Archive for freelance writing
Fops, Dandies, and Luvvies – How to Become a Writer
Posted by: | CommentsOn Shadesbreath’s excellent Hub,HubPages Sucks, an interesting conversation developed, a lament of times gone by; the days when everybody knew what a writer was and exactly what a writer did. Writers locked themselves in rooms whilst fearful servants passed food under the door, fearing to incur the wrath of an artist dancing with Muses, in an unbridled outburst of creative genius and passion. Everybody was perfectly happy with this except, of course, the writers themselves, who tended to starve and develop an unhealthy, corpselike pallor. Sadly, adulation does not fill a plate or fix the leaking roof, so writers used the emancipated frame and hacking cough as emblems of honour and identity.
It was a good whinge about the old days, buried long ago in prehistory, where everyone knew their place in the grand scheme and writers could adopt an expression of smug superiority. Like Waldorf and Statler, we sat on the balcony of Hubpages, two old men moaning and complaining just because we could. Beneath the puerile banter, about wasps, funerals, and dinosaurs, lay a serious tone, of two men floating adrift and questioning their very identity and purpose. What is a writer? Are we in danger of extinction?
A Writer – The Tamer of Words
Before we embark upon this tortuous journey through the inane ramblings of an old luvvie trying to explain how to become a writer, I will point out that this is one ouzo-pickled hippy’s opinion. If you think differently, then the balcony is over there; feel free to jeer the unfolding shambles on the stage and shower your abuse on the unrehearsed chaos.
A writer understands words; more exactly, a writer knows the power of words and has mastered the ancient techniques needed to use and manipulate them. Mass communication and the internet have seen an increase and proliferation of words, and an unimaginable amount of information is available to those who care to use this interweb and risk paralysis from the bite of the Google Spider.
Anybody can sit down and type ‘words’; anyone can use a word processor and lay down thoughts, easily and without ceremony. Writing words is easier than ever before, giving the opportunity to create, to communicate, and to bore. The amount of words has increased, but there is no more grist to talk about than in the halcyon days of the Bard; thus, many of these words are, quite simply, empty noise.
To me, a writer is someone who does not just see words as tools for communicating the maelstrom of thoughts swirling in their head. To a writer, words are alive, wild beasts to be captured and tamed before an adoring audience. Language is a thing to be moulded like a lump of raw clay, shaped into art and self-expression. Words can be joined together, flowing streams with subtle meanings and depths meandering through your emotions and nurturing your soul. In the hands of a master, words can entice, emote, and amuse.
The Greek Tragedy
Behind a writer lie the clichéd tears of the clown, and most of us are vain Pierrots with frail egos, like the old actor on stage wearing another personality, or an illusionist with only smoke and mirrors to create the illusion. A writer understands emotion and holds up a mirror, making you question your own psyche and unlock the dreams within.
Every time a writer lays words on the virgin page, they also bare a little more of their own soul, revealing their secret and inner self. Words are wild and dangerous beasts that can be used to tear egos apart and bare the intangible soul, but they can also turn on the lion-tamer and leave him bleeding and torn, a shambolic wreck consumed by the tendrils of dark thought.
How to Become a Writer – The Method Actor
I have seen people shape words, and their excellent grasp of technicalities and style allows clear and concise communication. However, some lack the passion and the ability to create the scene and draw the audience in. A fine actor knows how to draw people in with a whisper and then drive them away with a bellow of raw emotion, counting the audience as an integral part of the story. A writer can use voice, rhythm, and flow to make you feel both joy and pain, to take you from elation to despair in a single sentence.
On the other extreme, I have seen people pour their passions onto the page, a torrent of sheer, unbridled emotion. These are invariably wonderful to read, but a writer needs finesse and technique to restrain the flow, an ability to bring down the curtain between scenes. A humble comma, the unsung hero of the English language, can lift work from the good into the truly sublime.
The Mind of the Writer – The Cabinet Makers and the Sculptors
In the old days, we had two groups of writers; the creative writers and the non-creative writers. Locked in their towers, they used to argue ceaselessly about which of the two was the most talented, a display of pompous, academic arrogance fought amidst the spires of Oxford and the colonial mansions of Hemingway’s Havana. Now these two are united, an unholy alliance cowering behind a shield wall of similes, circled and beset by brooding uncertainty and destructive self-doubt. Besieging our broken heroes are the Keywords with Long Tails and the Search Engine Ogres, seeking to bring down their ivory towers.
The academic and non-fiction writers are cabinet-makers, the craftsmen and women who shape words and create function yet still imbue their work with individuality and style. The creative writers are sculptors, able to craft raw lumber into objects of beauty. Mostly, sculptors and craftspeople are fawning fops and preening dandies, flouncing and posing before the murmuring audience. For a writer, it is not about the money but the single red rose thrown at the feet of the actor, the applause as the crowd shouts for more. A good writer tries to leave an audience bewitched by beguiling prose and lexical panache, entertained and changed by rhythm and style.
How to Become a Writer – From the Shield-Wall to the Bear Pit
So where is this going? Has the hippy finished talking out of his backside? Not quite, if I can impose upon your patience and continue this flow of solipsistic excess verbiage. This is the crux of the matter and the point in the play where tragedy turns to joy, the scene where we employ a Spielbergesque happy ending. For, amidst the proliferation of words on the internet is a glimmer of hope for the beleaguered shield-wall. Maybe, relief for our fops and dandies is nigh, and hidden amonst the empty noise lies a sign of things to come. People are starting to seek out writers; they crave to be entertained, to smell the greasepaint and laugh at the preening pantomime dames.
Instead of Hollywood and plastic fame, audiences crave a return to the old days, when actors trod the boards and faced the audience, like some tired Roman gladiator before a baying crowd. Instead of fleeing from the internet and closing ranks, writers are learning to unleash the power, dancing with the Ogres instead of seeing them as fearsome, snarling beasts trained to rend delicate prose.
Rather than view marketers as implacable foes, we understand that they are allies and friends, a new target for our egotistical arguments and attention-seeking flounces.the crux of the matter and the point in the play where tragedy turns to joy, the scene where we employ a Spielbergesque happy ending. For, amidst the proliferation of words on the internet is a glimmer of hope for the beleaguered shield-wall. Maybe, relief for our fops and dandies is nigh, and hidden amonst the empty noise lies a sign of things to come. People are starting to seek out writers; they crave to be entertained, to smell the greasepaint and laugh at the preening pantomime dames.
How to Become a Writer – The Cast and Crew Milk the Encore
Actors need the crew, working tirelessly behind the scenes, to create the scene and set the tone, their special effects elevating any play into the realms of true fantasy with the audience hushed and beguiled by passionate speech. Likewise, the crew need the actors to bring the dreams to fruition, adding a human emotion to the play and garnishing it with the ancient magic and glamour.
Writers are spiritual vampires, needing the sustenance of adulation and, with the help of technology, can find new audiences to feed their souls. We must embrace this technology and emerge from behind the shield-wall, blinking in the sunlight of modernity and donning the greasepaint of progress. Suddenly, we can again show our undead faces as people seek the secret of how to become a writer.
Pierrot Photo courtesy of MatthiasKabelunder a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 licence
Photo courtesy of vbariteau under aCreative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License
How To Find A Freelance Writer: What To Expect
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For many businesses, setting out to find a freelance writer can be a tough task, especially as the internet is saturated with writers for hire. A search on Google or one of the many freelance hire sites throws long lists after list of writers, all claiming that they are the best fit for the job. How do you go about hiring the best professional freelance writer?
Hire a Writer: A Few Tips
Here are a few useful tips for making sure that you find a skilled writer with the ability to produce great content.
Price: Business is all about finding the best possible product at the lowest possible price, but that does not necessarily mean going for the cheapest option. If you find somebody writing articles for $5 a time, ask yourself why they are offering their services so cheap. Perhaps their language skills are not up to scratch or they intend to plagiarise the work of others.
An experienced, skilled freelance writer, with a good reputation and a proven track record, knows their worth and will price their work accordingly. They are professionals and it is rare to find one working for slave wages.
Samples: A pro writer will be delighted to provide you with a few samples of their work, letting you see if their skill, talent and style suit your particular needs, from web content to academic writing.
Website: Like any online business owner, a professional freelance writer should have a well-designed, informative website, allowing you to see exactly what they have to offer. Writers without websites are not necessarily bad writers, but a good website shows a higher level of professionalism and dedication.
References: A talented writer will be able to provide you with references from previous clients, allowing you to check the quality of their work. Many include testimonials on their website, which is fine, but you should check that any links genuinely lead to clients and are not fabrications. Most pro writers have a list of previous clients who will be delighted to write a reference.
Hire a Professional Writer: Things to Avoid
When you hire a professional writer, there are a few things that you should try to avoid, lest you risk losing a fine writer for avoidable reasons. Some of these bad habits stem from the freelance writing boards, where legions of inexperienced or untalented writers fight for every single position, promoting a culture of expendability.
Writing Samples: Try to avoid asking a writer to draft a sample from scratch, unless it is very short. If you ask a pro writer to write you an example on spec, they will simply smile and move on to the next client. Writers are not in the habit of giving their work away for nothing; there are too many unscrupulous sharks out there who will ask a number of writers for samples and gleefully receive a bundle of work for free.
Writers are not Employees: Try to remember that writer is not your employee but a professional in their own right. Too many people hire a writer and then assume that they are an employee, placing unreasonable demands upon their time, or speaking down to them.
The most common example is clients continually changing the job specifications and extracting more and more work for the agreed price. Another common issue is the tone you take with your writer; all writers have had a nightmare client who treats them with condescension and veiled insults. Your writer is a trained, experienced professional and should be treated as such.
Payment: If you have a batch of work, a writer isn’t going to hand it over and wait for payment; all writers have been stung by clients taking work and disappearing once payment is due. Some writers ask for all of the money upfront, others are happy to take a deposit of 50% and share the risk. For larger assignments, it is common for instalments to be paid once certain milestones are reached.
Communication: Creating a Partnership
The key to working with a freelance writer is communication, because by working together, you can really start to produce some excellent content that will really appeal to your audience. Writers are good at filling in the gaps and producing content based around any information you provide, but they still need some idea of what you actually want.
Some website owners, especially for article marketing and blogs, are happy to give the writer a list of general topics and let them loose. This is a good strategy, but it is unfair to then send the article back demanding umpteen changes because it didn’t fit with exactly what you wanted. Others like to give a structure to the writer and ask them to join it all together, which allows them to concentrate on generating voice and emotion.
Whichever method you use, using a freelance writer for hire is all about creating a working partnership, because a talented writer who knows your specifications is a great asset to your business.
Ultimately, you are paying for the unique voice and style of the writer, because only a few have the skill to imbue copywriting with life and emotion. Whether you want a light, flowing style or an informative tone, a good writer can use language to lure in the audience and convey your message.
Hopefully, this has helped you in your quest to find a writer. Feel free to contact me for a free discussion.
Keyboard Picture: Felipe Micaroni Lalli under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license
Freelance Copywriting: The Importance of Voice
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Many online businesses fail to see why they should pay for freelance copywriting, believing that it is an unnecessary cost. They try to write their own copy or scour the freelance writing sites in an attempt to find cheap labor. They don’t realize that this can actually harm business, potentially jeopardizing all the hard work they put into designing and promoting the site.
The problem is that too many organizations are prepared to spend a small fortune on web designers, SEO consultants, and photographers, yet don’t think too much about the content. Instead of treating content as the heart of the website, it somehow becomes relegated to a secondary function, a mere afterthought.
A well-laid out, easy-to-navigate website with good images will create an image of professionalism, like a well-maintained, tidy store. It can certainly catch the eye and entice people to explore further, but it will not encourage them to buy. The way to close the deal is with words, a tried and tested technique that has worked for a few millennia.
Incompetent Employees and the Empty Store
So, why do businesses forget this ancient technique as soon as they move online? Perhaps they become enamored with the whole multi-media/flash animations/Facebook thing: while these are great marketing methods, they cannot stand alone.
Think of it as populating a store with beautiful staff, complete with flashing white teeth, perfect tans, and designer shirts: this won’t work if they are completely devoid of personality. If a potential customer asks a question only to find that the employees aren’t particularly blessed with brains, they will go elsewhere. It is the same online: you need to use words to sell, ideally well-chosen words from somebody who is knowledgeable, engaging, and interesting.
Connecting With Words: The Gift of the Freelance Writer
This is one of the keys to good freelance copywriting, as an experienced professional writer knows how to connect with people. There are a few techniques for keeping readers interested, but the common thread uniting them all is the ‘writer’s voice.’ This is a fundamental principle that is very simple to understand yet very hard to practice.
Ideally, a writer’s language should resemble how they would sound if they were speaking to the person. Try reading this passage out aloud (as long as you are not in public), and it is pretty much how I sound in real life: a slightly pompous Englishman. In fact, many writers, when they read, actually hear a little voice in their head reciting the words aloud. That is why TYPING IN ALL CAPS is a bad thing, because it actually gives some of us a headache!
A good writer can not only write how they speak, but can adapt their voice; if they were writing to an audience of grizzled building contractors, they would use a completely different voice than if they were copywriting for a site frequented by gaming geeks. That is what a good copywriter can do – they can make your site a welcoming place, greeting customers with a little human warmth, explaining exactly what your business can do for them.
The Joy of Freelance Copywriting
Of course, that is only one part of the equation, because a good copywriter can also create content that attracts search engine bots as well as human readers. Your marketing department will love you if you hire a pro copywriter, because this will make their life much easier.
Anyway, that is the end of these musings – I hope that you didn’t get too lost in the rambling. As you are at the end of the page, I must have done something right, so here is the link to the main site where you are free to contact me for a no obligation discussion. Thanks for visiting and I hope to see you soon.
Image: “Raven Releasing the Sun”, by Todd Baker
Professional Writers For Hire: Adapting To The Panda Algorithm
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The recent Google Panda algorithm changes threw the internet world into turmoil, as webmasters, marketers and content writers frantically tried to make sense of the new rankings. For many professional writers for hire, copywriting work dried up, because website owners were reluctant to spend money until they understood more about the update.
Now that things are settling down, most webmasters are refreshing their websites as they look to modify content and consolidate. Content writers are once again finding work, so it is useful to look at how copywriting has changed in the post-Panda world.
Freelance Copywriters and Google Panda
Creating backlinks and traditional marketing are still important, but that is for the marketers and internet experts to discuss. From the viewpoint of a writer, I have noticed that a few things have changed, observations based upon my own experimentation and feedback/specifications from clients.
Death of the Content Farms:
Content farms such as Hubpages, Wisegeek and Ezine have taken a huge hit. It appears that Google is increasingly looking for sites built around specific niches rather than sprawling, spam-filled submission sites. Content farms still have a place, as a useful place for article marketing strategies, but they are not worth spending much time on for generating income.
Of course, if you already have a well-developed site built around a specific topic, you should benefit from clearer SERPs without the usual suspects occupying the top spots. However, Google has admitted that there are problems with scraped and duplicated sites outranking the original, an issue that they have promised to address.
For this reason, there is no harm in checking your work, making sure that it hasn’t been stolen, and slapping DMCA orders on any offenders. Your legal department or your copywriter should be able to help you with this.
Good Quality Writing:
This isn’t really a change, as good quality writing is always crucial to running a website and converting potential leads into sales. Google is trying to punish duplicate content, so the days of building an affiliate site and populating it with generic product descriptions from the manufacturer are over; you need to write unique descriptions. This also applies to quotes in general: Rupert Murdoch is able to get away with syndicated content spread across different sites, but you will be sent to the sandbox. It is better to paraphrase than use large block quotes.
Whilst I doubt that Google can directly assess the quality of writing without human intervention, it does use some indirect methods. In addition, with a greater emphasis on social sites and marketing, you want compelling copy that people will share and like, rather than keyword stuffed searchbot magnets.
Longer Articles:
For a while, most writers and marketers have started regarding 400 words as a minimum, rather than the traditional 250 word blog posts and sales pitches. There is no harm in adopting the new standard, possibly working back and seeing if you can lengthen any existing articles.
Bad Content:
As the content farms are finding out, bad content drags down your good content, because pages no longer standalone. If you have a lot of bad content on your site, it will need to be removed or reworked. However, try not to make things worse; if areas of your site have good backlinks pointing towards them, deleting them could be harmful, so it is better to rewrite and improve. If you source content from a lot of contributors or guest bloggers, you may want to make sure that they genuinely produce high quality, unique content.
Keywords:
Keywords and on-page SEO are still important, so you should make sure that you provide your content writer with a few good long-tailed terms. The search results also show that keyword-rich domain names have increased in importance, so that is another factor to throw into the mix if you run a portfolio of sites.
Hiring a Writer to Keep Up With the Changing Internet Landscape
So, these are a few of the observations from the viewpoint of a writer rather than an internet marketer or SEO consultant. It isn’t only the marketing folks that have had to adapt: we professional writers for hire have to keep up with the latest developments.
If you agree or disagree, please feel free to comment, as new information and viewpoints are always welcome in the aftermath of Panda.
Need A Professional Writer For Hire? Contact Martyn Shuttleworth for a Free Consultation.
Google Panda Picture: Search Ranking Optimisation under a Creative Commons Licence.
