Savvy Writing Careers Has Moved to Better Serve Creative, Freelance and Ghost Writers

Savvy Writing Careers has moved to its own self-hosted website.

I felt the move was necessary because I wanted to do more with this blog. I wanted to provide more resources for creative, freelance and ghost writers than I could provide in the past. Now that Savvy Writing Careers is on its own server, I can better help aspiring and experienced creative, freelance and ghost writers reach their goals.

I’m in the process of updating the website. I look forward to seeing everyone at Savvy Writing Careers.com! Stay tuned…

Amandah

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How to Solve the Five Challenges Freelance Writers Face When They Guest Post

Image via Wikipedia

As you may know, guest blogging for websites can drive traffic to your website and showcase your freelance writing talent. It offers you the chance to share your experience with others and help solve a problem. Freelance writers receive other benefits such as having their bios at the beginning or end of their posts. Here are a few questions to consider:

• What happens when you bio becomes outdated?
• What happens when you get married and take your partner’s name as your last name?
• What if you decide to completely change your name?
• How about changing your domain name?
• What if you stopped being a freelance writer?

Change happens and freelance writers have to think about this when they become a guest blogger or article writer.

1. Typos. Even the most experienced freelance writers experience the dreaded typo. Whether you find them in the latest Best-Selling novel by your favorite author or a blog post, they happen. If you’re lucky, a reader will notify you via email that your post has a typo. Thank the reader via email for discovering the typo then email the web master of the site where you published your guest post. It’s up to them if they want to fix it.

2. Outdated bio. Freelance writers are no strangers to change. Most begin guest posting as a way to build writing portfolios. After a few months or years, chances are bios become outdated. If you have the contact information for the web owner, you may want to contact them with your updated information. If you don’t have their contact information or it has changed, at least you still have your clips.

3. Name change. Freelance writers who get married may decide to take their partner’s last name. Don’t despair. Do you know how many actors, actresses and best-selling authors have changed their names or use a stage/pen name? There’s too many to list! When you inquire about guest posting for a website, let the owner know you were ‘formerly known as’ and give them your new name. It’s not a big deal.

4. Domain name change. It happens. People get bored with their domain name or think of a better one. Hopefully, the owner forwards the old site to the new site which can list previous blog posts or articles. If not, you have your clips.

5. The website is no longer available. People start and discontinue blogs/websites for various reasons. Think about this before agreeing to guest post. Keep copies of your ‘guest blog posts and articles’ and use them as clips when you pitch and query companies and publications.

Amandah

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Four Simple Things You Can Do Today to Get In Front of More People & Claim That Expertise!

“Presence is more than just being there.” ~ Malcolm S. Forbes

Here’s another guest post from Katy Tafoya is teacher and a coach who finds joy in helping women claim their passion and expertise. She guides solopreneurs to make their lives and their businesses juicier, more fulfilling and more successful. She also leads the Val Gal quarterly networking dinners which are always open to the public and in the greater San Fernando Valley. If you’re ready to identify, claim and leverage your expertise and live your passion you can sign up for a a F.R.E.E. subscription to her weekly ezine at SuccessForSolpreneurs.com.

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE? See Katy’s blog at SuccessforSolopreneurs.com/blog.

When was the last time someone contacted you completely out of the blue? When did someone you’ve never personally met before tell you that they’d love to work with you, or interview you, or even create a JV (joint venture) relationship with you?

Better yet, when was the last time you Googled yourself?

I ask about Googling yourself because if you don’t like what you see when you look at the information attached to your name, how will others like it? And why would they bother to reach out to you?

Whether you like it or not, we all develop relationships with those we know, like and trust.  And all the information that is out there on the Internet attached to you and your business builds up that knowable, likeable, trustable factor (yes, I know that trustable isn’t a real word).

In fact, when you have control over what is being said about you and your business, your message, it opens the doors to so many new opportunities (like people coming out of the seeming woodwork who want to work with you).

Here are four simple things you can do today to get started taking control of your online presence…

• Join those social networks. You don’t need to be active (except on the ones where your clients and colleagues spend their time), but you do need to have an account. The more the merrier.
• Fill out those profiles. When you join the various social networks, make sure you fill out your profile completely…add a photo, link to your site, import your blog. It’s all great fodder for the search engines and that’s what you want.
• Spread the word.  When you read something you like, share it, “like” it; give it a +1 or a retweet. Tell your friends. Tell your community. Do what you have to do to spread the word…in doing so, others will also spread YOUR word. And the more you share, the more it shows your shares (especially with Google +) in Google search results.
• Leave Comments. The more comments you leave (make sure you provide website URL when doing so, but only where it’s asked for) the more links you have that point back to your website. Which again, means the more search results that come up for your website or your name.

And of course…the great and positive side effect from having that strong online presence is that it really helps to demonstrate that you are the expert and the authority. And as an expert in your field, your community looks to you for advice and for resources.

That’s a pretty powerful place to be. So get out there and get busy!

ACTION PLAN: Google yourself today. Devise a strategy to get more relevant search results using any or all of the ideas mentioned above.

I hope you enjoyed this guest post. I find Katy’s articles to be useful to creative, freelance and ghost writers. After all, we are solopreneurs!

Amandah

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SEO Made Easy: Freelance Writers I like Yoast and You Will Too

Image via Wikipedia

I recently discovered Yoast while working on my creative and humorous website, Daily Family Antics. I thought I knew SEO and considered myself informed about the subject. However, I was wrong. I should have known that there’s always room for improvement. After working with Yoast, I quickly realized I needed to refine my SEO skills. Thank goodness Yoast is a great teacher.

What I Learned about SEO

As I was working with Yoast, I discovered that ‘permalink’ is the same thing as slug. I always allowed WordPress to choose my permalink; however, by working with Yoast, I discovered that it’s a good idea to change it to something shorter. Of course, it’s important to have your ‘main’ keyword or keywords in the slug.

As I continued working with Yoast, I discovered stopwords. I had no idea what these were and didn’t realize that search engines take them away anyway. If you use WordPress.org, you may want to download the SEO Slugs Plugin or some other slug plugin.

SEO Made Easy: Freelance Writers I like Yoast and You Will Too

1. Download Yoast, upload it to your plugins folder, and activate the plugin. It’s easy to do.

2. Freelance writers, Yoast gives you ‘thumbs up,’ warning, and okay symbols for various aspects of your post.

3. Yoast will force you to learn and strengthen your SEO skills. If your title is ‘lacking’ one or more of your keywords, the program alerts you. Furthermore, the program alerts you if you don’t have your keyword(s) in the first paragraph. It’s up to you to write a better title and introduction.

4. Freelance writers; your writing skills will improve. It’s important to provide quality ‘optimized’ content. Don’t stuff your posts or articles with keywords because search engines frown upon this.

5. You’ll develop a better understand of SEO copywriting. Freelance writers interested in gaining new ‘web content writing’ projects will be benefit from working with Yoast. New freelance writers will develop their SEO copywriting skills and attract clients.

6. If you verified your website with Google, Bing or Alexa, you can enter the ‘meta’ code in the Webmaster Tools area. Note: this is a good reminder if you haven’t already verified your website.

7. Yoast offers an introduction tour to teach you about the program. Take a few minutes and take the tour.

It’s important to write for people first but SEO can’t be ignored. Google keeps making changes to how it will scan data and connect its users. Provide quality content but incorporate SEO within blog posts, articles and web pages. Stay away from Black Hat SEO because you can optimize your writing without resorting to ‘dirty’ tactics.

Amandah

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How to Write Your Writer’s Personal Statement in 3 Easy Steps

I read Writer’s Digest article 6 SIMPLE WAYS TO REBOOT YOUR WRITING ROUTINE and step #1 was to create an artist statement. I never thought about this before. I Googled ‘personal artist statement’ and was surprised by the amount of links that came up. Some articles specifically stated that artists are not writers. I disagree. I consider writing a form of art.

What is an artist’s personal statement?  It’s basically a short paragraph about the artist to accompany a painting, sculpture, groups of paintings or sculptures, or other works-of-art. Obviously, a writer’s personal statement would be a short paragraph about you, the writer, and your writings.

If a writer solely focuses on how much money they’ll earn or how much fame they’ll receive from publishing a book, they’ll probably become unfulfilled.

How to Write Your Writer’s Personal Statement in 3 Easy Steps

1. Keep your writer’s personal statement around 100 words.

2. Your writer’s personal statement could describe the genre(s) you write along with your style and tone. Consider naming authors/writers that you admire or have inspired your creative, freelance and ghost writing career. You can mention your education and other credentials too.

3. Think about the journalistic questions what, how, and why and answer the following questions:

• Why do you write?
• Why do you write what you write?
• Why does it matter that you write?
• Why do you put the time and effort into writing?
• What are you trying to convey to readers through your writing?
• What do you want your writing legacy to be?
• How did you become a writer?

Use the above steps as a guideline to create your writer’s personal statement. If you wrote a writer’s personal statement last year, find and read it. Does your statement still apply? Have you grown as a writer? Are you still writing in the same genre(s)? Are you still freelance writing? If your writer’s personal statement no longer applies, write a new one and hang it up in your home office.

Amandah

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What’s the Word: Creating a Theme For the New Year

This post is from Katy Tafoya, a teacher and a coach who finds joy in helping women claim their passion and expertise. She guides solopreneurs to make their lives and their businesses juicier, more fulfilling and more successful. She also leads the Val Gal quarterly networking dinners which are always open to the public and in the greater San Fernando Valley. If you’re ready to identify, claim and leverage your expertise and live your passion you can sign up for a a F.R.E.E. subscription to her weekly ezine at SuccessForSolpreneurs.com.

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE? See Katy’s blog at SuccessforSolopreneurs.com/blog

“I’m a woman of very few words, but lots of action.” ~ Mae West

Happy New Year!

No, really, my wish for you is that this year you will discover and experience your HAPPY new year. So now that we’re a couple days in, how are things shaping up for you?

Have you made those resolutions? I’m not one for making resolutions myself. Like many folks out there, I found that I made these promises and within days, I’ve broken then. And then I feel crappy, like a failure for not being able to follow through.

So instead, I like to focus on setting an intention or a theme for the year. Following my mentor, Christine Kane’s advice, I choose a word (any word or short phrase) that can become the theme for my year. For example, in the past I’ve used, “let go,” “create,” and one year, “giggle.” I know others have used joy, love, peace, strength, bold, etc. The word can be anything that resonates with you, inspires you, makes you smile or motivates you.

I’ve noticed that for me, the word that I start the year with and the word that I end the year with, are not always the very same word. Take last year for an example…I started the year with “create.” My intention was to spend the year not only creating new products, new services and new business, but I also wanted to remind myself to BE more creative. I wanted to get out there and embrace my inner artist.

Well, about mid-way through the year, my word changed to “imperfection” (which I’ve no doubt you noticed as I wrote about it all the time). I realized that I couldn’t be very creative if I was always striving for perfection.

So to allow more creativity and moments of actual creation, I had to learn to allow imperfection. I had to just do it, and not stress how perfect it turned out. In my mind, it was better to have something out there imperfectly, than to have nothing out there at all because I was still stuck on making sure everything was perfect. This opened the world up for me. In fact, it brought me to this year’s word…expand.

This year I want to expand — my life, my relationships, my products and services, my presence and my business as a whole. I want to be BIGGER and BOLDER. I want to be more audacious and more approachable. I want to be the me I know I was put here to be.

At the same time though, I want to it to be easy and effortless. I mean why make it difficult, right? Which then brought me to the phrase — effortless expansion. This year will be the year for effortless expansion.

Will I change it up mid-way again? Quite possibly. It really all depends how things go and expand. Either way, I’m open to whatever sort of “expansion” the new year brings my way.

I encourage you to find a word that empowers you, brings you joy, has you feeling focused and in charge. It can be a short phrase. It’s not carved in stone, so don’t stress over this.

Get silent and see what comes to you. Then put that word up somewhere where you can see it throughout the day. Let it inspire you. Let it BE you. Then remember to live your life….with intention. And if all else fails, there’s always the 2012 Resolution Generator.

I’d love to know what your word or short phrase is for this year. Feel free to respond back to this newsletter or send me an email.

ACTION PLAN: Pick a word for your year and try it on for size. When it feels right, embrace it! 

I invite you to share a little about who you are, what you do and your successes as solopreneur by joining the conversation at the Success for Solopreneurs community.

I hope you enjoyed Katy’s post!
Amandah

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Wednesday’s Creative Writing Prompt: Freelance Writers and Technology

Since I’ve been having nothing but issues with my laptop, I’d thought I’d post a creative writing prompt based on freelance writers and technology.

Wednesday’s Creative Writing Prompt: Freelance Writers and Technology

It’s 5 pm on a Friday and you decided to backup your website’s files. The FTP program from your hosting company isn’t working. Write the dialogue between you and the their lovely tech support.

You work on a laptop and dream about getting a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Write the dialogue between you and an Apple customer service representative.

It’s 5 pm Friday and you’re almost finished with the five blog posts for your freelance writing client. Uh oh! Your lovely cable connection drops because of a power outage. How will you get the posts to your client? Write the dialogue between you and your client.

Amandah

Monday’s Creative Writing Prompt Based on 2012

Happy New Year! It’s 2012, and according to the Mayans, it should be one heck of a year. I’m kidding. Who knows what happened to the Mayans and why they couldn’t finish their calendars. Anyway … Here’s a writing prompt based on 2012 and all of the whacky and perhaps not-so-whacky predictions.

Monday’s Creative Writing Prompt Based on 2012

You’re given psychic powers and can see what will happen in 2012, write a story based on your vision.

A Mayan shaman appears before you and says he has important information to share with you, what is it?

You’re outside one night gazing at the stars. All of the sudden you see flashing lights in the sky and a whiling motion. Did you see a UFO? If so, what does it look like? Write about your experience.

What predictions would you write for 2012?

Amandah

Creative and Freelance Writers Beat the Winter and Solitary Blues in 7 Easy Steps

Have you heard of seasonal depression or the winter blues? Freelance writers, if you live in a cold, gray, snow, or rainy part of the U.S. or an area of your country of origin that’s not sunny and warm, you may suffer from seasonal depression. Also, you may get depressed or crabby from time-to-time because you work alone. This is normal and treatable.

Some freelance writers prefer the solitary life while others are very sociable creatures. If you fall into the latter category, you probably like to be surrounded by people and may become irritable if you constantly stay indoors. There’s no need to be blue about writing alone, you just require the knowledge and tools to free yourself from the grips of writer’s depression.

Creative and Freelance Writers Beat the Winter and Solitary Blues in 7 Easy Steps

1. Decorate your home office with colorful artwork or homemade art from your kids.

2. Hire a Feng Shui expert to design your home office.

3. Place fresh flowers in vases or put plants in your office.

4. Get a pet that you can easily manage.

5. Get out! Freelance writers; meet with clients face-to-face once or twice a month. Creative writers may want join a coffee group or visit your local library to see what classes they offer. Also, go to the beach, park, or walk around your neighborhood.

6. Become a volunteer at your favorite charitable organization.

7. Take up a hobby like painting, pottery, drawing, model airplanes, or whatever interests you.

It’s true that writing can be a lonely profession, but you can join writer’s groups or attend weekly or monthly book clubs. Let’s face it; staring at the same four walls every day could slowly drive you insane! Seriously, working by yourself could get to you if you let it.

Creative and freelance writing does not have to be a depressing career. You could listen to music while you write. Also, don’t allow the solitude of writing choke you. Make sure you’re involved in activities other than writing such as working art, painting, yoga, dance, etc. It’s good to branch out of your comfort zone and try something new.

You can overcome the winter and solitary blues. So … Before you do something drastic like quit writing, find something else that you’re passionate about and do it. Creative and freelance writing doesn’t have to be a gloomy profession. You don’t have to be the stereotypical depressed artist. There’s a bright side to your profession, you just have to find and appreciate it!

Amandah

Freelance Writers Use This Simple 5 Step Laptop Maintenance Plan

Freelance writers, do you work on a Mac or PC? What’s your backup plan? My laptop has been acting up lately. It gets stuck when it goes into sleep mode and sometimes Windows takes a long time to boot. My laptop is four years old, but I was expecting it to last a little longer than that! I’ve been trying to ‘diagnose’ the issue, but I can’t be certain if it’s the CPU, hard drive, motherboard, Windows Vista operating system, or RAM. Who knows? I’m a writer, not a computer technician!

Freelance Writers Use This Simple 5 Step Laptop Maintenance Plan

1. Always backup your files. Choose a day during the week or month and backup up your computer system. You can also purchase an online backup system or purchase an external hard drive and backup your files.

2. Clean your laptop. Keep your laptop clean by cleaning it. I know it’s a ‘no brainer’ but you’d be surprises how many people own laptops but don’t take care of them. Use non-abrasive cleaners on laptop and it will look good as new.

3. Delete old files. Clean your system by deleting old files. When in doubt, transfer files to a USB or external hard drive and then delete them from your computer’s system.

4. Use a good surge protector. It’s important to protect your laptop or MacBook Pro from power outages. Purchase a heavy duty surge protector and make sure your outlets are up to code.

5. Defrag and cleanup your disk. If you’re not a techie or that computer savvy, have someone else do this for you. Locate your ‘My Computer’ on your laptop and open it. Find ‘Properties’ and right click on it. This brings up a menu. Select ‘Disk Cleanup‘ and allow your laptop to work its magic. If you feel comfortable with ‘moving’ around your computer, check out Tools and check for errors, Defrag your system, and Backup your files.

Amandah

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