Content Marketing for Your Freelance Copywriting Business

A fast content marketing strategy from website to social media for freelance copywriters.

Welcome to your quick and easy content marketing 101 class! By the end of this blog you will have a simple outline and structure that you can implement to get almost any online business going including your freelance copywriting business. So, let’s begin!

There are a lot of different definitions of content marketing but the 4 main pillars I have identified in my business are: website, social media, SEO, and email marketing. These are the 4 main areas I work with my clients in and have found it to be well rounded and successful. Getting these in place will help you set an excellent foundation for your online business.

However, an important side note to this is, these are not the only things you need to establish your business. You still must do the groundwork and set your business up legitimately. Take care of all the legal obligations, so you set the tone to (most importantly) the government, yourself, and to the universe so that everyone knows you really are taking this $h*t seriously and shout it from the rooftops that you really do intend to make this gig your full time job, if it isn’t already. So, get your LLC if that is the route you are going, plan out how you are going to pay your quarterly taxes, or at least be aware and be prepared to pay those taxes once a year, get your EIN and open those business banking accounts. Just make sure your legal ducks are all in a row first, then you can dive into creating your 4 pillars of content marketing.

Website

Our first pillar of content marketing is your website. Let’s pretend that you are starting a freelance copywriting business and you don’t have a website set up yet. It is definitely important to have a website and not run your business solely on social media because it gives you somewhere to send your potential clients and makes your business look much more professional and established.

Copywriters are lucky in that we can keep our websites fairly simple, in fact, the simpler the site the better. Template websites such as Squarespace and Wix are completely sufficient. Anything with a drag and drop feature will do the trick. You can DIY it or outsource the job for a minimal amount and build a perfectly functional website.

You are going to start by creating your site map. Think of this kind of like a flowchart that starts with your home page. Your homepage is where if someone types in your website address to your URL they will land here. At the top of your homepage you’ll have a few items, aka your nav bar, to click on to help navigate to the rest of your site. The less navigation items you have in your nav bar, the better. You want your site to be as user friendly as possible and too many options can be complicated. A good nav bar might include your about page, services page, your portfolio and a blog. This is what I use on my own business website and it works swimmingly!  Then you can build out those pages to be SEO friendly (as we will talk about later) but starting with these items in your top nav will serve your starter freelance copywriting website well.

Another great tip that I learned on The Skinny Confidential Podcast (which is one of my faves) is to physically draw out, color, and cut out what you want your website vibe to feel and look like. You can cut things out of magazines, pick out your typography, go nuts with the glitter and basically create a physical vision board for your website so that you stay true to your design and concept. The benefit to this is that you keep your website completely authentic, unique and aligned with who you are, then when people visit it, they have a clear idea of what they are signing up for in working with you. You stay true to yourself and find those perfectly aligned clients and everybody wins! And don’t worry, the template sites are easily customizable so you can bring your poster board vision to life.

Remember the user experience when you are laying out your site as well. Not everything should have the same hierarchy, make sure more important items are bigger and bolder, or at the top of the page, or in a different color. Keep things organized, clear and concise. If someone lands on your page and it all looks the same, they are not going to know where to start and the eye gets confused which might just lead them to leave. You want to create an easy nurturing experience for the user.

Also, don’t skip to the goodnight kiss before you take them out to dinner. Create a nice journey for them to go on when they visit your site then you can throw in your CTA midway or at the bottom of the page.  Show off your personality as well, there are no rules! You can do some market research to get inspired but don’t copy what anyone else is doing. It won’t serve you, it’ll annoy them, and it’ll ruin any kind of collaboration you could have had in the future. So, you do you and remember that your client is hiring YOU for a reason. It is not just your years of experience that are going to align you with clients, they will be attracted to you by your vibe, energy, and the way you present yourself. But make sure you still have a portfolio page to showcase your work samples and find that balance.

Social Media

Social Media is the next pillar in our content marketing strategy. There are a lot of options out there like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest, Tik Tok, etc. The best way to start out is to choose 1-2 different platforms and show up there consistently. Don’t overwhelm yourself with trying to use all of them at once because you’ll start to feel swamped and begin procrastinating and then nothing will get posted. Choose the 1 or 2 platforms that you love, are comfortable with, and where your people are hanging out on and stick with those. Once you are consistent with those, then maybe think about adding on a few more. At that point, you can take the opportunity to repurpose some of your content to make life easier.

After choosing your platforms, you will want to pick 3-4 things that you are going to talk about. These topics will represent how you want to be perceived by others when they land on your page. For example, in my business I want to be perceived as a copywriting expert, as someone who is quick witted, and spiritually aligned. I’m currently using Facebook and Instagram the most and almost all of my posts will include something along the lines of at least 1 of these topics and some posts will even include a representation of all 3. This is a great strategy because it gives people a clear idea of who you are. Go where your people are and consistently post and show up. It will do wonders in attracting your soulmate clients.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is our third pillar. I started out having a huge resistance to this because I felt that its structure hindered my creativity. But as I learned more about it, I realized it can actually do the opposite and heighten people’s creativity because you have to learn to be creative within certain parameters and that forces you to come up with really cool $h*t and be even more genius. Now I think the challenge is fun and brings out my best work!

SEO is all over your online content.  It’s on your website and your social media. The trick to SEO is knowing your keywords and knowing where to use them and filling in all the little bits on the backend of your site when you are posting content consistently. This is where the magic of SEO exists. And FYI, both Pinterest and YouTube are actually search engines.  So definitely be mindful of your keywords when posting on those platforms.  They are also both excellent places to research keywords.

Something to remember though, is that success with SEO doesn’t necessarily happen overnight. It can be a struggle when copywriters, content marketers, and strategists like ourselves are working with clients trying to sell SEO as a service because your clients want to see their product ranking number one on Google right away. In reality, it can take 3 or more months for your SEO efforts to really begin to pay off, but it is absolutely worth taking the time to do that busy work.

A great example of successful SEO is none other than Carole Baskin of the recent Netflix breakout hit Tiger King. She crushed it at SEO! She was an early adapter, she posted content ALL the time and she used a super search friendly keyword as her business name: Big Cat Rescue. And it worked for her in huge ways, she got that top search ranking! Unfortunately for us nowadays it is not quite as easy to grab those top spots and keywords simply because there are so many people in the game, but she is a perfect example of how it can work.

Another good resource for SEO information is Neil Patel. You can follow him for SEO news, information and updates. I also use his tool called Ubersuggest for a lot of my keyword research for both myself and my clients.

Email Marketing

Our last and final pillar is Email Marketing. The sooner you start building your email list, the better. I started out using Mailchimp as an email service provider. It is super user friendly and has free options that will get you off and running easily. They also have really clever marketing and copywriting as an added bonus.

There are 2 simple ways I began my email list. The first was through a weekly newsletter that I began to write with no intention of selling anything off of it. I launched it simply out of excitement, and it was just a weekly check in with some copywriting and content marketing tips, but the authenticity and personal touches of it got such a great response! Most of the response at the beginning was from my Mom and her friends, but it eventually led to more and more clients that really aligned with the energy I put out in creating it.

The other outlet I use to build my email list is through my Facebook group called The Copywriting Girls Club. I ask my followers if they would like weekly copywriting tips emailed to them and add them to my list if they are interested. These are 2 really simple and noninvasive ways to build your email list.

Another route you can go to build that list up is the funneling option or the good old “Opt In”. This is more for nurturing to a potential client or someone you eventually want to sell to, which is probably your main goal anyways. The marketing email gurus will tell you that the best way to do this is by having a very valuable freebie option, called a lead gen or content upgrade, that is typically a free guide, audio or video that you aren’t posting on your social media or providing anywhere else. The only way to get it, is for them to give you their email address. This can be part of your content marketing strategy and work well if your freebie is really valuable.

I often use Pinterest to get new email sign-ups. First, I create a blog for my website. For this example, I have a blog called “Social Media Strategy to Build Your Freelance Copywriting Business”. I also have a freebie that is “32+ Ways to Repurpose Your Content”. I create the blog, then have my VA go into my blog and create 30 different pins to put on Pinterest. Anyone on Pinterest that is interested in it will click on it, it will lead to my blog, and then a friendly little message will pop up saying – Hey, I see you are interested in this blog content, I think you might also be interested in this “32+ Ways to Repurpose Your Content”, fill your email address in here and I’ll send you the guide. They can take it or leave it but if they take it, then you can add them to your email list and Voila!

Once they are added to your email list, start them out with a simple Welcome Series of 4-7 emails. That would include an intro email of who you are, talk about other resources you have for them, send them to some of your other blogs, tell them where to find you on social media, or a preview of offers you have coming up. Once they have gotten this welcome series and gotten to know you a little bit, then you can shift them over to your regular email list where you send out your newsletters or marketing email.

You don’t want to add people to your list if they don’t opt in. It’s not a good look for you. And make sure to start them out with the Welcome Series so they aren’t confused when you are suddenly in their inbox consistently. There are also some other rules depending on where you live. If you are outside of the United States, there might be some more stringent email opt-in policies to follow so look into that. Don’t ever buy email addresses either, yuck! The poor stranger is going to suddenly get your emails and it is very unlikely that they’ll actually be interested in your services, so it’s just not worth it.

Testing is your friend when it comes to emails as well. The best thing to test out is subject lines. They are arguably the most important part of your email because that is what is going to help people decide if they are going to open the damn thing or just ignore or delete.  So, test length, emojis, capitalizations, exclamation points and all the different ways to do it and find your sweet spot!

Your Complete Content Marketing Strategy

And that is a wrap on your content marketing 101 course. This is a quick and simple run down of the perfect content marketing strategy for your freelance copywriting (or other) business. Your 4 pillars are Website, Social Media, SEO and Email Marketing. Get that user-friendly website set up, choose a couple social media platforms that you’ll show up on consistently to show off both your business and personality, set up your SEO optimizations wherever you are showing up, and get going on your email marketing even if it is slow and steady!

If you want to connect with me on Facebook in a private, more intimate setting, hop on over HERE and join my Facebook group called The Copywriting Girls Club. I’m happy to answer any questions about all of this content marketing stuff or just shoot the $h*t about copywriting. 

This week’s podcast or show recommendation: The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast w/ Lauren Evererts and Michael Bostick. They are married with a new baby. It’s a bit of a health and wellness podcast but is filled with great business tips as well and it’s just plain fun. There is something on there for everyone!

If you want even more helpful tips each week, take a listen to my podcast, “The Copywriter Show.”

And just one more thing – I’m a strong “repurpose your content” advocate. It saves SO MUCH time and effort when creating all the social media posts, emails, landing pages, email funnels, etc. for your business. I made this “Spread Your Magic” Free Guide that gives you 20+ Ways to Repurpose Your Soul-Driven Content. YOUR words deserve to be read by more people, on more places and platforms. Grab your copy HERE.

Connect with me on Instagram: @amyleisner