Five Reasons A Blog Is Your Most Powerful Writing Tool

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Thursday, December 6th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

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Let’s look at five reasons a blog is your most powerful writing tool to help you to build your writing career. I hope that by the end of this article, if you don’t have a blog, you’ll create one right away.In 2007, a blog is not optional. I get email messages every week from writers wondering how to get more lucrative writing gigs. Heaven knows there’s plenty of sweatshop writing gigs out there.

The answer’s always the same: get known. When you’re known, you set your rates. When you’re unknown, you take whatever rates (often dismal) you can get. A blog is the easiest way of getting known.

So here we go; five reasons a blog is your most powerful writing tool:

=> 1. A blog gets your name known, so USE your name, if you intend a long-term career as a writer

Your name - your real name, not a pseudonym or a business name you’ve selected - is your brand. It takes time to build a brand so that editors and people who hire you know your name and what it stands for, so the time to build your name is now - a blog is a super way of getting known.

Major, major tip: Please don’t use a handle, or a nickname. Use the name you were given at birth on your blog. There’s a reason for this, and here it is: a freelance writer writes many things over the course of a career. Who knows what you’ll be writing a year from now, or ten years from now?

Change what you write as often as you like, but keep ONE name, your own, on your blog.

Another tip: If you want a keyword-specific name for a topic blog for search engine reasons, then add your photo to the blog so people know it’s one of yours - you’ll notice that my photo’s on many of my blogs. I did this after I realized that few people knew that a particular blog was mine.

=> 2. A blog gives you visibility - in 2007 and beyond, publishers and businesses are looking for writers on the Web

You must be visible. I’ve been offered some fantastic gigs because my name on a blog post came up in connection with “business proposals” or “creativity”. I got these gigs because I blogged about those topics, a publisher saw my blog post, and got in touch.

=> 3. A blog gives you a platform: when you get readers, you can use that platform to write books, or anything you choose.

Perhaps you’ve heard about “platform” in connection with writing a book. A platform is essentially people who know you and know your work. A platform gives you clout, and blogging helps you to build your platform.

=> 4. A blog leads to offers of writing gigs and other opportunities

All the established blogger-writers I know are booked up months ahead. In connection with this article, I called three writers yesterday and asked them whether their blog helps them to get work and how many enquiries they get.

In a nutshell, each said they receive from one to ten enquiries a day, and their blogs are their major source of writing gigs. They’re well booked, as am I.

=> 5. A blog is a creativity enhancer

Writing begets writing, especially when your writing is building your career and is well paid. Every writer who’s ever said to me “I wish I’d started blogging years ago” has said that their blog has made them a better writer, and more creative.

So, if you’re wondering whether you should blog, I hope you’ve decided that you should. Happy blogging.

Freelance Blogging: Fun, Easy and VERY Profitable - start today

Want a new freelance writing career? Become a freelance blogger.

I’ve been blogging since 2001, and for the past 12 months I’ve been swamped with offers of blogging gigs, and so have other freelancers who are highly visible on the Web. Blogging has huge returns on investment for businesses, so they’re hiring bloggers to update their blogs each day - often several times a day.