3 Perils for Professional Freelance Writers to Avoid

Credit: Iofoto on Photodune

Youre an awesome writer. So why arent your clients in awe?

Most of us become freelance writers because well, were talented writers. We love finding the perfect words and putting them together with skill and finesse. We take our craft seriously and work hard to deliver polished, readable copy to our clients.

But sometimes we turn in our best work only to have the client come back to us with a less than enthusiastic response. When it happens, it’s easy to fall prey to self-doubt: “Am I not an awesome writer, after all?”

In fact, when good writers get a bad reaction to their work, it often has less to do with the quality of their writing skills than the quality of their people skills. After all, we become writers because we’re good with words, not clients. But to become a successful freelance writer, we need to learn to manage clients as skillfully as we manage the words on the page.

Are you getting the balance right? Take a look at three limiting beliefs writers fall into when they pay more attention to the words themselves than to the clients who pay for them.

Writing is a Solitary Act

We writers are artists. We march to a different beat. Give us a pen or a keyboard and some alone time, and well emerge with something incredible.

This kind of approach might work for Hemingway, but its not going to work for a freelance writer.

This kind of approach might work for Hemingway, but its not going to work for a freelance writer. Our role is to respond to our clients needs and write according to their vision. We need to spend time understanding who they are and what they want to accomplish: rushing this step and retreating too soon into the fortress of solitude will result in a final product that misses the mark.

I keep a list of about 30 questions that I draw from when establishing the groundwork for a new writing project. Some of the most important questions include:

• What do you want to achieve with this piece of writing? What would success look like?
• Do you have a style or tone of voice established for your company? If not, can you point to examples of writing you would like to emulate?
• Who is your target audience? Whats important to them, and how do they prefer to be addressed?
• What are the most important messages you want to get across to your audience?
• Is there any information that you find particularly difficult to communicate to your audience?

Im the Pro: Clients Should Listen to Me

An amazing writer is usually a confident writer, and confidence is good. It allows us to write with flair and conviction and charge what were worth. But we cant become overconfident and assume we know more than our clients. We need to keep an open mind and open ears so that we really hear what the client needs. Asking the right questions is a great start, but listening to the answers is crucial if were going to knock the first draft out of the park.

I think listening is so important, I do it twice. I record the initial conversation with the client so that I can focus on what theyre saying without the distraction of taking notes. Then I listen to the recording a second time to make sure I havent missed anything critical or let my own assumptions overshadow what the client actually said.

My clients are all remote, so I communicate mainly through Skype and use Call Recorder to record the conversation. The sound quality is excellent, and the resulting .mov file is automatically labeled with the clients name and the date of the call. If you conduct in-person meetings with a local clientele, invest in a decent digital recorder.

Once I have a Concept, I Run with It

As a talented writer, youre probably a bit of a perfectionist, and you hate anyone to see what youre working on until its finished. But when you dont give the client an opportunity to weigh in on the work in progress, the "big reveal can be a big mistake. If you have missed a key message or youve got the tone wrong, it means the whole project needs a do-over. Thats going to set the project back and either reduce your profits or increase your clients costs, depending on whether you choose to bill them for the extra work or not.

Avoid a prickly situation by getting the clients feedback and buy-in early on.

Avoid a prickly situation by getting the clients feedback and buy-in early on. I always make a point of delivering a small writing sample so that the client can see where Im taking the copy. For instance, if its a website, Ill draft one page from a multipage website, and let them provide input on the style and content before continuing on with the rest of the work. This technique accomplishes a number of things:

• Prevents unpleasant surprises when the client sees the rest of the work
• Minimizes the amount of time you need to spend revising the draft
• Ensures the client feels less anxious and more in control of the project

Working with Your Client to Improve Your Writing

If you can identify with any of the statements listed above, take a pause. Try shifting your mindset from that of the lone pen for hire to something thats more collaborative and team-oriented. Think about how you can include your clients in the writing process more effectively. Could you be engaging them more fully? Listening harder? Getting their feedback sooner and more frequently?

By creating a more inclusive process, not only will the quality of your client relationships improve, the quality of your writing will improve too. Learning to draw on your clients knowledge and respond to their needs results in more powerful, purposeful writing. So if you want to take your freelance writing career to the next level, put down the penand pick up the phone!

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Iofoto.