have a different format than other types of pins, and provide information about the article otherwise hidden from the viewer.

pinterest-article-pin

(Picture from: Picture from: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/pinterest-announces-rich-pins-for-articles-nj.)

So if you’re a blogger and you aren’t yet on Pinterest, you need to start ASAP! Try a few of these methods to optimize your Pinterest experience:

  1. A Pinterest update made this year created separate accounts for businesses and individuals. Bloggers can be counted as a business. After creating your business account, make sure your website is verified. Pinners with a verified website tend to do better.
  2. The images you use will make or break you on Pinterest! Seriously, this may be one of the most important Pinterest tips you will ever find. Make sure your images are clear and beautiful. Use your best photography skills and original pictures. To make your pin even more popular, use a photo editing site to add words and a watermark.
  3. Pinterest is a social network, so make sure to be social! Comment, share, like, pin, and follow other users!
  4. Create or join a group board. This will bring your pins to a broader audience.
  5. Make it easy for readers to share your post on Pinterest by adding a Pin it! button on photos in every blog post.
  6. Connect your Pinterest account to other social media websites. Share your Pinterest account on Facebook through tabs.
  7. Share the URL to your pins on other social media outlets.
  8. When you pin something from your blog, make sure to fill out the caption box. Include the URL to your post to optimize your SEO. Put a call-to-action in your caption as well – these will increase the engagement on your pin by 80%.

Expand Your Blog Reach with Twitter

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Twitter can be a great social media platform for helping bloggers expand their reach. With the use of hashtags, huge audiences from your industry or niche can be found easily. You can also grow your blog following by having your current readers share your posts through Twitter, or retweet your tweets. Here are a few instructions to help any blogger get started on Twitter.

Your Twitter profile

Before you start tweeting to broadcast your messages, take a look at your profile. Do you have a profile picture? Twitter profiles without a picture look shady and untrustworthy. So do profiles without full bios. Unfortunately, your bio has to be short, so only include the most pertinent information. Twitter allows you to put a website in your Twitter profile, so stick the URL to your blog there.

Having a cover photo and background picture makes your profile look so much more professional than the default ones provided by Twitter. You can copy a common marketing strategy many businesses use and create a background image with your blog URL, social media contact information, or a CTA.

What should you tweet?

Before you send out your first tweet, sit down and think about your goals. This should partly tie into a social media strategy you’ve already made for your blog (or are in the process of making). Each social media platform is different, so while your tone or style for Twitter might already be set out in your strategy, think about what you can accomplish with Twitter. Are you mainly trying to show your readers a social side? Are you working on gaining more traffic? Are you trying to establish yourself as an expert in your niche? Or are you networking? It’s important to pick one of those objectives and diligently stick to it in your tweeting ventures.

Once you pick your objective, it should be easier to develop a content strategy for your tweets. Many bloggers find success in sharing the title of their individual blog posts – which means you’ll have to keep Twitter in mind when you create your titles. You can also share excerpts from the text of your post, especially if it’s a pithy quote or juicy tidbit. Asking your followers questions that you would genuinely want an answer to is also a good strategy.

While you’re learning Twitter, explore hashtags that are relevant to your industry or niche. Many of them will be similar to Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram hashtags. Follow accounts that are similar to yours or interesting to you or your readers. Retweet tweets from others as well as posting your own original messages. Once you’ve learned the hashtags that you need, include them in some of your tweets, but limit it to 2-3 hashtags per tweet.

The more you use Twitter and follow accounts that are similar to yours, the more comfortable you will be with your tweeting. You’ll learn the best strategies either through example or through trial and error.

Quick tip: Use a URL shortening service if you are sharing links in your tweets. The long URLs will take up too much of your 140 characters. Websites like Bitly offer the service for free.

How often should you tweet?

Twitter is kind of like Pinterest when it comes to posting frequency. You should post multiple times a day, but it is possible to get carried away and annoy your followers. However, that would take many, many annoying tweets to get that far. Tweeting daily is the best policy, but every couple of days is adequate.

Twitter, your blog, and other social media platforms

You can use embedded posts, apps, and plugins to connect your Twitter account to your blog and other social media platforms. Use a Twitter social media button on your “About Me” page and on blog posts. You can embed a tweet to encourage users to follow you or respond to you via Twitter.

Twitter can also be connected to your Pinterest, Instagram, and Vine accounts. Use an app to show your latest tweets on your Facebook page.

Measuring your Twitter success

Just as Facebook and Pinterest have an in-house analytics program, so does Twitter. Use ads.twitter.com to access statistics on your tweets and followers. This program mainly exists to keep track of paid campaigns on Twitter, but is accessible for free. Analytics will tell you how many people clicked your link to go to your website, as well as favorites, retweets, and replies. This can help you see not only how much of your traffic comes through Twitter, but also which tweets attract the most clicks or shares.

Use Twitter analytics in conjunction with Google analytics. Twitter analytics can tell you which of your tweets were the most effective, but Google analytics can tell you if your website lived up to its Twitter promises. If traffic that comes through Twitter has a high bounce rate or doesn’t stay very long, you can use that information to work on user interface techniques.

For more information on how to use Pinterest as a blogger, check out our blog post “8 Tips to Help Bloggers Get Started on Pinterest.”

Courtship and Content Marketing: How to Measure Your Success

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Marketing is simply another form of courtship. As marketers, we court our prospects with the hopes of winning them over with our charm and beginning a lasting, mutually profitable relationship. You see, in this analogy, we’re not dealing with a one-sided, dysfunctional romance, but a win-win situation for both parties.

Continuing the analogy, traditional marketers and content marketers represent two kinds of wooers: the short-game players and the long-game players. Each type of marketer must track their success in different ways, but before we get into that, let’s explore the distinction between the two.

Traditional Marketers: Masters of the Short-Game

These are the more aggressive go-getters. They put their offer on the table in a take-it-or-leave-it type approach, often with a narrowing window of opportunity. Their pickup line is to the point and leaves little room for “maybes,” usually eliciting an immediate “yes” or “no.”

Yeses in traditional marketing come from people who have been adequately prepared to take the leap and become a lead, whether by happy circumstance or deliberate prior conditioning through content marketing.

How to Measure Traditional Marketing Success

Tracking your success with traditional marketing is a simple matter of counting up the yeses, or leads. How many people filled out your contact form? How many calls did you receive off of the new landing page? How many clicks did you get off your PPC campaign?

Content Marketers: Pros of the Long-Game

Content marketers play a game of patience, opting for the trust-building technique, which takes more time but creates more payoff. Not only may your efforts end in a lead or sale, but your prospect will learn to trust you as an authority, confidante, and/or friend in the process.

The relationship a content marketer is trying to build is noncommittal, even passive. You want to build something long-term and loyal, but you’re not making demands or asking for anything right out of the gate. That’s the traditional marketing approach. Your priority is to disseminate useful information and media for their consumption and education. You also want to learn about your prospects through fruitful interactions via blog comments, webinars, surveys, and more.

Just like an attentive date, you understand that a healthy long-term relationship is built off of solid two-way communication and benefit.

How to Measure Content Marketing Success

It’s tempting to only track clicks, downloads, and views as your measurement of success in content marketing, but the real measurement of success will come outside of individual pieces of content or media.

What you really want to know is how well your content is motivating your prospects to take action. This can be accomplished by tracking prospects versus content. It will involve asking targeted questions of your prospects and sales team. You’ll need to find a way to track what your prospects are consuming and where they go after that, and what they do.

For example, if a particular prospect has downloaded a whitepaper on cloud computing for big business, and has visited your cloud computing product page a number of times, sales can be informed on how to approach that particular prospect and what content they may be interested in viewing next.

By tracking your prospects’ progress through the courtship process and learning all you can about them, you can take away actionable insights that will allow you to prove your success and recognize areas for improvement.

How do you track the success of your content marketing efforts?

Sources:

Balik, Rachel. “To Successfully Measure B2B Content Marketing, Get In the Friend Zone.”http://marketingland.com/successfully-measure-content-marketing-get-friend-zone-91908?utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=scap&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonv6TOZKXonjHpfsX97uwrXaS%2FlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4JRMpqI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFTbLCMbpx37gNXxU%3D. (July 29, 2014.)

SEO Isn’t Dead and Here’s Why

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What follows the headline “SEO is dead!”? Usually a click, and that’s why people use that claim in their article headlines. They know they’ll get clicks by scaring people. When you see such a loaded claim, the obvious, knee-jerk response is to say, “There’s no way! Without SEO, what will I do now to make my website visible?” And then you read on to find out how to protect and ensure the success of your website.

One blogger argues that not only is this claim inaccurate, but the articles that follow it are surface level sensationalism at its most dangerous. Bad advice that eliminates good SEO strategies can lead people to make poor decisions for their websites that can hurt their ranking, and consequently, their chances for success.

The Timeless Definition of SEO

As long as there is information online, there will be a way to search for it. And as long as there is a way to search for it, there will be a reason to optimize said content for more efficient and effective searchability.

And that’s what search engine optimization is: the process of refining content for optimal visibility online. This “refining” process is where SEOs (search engine optimizers) come in. They are responsible for navigating and deploying the correct practices that will help a website appeal to a search engine’s defined yet evolving algorithms.

Kristine Schachinger of SearchEngineWatch.com gives two rule-of-thumb questions to consider every time you’re confronted with a claim that SEO is dead.

  1. “Is there still a search engine that seeks out and returns content to a user based on words they enter through text or voice input?”
  2. “Are these results based on programming, algorithms, and math?”

If the answer to these two questions is yes, there will always be a reason to continue employing SEO and you’ll be wise to keep yourself in tune with the current state your favorite search engine’s algorithms.

A False Accusation

Those that say SEO is dead also make sweeping claims against SEOs, lumping legitimate SEOs in with the spammers with unfair generalizations. It’s been called an “industry full of promises,” but Kristine clarifies that true SEOs “give Google what they want—sites that are good for users, guided by Google’s guidelines.”

A true search engine optimizer isn’t a proponent of “blackhat tricks,” because they know that the results won from those tricks won’t last. True SEOs understand that Google’s algorithms are constantly shifting in order to provide the end user a better and more accurate search experience.

If a website owner understands Google’s motive and the implications of each algorithm change, then they will be on top of making content and design strategies that will best appeal to those algorithms, and will see a boost in ranking and traffic as a result. A knowledgeable SEO acts as the consultant, or spokesperson, for Google in relaying those practices and strategies that will yield the desired results.

What content and design decisions have you made that were influenced by Google’s changing algorithms?

Sources

Schachinger, Kristine. “Is SEO dead? Nooooooo!” http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2358557/Is-SEO-Dead-NOOOOOOO?utm_term=&utm_content=Is%20SEO%20Dead%3F%20NOOOOOOO!&utm_campaign=08%2F04%2F14%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Daily (August 18, 2014.)

What All New Freelance Journalists Need to Know

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In previous posts, we covered a few of the essential qualities and tips new freelance writers needs to know and possess in order to be successful. These included:

Qualities

  • Writing skills
  • Self-editing skills
  • Quick turnaround
  • Job satisfaction

Tips

  • Don’t be too proud to ask for help
  • Constantly build your portfolio
  • Make finding new clients a priority
  • Determine a niche and perfect it
  • Don’t expect overnight success

In this post, we’ll talk about a few more things that new freelance writers need to incorporate into their practices and philosophies as they embark on the journey to become established, profitable writers.

Successful blogger and freelance writer Carol Tice offered this advice:

  • Forget about qualifications
  • Find a mentor(s)
  • Write your way into a niche
  • Don’t be scared!
  • Stay focused

Qualifications

As a freelancer, any other qualifications besides experience and ability simply don’t matter. In Tice’s words, “If you can get the story and tell it so we want to read it, you’re in.” No one will hire you for a gig solely because you have a master’s degree, and a master’s degree alone isn’t going to make you feel qualified. Remember that and keep writing, because practice and experience is going to be what gives you the edge in the end.

Find a Mentor

When you make knowledgeable connections, exploit them—in the best way possible! Tap into their expertise, ask questions, and be precocious. It’s the aspiring writer that seeks out and absorbs knowledge that makes it to the finish line.

Write Your Way Into a Niche

If you’re writing what you enjoy, you’re not only expanding on your expertise in that area, but you’re building your portfolio that proves your expertise to prospective clients. Build a strong case for yourself by backing up your experience with previously published work.

Don’t Be Scared!

Tice gives some funny advice: “Think of something scarier than writing an article, and it’ll be a breeze by comparison!” For example, you could be waiting tables instead, so cozy up in front of your computer and do what you love—write! Don’t allow the scope of the assignment daunt you either; just do it and chalk up the results (whether positive or negative) to experience. All experience is positive depending on your perspective.

Stay Focused!

Maintain focus on what you love to do and time will fly. As it passes, your experience will grow. Also,stay organized! As you take on more and more gigs, you’ll need to be in order to be successful.

Any comments on what you’ve done to pave your way as a freelance writer?

Source

Tice, Carol. “The Advice I Wish I’d Had as a New Freelance Writer.”http://www.makealivingwriting.com/best-advice-for-new-freelance-writers/. (January 26, 2015.)

Why Switch to a WordPress Website

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If you’re like the majority of website owners, your greatest hang-ups emerge when it’s time to make any type of update to your site. A section of content on your home page becomes outdated, and suddenly you find yourself at the mercy of your web designer or developer for something as simple as changing a few dates in some text, or swapping out a photo for another.

Not being able to manage the content on your own site is a huge stressor, time-drain, and expense for far too many site owners. Why? Well your options are pretty sparse:

  1. Learn HTML, FTP, and any number of other complicated protocols.
    You’ve entered your line of work for a specific reason: it’s what you wanted to do! Putting up a website is a necessary evil in achieving your actual dream. You don’t have the time or interest in becoming a web designer just so you can do business online.
  2. Hire someone who has gone to school for this stuff. Pay the big bucks for quality!
    It’s all too tempting to be lured into a contract with a web design/development company who promises you the world for just a few hundred dollars, but the fact is when it comes to web design, you will get what you pay for. A high functioning and performing website will cost you upwards of $1000.
  3. Switch to a dynamic, user-friendly platform.
    The learning curve is minimal. The platform is free. Making website updates becomes a matter of a few clicks.

The Fantastic Perks of Switching to WordPress

WordPress is a free content management system that is used worldwide by millions of site owners (it supports more than 60 million websites!), more than any other CMS or similar product. Why are people making the switch to WordPress from their static HTML sites?

  1. Easy peasy updates! WordPress isn’t just for bloggers. It allows you to make updates to content on your standard website pages as well. It’s an uncomplicated way to keep your site info updated and ready for consumption by all your potential customers.
  2. Increased flexibility! With access to hundreds of free and paid plugins and themes, you can customize the look and functionality of your site with ridiculous ease.
  3. Better SEO functions. As opposed to other CMSs, WordPress is predesigned to help you with your search engine optimization strategy. It’s already well positioned to draw in Google traffic.
  4. Easy one-to-one conversions. If you have an existing static site that you need switched over the WordPress, it’s only a matter of a few days and a couple hundred dollars to do it. Often this is a one-to-one conversion, where the WordPress version copies the original in look and functionality as closely as possible.
  5. Ease of programming. If you are making a fresh site from scratch, hiring a designer who is familiar with WordPress will be simple and (depending on the scope of your site) cost-effective, because of WordPress’s popularity.
  6. Awesome integration abilities! WordPress isn’t just the most popular choice for millions of website owners; it’s the number one option for third party software as well, such as email clients that have special features that integrate with WordPress.
  7. Affordability! Your expenses with WordPress are optional. Depending on the themes and plugins you choose, you’ll only be paying for hosting services and domain registration.
  8. Support and resources. There are countless resources out there that offer WordPress support and help, including tutorials and forums, whenever the need arises. It has an excellent community that proves to be an invaluable asset as a WordPress site owner.

The Only Reason Not to Make the Switch

You are utterly and completely happy with your website’s look, functionality, and the ease with which you can make even the simplest of updates. Oh yeah? Lucky you! If that’s the case, I wouldn’t recommend switching to WordPress. However, if you’re only kidding yourself, maybe now’s the time to admit it and jump on board.

What’s your biggest pet peeve about your site?

Sources

Padovani, Stephanie. “7 Reasons You Should Switch to WordPress.”http://www.bookmorebrides.com/7-reasons-you-should-switch-to-wordpress/. (September 5, 2014.)

5 Common SEO Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making

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Successful website auditor Alan Schill recently wrote on areas of SEO that he’s noticed the majority of website owners neglecting to their own detriment. These are low-hanging fruits that you may even be ignoring as you strategize ways to optimize your site for the search engines. Take a look.

1. How heavily do you pepper your content with keywords?

Keyword stuffing is an archaic SEO trick that people still fall back on out of habit. It’s only a matter of time before Google penalizes these sites for being spammy. Google’s goal will forever be to favor high-quality websites over the ones that try to take the back door to the top of the rankings. If your website is about lawn care and you strive to populate your blog with lawn care related how-tos as well as stay on topic in all your other web copy, your keywords will appear naturally throughout your text. The result will be a website that looks natural to Google while relevant and informative to your guests.

2. Are your blog images at the top of your posts?

Because people like visual aids, blogs do better when there are images attached to them. And they do even better when those images are at the top of the post, not sprinkled around in the middle. Don’t neglect this simple technique to draw the eyes of your visitors to your posts.

3. Who’s Your Audience—Google or Your Web Visitor?

This one ties in perfectly with question #1. Think about it: why would an SEO professional write content for the search engine instead of the visitor? To game the search engines and get to the top of the rankings, of course. Why would they want to do that? Well, to make a pay check, because unless that SEO has stock in the company they’re SEOing for, they may not care what happens after the target audience clicks on the link. This should bother you. This should bother you a lot.

Remember, Google doesn’t like to be played and every algorithm change is designed to make it more and more difficult to play them. Your objective should be to educate your target audience and offer them valuable content and products. Do this, write for them, and you will begin to see conversions in the areas that matter—sales.

4. Are you linking to websites that Google likes?

If you’re making an effort to create a high quality site, don’t waste your outbound links on sites that Google would view as spammy or low quality. Your site is better than that and you don’t want to be tainted by association. It’s considered good practice to link out to at least one respected website per piece of content on your site. Links to sources count.

5. Are you interlinking between blog posts?

If you’re writing content relevant to your industry and target audience, your blog topics are going to relate and you will have plenty of opportunities to interlink between them. This gives an SEO boost to newly created pages, lowers bounce rates by keeping your readers exploring between pages, and increases the chances that those visitors will convert.If you haven’t done this, it’s not too late to go back to your old posts and find which ones flow naturally into each other.

What now?

How many of these errors sound familiar? Hopefully we’ve given you a good start on critically analyzing your current SEO methods and beginning the process of improvement. Good luck!

Source
Schill, Alan. “SEO 101: 18 Search Rankings & Engagement Factors You Can’t Ignore.”http://www.searchenginejournal.com/18-search-rankings-engagement-factors-you-cant-ignore/119638/. November 21, 2014.

3 SEO Truths All SEO Managers Should Remember

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SEO managers know that you can never get too comfortable. They’re a jumpy sort, hanging on Google’s every word and continuously adapting to ever-updating algorithm changes. It’s a lot of pressure, but in the midst of all the uncertainty, there are three universal truths that every SEO should remember as they continue plowing toward that number one spot in the rankings.

First, Mismanaged Expectations Will Ruin You
The first priority of any decent SEO professional should be to educate their client. There are so many definitions of SEO out there that depending on which one your client subscribes to, they’re either going to be thrilled with your services or deeply dissatisfied—and with the same results!

For example, a client may see increased organic traffic and subsequent leads, but they’re still upset because they expected more based on the amount of money they put into you. In this scenario, you may have succeeded by your estimation, but in the client’s eyes, you failed based on the expectations you failed to clarify. And if the client thinks you failed, you failed.

So how is this frustrating and potentially costly scenario avoided?

  1. Make sure you evaluate the data closely and set realistic numerical goals. If your client doesn’t have past data to scrutinize, draw on your experience with customers that have a similar profile. This will provide a baseline for your customer to latch onto, which they certainly will do. Remember that they will latch onto whatever estimated number you give them.
  2. Prepare education material for your customer at every level of the SEO process.
  3. Determine what’s most important to the client and report on that, and when you provide them with data, it’s absolutely critical that they understand what they’re looking at. That will depend on how well you’ve educated them.

Second, Resource Constraints are the Bane of an SEO’s Existence
Resource constraints can ruin an SEO endeavor, especially as you consider how many different departments factor into completing SEO initiatives: web dev, content, lead gen, social media, and more. If your budgets are limited in any of these, SEO-targeted projects can be road-blocked at multiple stages.

Techniques to avoid resource-related roadblocks:

  1. Inform yourself of the possible resource constraints ahead of time. Become familiar with the liberties and restrictions your client will have on those necessary departments, and how much access you will have to them too.
  2. You’re also going to have to make a list of priorities to follow to the letter. You and your client are a part of the creation of this list, discussing budget in relation to their needs and goals will help you determine which item should take priority over the rest and which should be put on hold until resources allow.
  3. Depending on your own resources, you may have some of the manpower to take much of the delegation aspect of SEO off of your client’s shoulders. In fact, that may be why they chose you as their SEO solution.

Third, Not Being Prepared for the Unexpected Will Hurt—A Lot

This just has to do with personnel changes, which happens frequently in our industry. When you lose clients for any number of reasons, here’s what you can do to salvage benefits from those relationships:

  1. End on the best note possible. Provide the info they need to transition to their new arrangement and request referrals if possible.
  2. Stay in touch too. In this highly connected world, there’s no reason not to stay connected over social networks.
  3. It will be hard not to take it personally when a client departs, but don’t. Learn what you can from the relationship and use what you’ve learned to perfect the next to come.

What have been the biggest roadblocks or lessons that you faced and learned as an SEO manager?

Source

Gillette, Casie. “3 Common Challenges Facing All SEO Managers.” http://searchengineland.com/3-common-challenges-facing-seo-managers-209308?utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=scap&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonv6TOZKXonjHpfsX97uwrXaS%2FlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ATcdkM6%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7fHK816y9AQWxXm. (November 26, 2014.)

Why Freelancing is Great for Stay-at-Home Parents

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The allure of freelancing is generally freedom, right? You get to set your schedule, handpick your projects, and work from anywhere with an Internet connection. The world is your oyster! As a parent, these same benefits can come in especially handy when you’re juggling the rigmarole of child-rearing with the tedium of income-earning.

As you’re fine-tuning your freelancing game plan, here are a few other benefits you may not have even considered yet.

Perks of Freelancing for Parents!

  1. Keeps you sharp
  2. Breaks up the monotony
  3. Great writing practice for larger goals
  4. Creates a versatile and prolific portfolio

Stay Mentally Fit

Many mothers, and even fathers, who spend the bulk of their days alone with the kids struggle with what has been termed “mommy brain.” Even daddies can develop “mommy brain” if they’re the ones assuming the stay-at-home parenting role. There’s more to “mommy brain” than simply the changes your mind and body undergo when there’s a human developing inside of it. It has to do with lack of mental stimulus that can occur when you’re interacting regularly with infant and toddler-aged lifeforms. You’re not exactly being challenged mentally and before you know it, you’ve been reduced to their level.

Freelancing gives you a way to work out your articulation skills as well as your vocabulary. It also gives you an outlet for goal setting and the reward of reaching those goals.

Do Away With Monotony

Depending on your portfolio, areas of specialty, and interests, your freelancing projects are going to be varied and diverse, giving you an exciting outlet for your creativity. You will also begin to make connections with other like-minded professionals as you network and join forums and groups. This will give you a sense of community and social interaction that you will often have to do without during long stretches of time as a stay-at-home parent.

Beginner Steps

Many writers and authors start out with freelancing as they work on their larger goals of authorship or screenwriting. What this does is give you the chance to hone your craft. Words are your tool and how well you wield it depends entirely on the amount of practice you’ve had with it. Write, write, write, and your big writing dreams will become more and more attainable as your skills grow to match them.

You’re a parent now, and that may have been one of your dreams as well, but you don’t have to accept that it must be your only dream.

Build that Awesome Portfolio

Be flexible in the projects you take on. The highest paying may not be the most enjoyable, but you’ll need to take them on to keep bread on the table, but throw in some varied gigs that will excite and entertain you. Not only will this flesh out your portfolio, but it will give you something to look forward to or distract yourself with when you require a break from those harder, less enjoyable projects.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s a great boon to parents to have creative and productive outlets away from the task of parenthood. Many have found that to split their time gives them more satisfaction in the professional world as well as the domestic. You will all-around be a better mother or father as well as a better freelance writer. Enjoy!

We’d love to hear how you’ve handled freelancing and parenthood. How has it been the most satisfying or frustrating? Share in the comments!

Source

Carpenter, Courtney. “Balancing Motherhood with Writing: The Benefits of Freelancing.” http://www.writersdigest.com/tip-of-the-day/balancing-motherwood-with-writing-the-benefits-of-freelancing. (February 6, 2015.)