There are almost 31 million small businesses in the United States, and a freelance writer who understands how to serve and communicate with small businesses—and their special needs and restrictions—can open up a whole new world of opportunities, relationships, and steady income.
As a small business owner, advocate, and consultant, someone who has worked on both sides of this equation for over three decades, here are ten tips for working with us.
1. Know that small businesses need writing help (templates, letters, newsletters, website content, blog posts, social media posts, press releases, marketing materials, manuals, books, and more), but we likely don’t know it. How will it help us? How much will it cost? Will it save me time and money and bring in new business?
2. I’ll say it again: 31 million. That translates into an endless stream of potential clients for any one writer. We are not being contacted as often as you’d think by freelancers (rarely, in fact)—and not with compelling offers that speak our language. Fix this and you’re ahead of the minimal proactive competition.
3. We are everywhere, starting with outside your front door and in the personal networks of your family, friends, and colleagues. Visit small businesses in your neighborhood in person. Ask your contacts to make personal connections for you with the small business owners they know. In both cases, start with casual conversations about them, their values and passions, their customers, their business’s needs and quirks.
4. Transition a discussion to offer services with a basic question and provide examples the business owner can relate to. “Is there a project you’ve been putting off because you don’t have time to get around to it? For example, a holiday letter, an employee manual, a series of articles for your website?”
5. Complete one well-defined project for each client—prove your abilities and value small-scale—then build on the results and the budding relationship to suggest more services. Flexibility, performance, and an attitude of service are key for retaining individual clients. Assembling a growing portfolio of regular and satisfied customers who can and do pay on time is key for your reliable income.
6. Small businesses may not have steady work, but they may have additional or future work. With every contact, remind owners of your availability next week or down the road and the range of writing you can offer. Mention adjacent services that may be in your wheelhouse too, such as editing, proofreading, website design, social media, photography, and marketing plans.
7. Also, small businesses may not have lots of work but they usually have lots of contacts—customers, vendors, other small business owners—and they tend to talk, swap ideas, and support each other. Ask for testimonials of your work and for referrals, even introductions, to others they may know who need the same kind of help.
8. Waste not, save everything! Reduce your time (but not your fee) by reusing, recycling, re-tweaking, and repurposing ideas and content for small businesses in different industries, with different customer bases, and in different geographic areas.
9. Small businesses like maximum impact—the most bang for the buck, demonstrable results, more customers, and growth. Frame your services to support these universals.
10. Find clients who can afford you by developing a sixth sense for small operators that are not struggling financially. These may include such businesses as upscale services (boutique gyms, wedding photography), medical offices (dentists, optometrists), skilled tradespeople (plumbers, electricians), and high-end goods (antiques, jewelry stores).
Small business are everywhere, and they need freelancers. Many of them just may not realize it yet, or at least until they meet you.
BIO – Sharon Woodhouse is the owner of Conspire Creative—coaching, consulting, conflict management, project management, book publishing, and editorial services for solo pros, creatives, authors, small businesses, and multipreneurs. Follow her writing on Medium.com @slowcharacter.
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