When you first set out to market yourself — whether it’s through social networking, publishing, setting up your podcast, or any digital-marketing strategy — it can feel a little bit like you’re shouting into the void.
No, that’s not quite right. It can feel like you’re in a crowded room, trying to strike up a conversation, and nobody realizes you’re talking.
That feeling has slowed the progress of many a freelance digital copywriter. It’s hard to keep at something, when you can’t tell if it’s working. And, when you’re just getting started marketing yourself, it’s going to take a little time to know if it’s working.
Fortunately, there’s a way to speed things up a little… focus on attention and connection.
But first, a little perspective. The internet is a crowded place — it can seem overwhelming — but you don’t need to make an impression on the entire internet. You really just need a small, but growing, circle of people interested in what you do, adjacent to what you do, or who are fans of what you do because they like you.
Building that small, growing group of connections isn’t as hard as you might think. Especially when you look for ways to stand out and get the attention of people you’d like to know, and then, when someone does pay attention to you, capitalize on that by deepening the connection as quickly as possible.
Let’s start with the first part. Getting attention. There are lots of ways you can do that. Here, I want to focus on three that are readily accessible, fairly easy to execute on, and can be genuinely helpful to both your audience and your reputation.
#1) Be Disruptive
On the internet, people tend to do what they know works (because they’ve tried it) or what they see other people doing (because, if other people are doing it, they must have tried it and know it works).
There’s nothing wrong with studying what other people are doing to inform your own marketing methods.
But, also consider how you can be different.
If everyone in your industry is doing email marketing, what if you tried sending postcards by mail?
If everyone is saying LinkedIn is the place to be, what if you tried X?
In both scenarios, you wouldn’t necessarily stop doing the proven things, but by adding something to your marketing mix that’s unexpected, you’re more likely to get attention.
Which do you think will make the more memorable impression — an email pitch or a pitch delivered to someone’s desk in a handwritten envelope? (It’s the second one, if you hadn’t guessed.)
Disruption is a great way to get attention and hold it for a minute. But, like any attention, you need to be sure you’re earning it. For that to be true, your disruptive-marketing efforts can’t be disruptive for the sake of making a splash alone. They also need to be:
- Your audience needs to care about your message.
- Have a purpose behind what you’re doing. If you don’t know what your goal is beyond shaking things up, then you need to give your disruptive approach more thought.
- Part of earning attention is giving something in return. Make sure your audience comes away with more than a pitch — that could simply mean making sure they have a clear connection between what you’re talking about and how it will help their business.
How Mail Can Be Disruptive
If you really want to get the attention of a business you’d love to work with, try this:
- Find the name of the head of marketing.
- Send them a handwritten card introducing yourself as a copywriter. Keep it brief. Highlight your services and key benefits.
- One week later, send another handwritten card with some specific ideas for how you would help them.
- The following three weeks, send handwritten notes each week with your thoughts on things happening in the industry, your basic copywriting philosophy, and the top three things that make you easy to work with.
- Send a final handwritten note asking what they have coming up that needs a copywriter. Be bold and ask if you can work with them on it.
This approach takes a little time. Cost-wise, you have to invest in six cards with envelopes and six stamps — a few bucks.
But, when I’ve done this, it converts more often than not. Give it a try!
Doing the Unexpected
Oatly conducted one of my favorite disruptive-marketing campaigns in recent years.
They used billboards to ask people to sign up to their email newsletter. Billboards! In addition to experiencing 295% growth during the pandemic (not just due to their billboards), they got a ton of free press, because the campaign was so unexpected.
Now, I’m not suggesting you put your writing services up on billboards (although, if you do, please, please tell me about it and how it works).
But, I call this out as an example of thinking far outside the box.
See if you can come up with something totally unexpected and then see how it works.
#2) Consistency Can Move Mountains
If you’re expecting to get tons of attention and interaction from the first thing you post, publish, share, or send… well, you’ll probably end up disappointed.
But, if you keep showing up, eventually more people will notice you. They’ll respond and connect. They’ll share your thoughts and send referrals your way.
A big part of earning attention is cumulative.
Now, showing up again and again is powerful, but you can do one better.
Decide when you’ll show up during the day or during the week and then keep showing up at that same time.
If you’re trying to earn attention and build a following on LinkedIn, decide which days you’ll post and then stick to that schedule. Bonus points if you decide to post at a specific time on each of those days. Even more bonus points if you create a theme for each of your posting days and stick to it. Here’s what it might look like:
- Monday – post at 2:30 pm ET about the best marketing email I received last week and why.
- Thursday – post at 2:30 pm ET with advice about writing better emails.
- Friday – post at 12:00 pm ET with something that mixes business with the personal, like the book I’m reading right now, a picture of my favorite writing spot, or what I’m working toward.
If you’re trying to get more traffic and leads through blogging, the same principle applies. Decide how often you’re going to post and on which days of the week you’ll post. Then stick to it.
If you’re trying to land more work through sending out pitches to potential clients, decide on the number of pitches you’ll send each week and then hit that mark. Every week. You may be thinking, “Pitches aren’t the same as publishing or posting on social media.”
And you’re right about that. When you publish or post on social media, you’re likely to be seen by some of the same people again and again. When you send pitches, you might not be sending them to the same companies over and over again (although that’s a strategy worth trying), but you’ll still build momentum. If you send out 10 pitches a week every week for the next three months, I’ll be surprised if you don’t land at least one project.
#3) Tell More Stories
Another way to gain and hold attention is to tell more stories.
People love stories… as humans, we’re naturally wired to pay attention when we sense the start of a story.
One of the best responses I ever got on LinkedIn was from telling the story of going wedding dress shopping with my daughter. People also responded to my story about having to replace an air conditioning unit because my dog had decided to treat it like a fire hydrant.
Instead of just sharing writing tips, tell a story about when those tips came into play.
Instead of just telling your audience how you can help them get better results, tell them a story of how you helped another client get better results.
Instead of telling someone you have a new service package available, tell the story of how that package came to be.
You get the idea. Whenever you write, think about the stories you have that could help you make your point better… and more memorably.
Stories grab attention and beg for a response.
And speaking of response, attention is only the first step.
Whether you’re being disruptive, amazingly consistent, telling a story, or a combination of all three, make sure you do something with the responses you get.
Don’t Wait to Deepen the Connection
When someone responds to you, it means whatever you did worked. You got their attention.
You put a lot of effort into making that happen, so don’t waste it.
Attention alone isn’t how you build a copywriting business. You need to connect with people, to get to know them better, and to help them get to know you.
To get a return on the work you invested into getting attention, you need to take the next step. Once you have someone’s attention — they’ve responded to you in some way — follow that up with another point of connection.
- Invite them to have a conversation
- Ask them a question
- Share a useful resource
- Give them a compliment
- Make an introduction
Bottom line: Once you have their attention, build on that. Make name recognition (they recognize you in their inbox) and relationship your goal. And remember, not every person you connect with is a potential client. But they may know a potential client they could introduce you to. Or they may simply become a friend.
Whichever they turn out to be, you and your business will be richer for the effort.
