10 Fundamentals of Good Freelancer Blog Posts
Nearly every freelancer I meet seems to be starting a blog, or at least thinking about it.
But there’s a problem: Many freelancers tell me they’re posting like mad on their blog…but nothing’s happening.
No comments. No shares on Twitter or Facebook.
Even worse, no client nibbles, and especially, no firm new clients.
Blogs are a big time investment. So if you’re blogging away and not getting results, that’s not good. If you can’t get the hang of this, you might want to consider spending your marketing time another way.
But first, let’s see if we can fix this and get your blog some traction by focusing on improving your fundamentals.
What’s wrong with your blog
Why do so many freelancers’ blogs fail to attract an audience? I’ve reviewed hundreds of freelance writers’ blogs, and there are some common problems with the content.
Here’s a quick tip: Blogging is a unique format all its own. It’s not a magazine article or a portfolio or a newspaper article or a sales page or anything else.
Here’s a quick tip: Blogging is a unique format all its own. It’s not a magazine article or a portfolio or a newspaper article or a sales page or anything else.
Most freelancers haven’t studied blog style, and don’t know how to write a blog post that’s designed to impress their prospects.
Sorry to be harsh…but it’s true.
There is a format to blogging that reliably works. Master it, and you can use your blog to get clients. Ignore it, and the blog will flounder.
If you’re a freelance designer, webmaster, photographer, or graphic artist, writing your blog may be daunting. This isn’t your forte. But it’s OK — you can use your strengths to create blog posts that are strong on visuals and appealing to your target customer (see point 9 below).
The good news is, it’s not hard to learn how to craft compelling blog posts that will attract readers and help search engines send you great clients.
Here are 10 basic content elements of blogging that can help you land freelance clients:
1. Great blog name
Good blog names are short and memorable. Readers should be able to tell what topic you write about on the blog, too. Confusing or mysterious blog names don’t intrigue readers — it’s more likely to make them leave.
It’s common for freelancers to have a website with their own name as the URL. Often, freelancers also make that name the blog’s name, too.
Instead, go the extra mile and give the blog its own, more memorable name and identity. It will pay off. For an example of how this can work well to promote your business and brand, take a look at web designer Chris Coyier’s CSS Tricks blog.
2. Informative tagline
Your tagline is a critical spot to fill us in on what the topic is here, especially if your blog name is your own name.
An informational tagline can work wonders to draw and retain the readers you want.
Put search terms in your blog name and/or tagline that readers might search on for your sort of information, and you’ll greatly increase your chance of attracting the right sort of readers. Don’t waste this valuable real estate — which search engines regard closely — with a tagline like “my random thoughts and musings.”
If you can, work in keywords describing the blog’s target readers. That helps visitors quickly decide if your blog is for them.
You can also build keywords into the meta description of your blog to help search engines send customers, as with designer Chris Spooner’s blog, Line 25 — the description adds “web design blog.”
3. Focused theme
The vast majority of blogs are not focused on a theme. The author posts about whatever strikes their fancy that day. They’re like online personal journals.
If you’re using your blog to get business clients, you need a single-topic blog — and that means choosing one general topic and sticking to it.
One day it’s your outrage over the fate of endangered frogs. The next day a funny video from YouTube. The next a gripe about your kids.
This approach will not attract clients to your blog.
If you’re using your blog to get business clients, you need a single-topic blog — and that means choosing one general topic and sticking to it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about your design work or writing life, but it needs to have one unified theme. (If you’ve got more topics you’re dying to blog on, the answer is…multiple blogs.)
Why? Prospects will be scanning down the blog looking at the headlines to see if you understand niche blogging. If the headlines reveal an unrelated series of topics, it looks like you don’t get blogging.
Especially if you’re looking for business blogging work, remember that no business is going to hire you to blog about a series of random topics. (No good-paying one, anyway.) All company blogs are about a niche topic — so show you get that on your blog.
4. Great headlines
Here’s another place where the vast majority of blogs fall short. Headlines are often not compelling and lack keywords to help search engines send you readers. Common headline problems include:
- You can’t tell what the post is about
- Can’t tell who the intended reader is
- No keywords
- No intrigue, surprise, or mystery
- No obvious reader benefit
If you devote time to learning one thing about blogging, make it how to improve your headlines. It’s a competitive world out there in the blogosphere, and you’ve got to know how to grab attention with your headlines to get read.
There are great online resources on how to build a catchy headline, including Jon Morrow’s Headline Hacks report. Study them.
5. Compelling opening lines
People’s attention spans are famously short online. If you write an opening anecdote that winds along for five paragraphs before finally revealing the point you’d like to make, you will probably lose most of your readers along the way.
When you write the opening lines of your post, bear in mind that the first sentence or two of your post also appears in search engine results. Make it count.
Think of it this way: The job of the first line is to make readers want to read the second line. And the job of the first paragraph is to make sure readers can’t wait to read the next paragraph.
And so on, through your post. But it’s most critical at the beginning of your post. If you lose readers at the top, you won’t get them back. If you have a tendency to write long-winded blog openings, go back and chop off the excess so that you cut to the chase.
6. Short post length
Did I mention attention spans are short? Right.
That’s why the vast majority of successful blog posts are short. Think 300-500 words. Especially if you’re just starting out with your blog, and if you’re new to writing, aim to keep posts short.
The occasional long and more detailed post is good too — if it has a lot of good information, like this one. But keep it simple to start and focus on creating strong, short posts.
7. Scannability
In magazine articles, a paragraph can go on for miles. But that doesn’t work online. Readers will simply skip over a huge blob of text.
Many online readers don’t really read — they skim. If your post can’t be easily skimmed, you lose all those readers.
Many online readers don’t really read — they skim. If your post can’t be easily skimmed, you lose all those readers.
Make it easy to get through your post by including bold subheads, numbered or bulleted points, or pullquotes. Simply keeping paragraphs short also helps make posts scannable.
8. Watch your tone
Hey, wassup! Would you like to discuss how to better obtain clients?
So, what happened there? I combined conversational slang with formal, business-letter tone. That didn’t work very well, hmm?
Many bloggers aren’t aware of the tone they’re using, and their writing style is inconsistent. Iron this out and find your voice. The sweet spot for impressing business clients that you could talk to their customers is usually conversational without being rude, crude, or full of jargon or insider terms.
9. Visually interesting
Here’s the part where all the freelance designers and photographers get to shine. A blog is really an online magazine, and as with any glossy magazine that lands in your mailbox, visual elements play a big role in driving reader interest.
Consider paying for quality photography if you aren’t a visual artist — that’s what I do. For just a few dollars, you can make your blog instantly look a cut above.
If you are a visual artist, get creative. Your posts might rely primarily on images with little text, or use infographics to show off your design skill. Demonstrate new techniques or showcase recent project work and discuss how it was created.
10. Engages the audience
Blog posts are different from articles in an important way: They’re not a statement. They’re a conversation. Blogs that have comments closed are usually written by top bloggers who aren’t looking for clients anymore, so don’t let that confuse you.
Show you get the interactive nature of blogging that by asking questions at the end of posts, encouraging comments and responding to commenters. Have social-media sharing buttons so you can get retweets and likes. Social shares bring more readers and help you find those clients.
Any business looking to hire a blogger wants to pay a pro because they haven’t figured out how to get this engagement. They’re looking for someone who can show they know how to get readers involved in their posts.
Is your blog getting you freelance clients? Leave us a comment and share your experience.
Leave a Comment
Great article Carol!
I am in the process developing my blog. I am currently redesigning my website. I found these tips to be helpful
I recently posted in a forum, not long ago, about having my blog on my graphic design companies website or have it separate from my company site. I wonder if it would be confusing to potential clients if I had separate from my website. I concluded that it would be best to have it on my companies site.
As for a catchy name, I wouldn’t know what to call it. In my case, would it make sense to have a catchy name? Chris Spooner’s other blog, Blog Spoon Graphics, was originally part of his business site. (Please correct me if I am wrong).
I don’t know – you’d have to ask Chris!
I get that question a lot, Brandon, about whether the blog should be on your freelancer portfolio site or separate. I think it depends on the goals for your blog.
I started mine on my writer site…but eventually it grew up to be a business of its own. When I started seeing that I wanted to sell products and services in connection with my blog, I gave it its own site. I’ve got a huge, graphical sidebar icon that advertises it on my writer site, and that seems to be working fine.
I think that’s awesome! It’s always good to hear how people got their start.
I think for me, the ultimate goal is to gain more clients. If I can monetize my blog down the road, great! Right now, I just want to make sure that I have a consistent flow of posts on the site.
Thanks for the help Carol!
Good post and helpful tips.
Always enjoy your content Carol.
I’ve heard contrasting points on length. Some say “be short like News posts that sometimes are just 100 words”, then others are more in the mindset of “You can’t say anything meaningful in less than a 1000 words.”
I’m somewhat torn, I think for myself I tend to be “wordy” so shorter posts may shape my writing more to be more exact, on the other hand, I enjoy long form writing.
Not sure
In reply to Joe Cassandra’s comment-February 7th
Hey Joe, ever heard that “The shortest answers ‘yes’ or ‘no’ always require the most thinking.
This by no means is saying that, dont write in detail where need be.
For me need arises with clarity of aim/goal/objectives. We need to spend time in pondering, take the time out which none of us get…until we realize that we are living like robots most of the time. I better stop here…
Undue, long blogs somehow facilitate in covering or masking the real subject and point of writing a blog or article.
Just my opinion. If you do have time to ponder. Great! no problems. just check yourself out.
It really takes much more time to understand what really happened…not always seen when something happens. Time and pondering helps.
Short posts? Seems to be absolutely wrong in this regard. Now content longer than 2400 words is winning the rankings on Google, not short posts. Any idiot can write a short post, a valuable Case study will take much more, at least a 1000 words, plus pictures. Read up Neil Patel’s blog about this at http://www.quicksprout.com absolutely amazing resource.
This may seem weird, but I actually agree with you, and write a lot of longer posts on my own blog.
BUT…I think for most freelancer blogs, especially if you’re just starting out, and ESPECIALLY if you’re not a freelance writer, aiming for shorter posts will probably be a better way to go.
Also if you don’t have a lot of free time — because you’re busy freelancing! — aiming for more frequent short posts can work better for getting traffic than rare long posts.
A freelancer should focus not on blog creation but on portfolio building, and getting that portfolio ranked.
Blog should be an appendage, not the main focus.
Not sure what you mean by getting your portfolio ‘ranked’? By whom?
Maybe that’s something to do if you’re hanging around bidding sites…but those aren’t usually a great-paying situation. Most of the freelancers I know avoid those and find their own clients.
As far as whether a blog should only be a sideline to your marketing…it really depends on the kind of work you’re looking to get.
I know freelance writers who do mostly blogging work, and their blog and guest posts from that blog are their primary way of getting exposure and having clients contact them. Their blog really IS their portfolio.
Carol, thank you for this – it’s perfect for me to send my students to read! I get so many questions about how to blog professionally, and I think this post answers at least half of them.
If I could add an 11th item to your list, it would be this:
You need to make it clear on your blog that you can be hired. I’ve seen a lot of aspiring freelance bloggers whose blogs give me *no clue* they’re available for hire!
Hi Sophie — great to see you over here!
Stay tuned for a post coming up next week that goes over design & layout fundamentals…one of them is “have a hire me tab.”…
Love the post, Carol!
Another thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of freelancers write blog posts for the people in their industry, and not their clients (who should be the blog’s target audience in the first place.)
For instance, freelance web designers publishing posts about coding and tech instead of writing about what their clients (who are usually non-techy people) would be interested in.
Hi Francesca –
You bring up an interesting issue in blogging — whether your blog HAS to be for the audience of your clients or not.
I’m going to be doing a post on this coming up as well…but the short answer is I don’t think you DO have to blog, on your own blog, for your target client.
For instance, I have a blog for freelance writers, not editors or marketing managers. Yet my guest posts on big blogs that promoted that writer blog also got me clients.
I even had one government marketing manager who hired me for a five-figure project tell me she loved that I had this side thing blogging about writing and serving that audience! I’ve gotten gigs writing about surety bonds and other completely unrelated topics off my writer blog.
I think if you do the blog fundamentals right, your blog can be about your love of tattoos or whatever. It still makes a good sample.
Obviously, if you can get all the ducks in line and your blog talks directly to your prospects and has a free subscriber product that helps your prospects, that’s ideal. But I know a lot of freelance writers who say the idea of doing a blog for clients bores them…and we all know trying to blog on a topic that bores you isn’t going to work well!
As I am new blogger and learning from my past experience and by reading the useful like this. These tips definitely going to help me a lot.
Great points, and the point about the short post is the best one because in blogging many people think that writing big articles will mean more visitors but in my view a short but informative article is enough to attract visitors to your site.
Well…long posts can be great and bring a lot of traffic if they are long because they have a TON of valuable information…like hopefully this post you’re reading.
Being long just to be long doesn’t necessarily work well. I agree with you that frequency is important, so it goes back to how much time you have for blogging, as you would want to post on a regular basis…probably at LEAST once a week. If you’ve got the bandwidth to make those posts 1500 words of super-useful stuff, I say go for it!
But most freelancers I know are pretty time-pressed, and probably need to stick to shorter posts to get the frequency they need.
Great post, Carol!
I would add a last bullet point “Spread the good news and don’t be shy”. Nowadays I think RSS feeds are so overloaded that marketing needs to start within your colleagues/friends in social networks. The outreach increases exponentially!
Well, RSS feeds are particularly unhelpful if you’re writing a blog directly TO your prospects…because then you don’t capture their emails and can’t market to them! Serious marketing fail there.
Thanks for that helpfull article.
Hey Carol,
Great post with tons of valuable information. I really felt like this post was speaking to me because this has been one of my challenges with my writer site now for a while. Trying to figure out whether I should make the blog about my clients or write about some of my other interests.
The fact that you mention that my professional blog does not have to necessarily geared towards my clients is such a great relief. It really opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
Love the idea of shorter more frequent posts (ha! maybe even videos or podcasts, why not?!). After writing for others, I don’t always have the time/energy to sit down and write a long 1500 word post for myself.
The result: spotty and sporadic blog posts that don’t get traction. There was a point in the beginning where I posted each week and it worked.
I’m looking forward to your follow up posts on this topic, thank you!
Great to see you on here, Hermine!
I hear that a lot, when I mention that your blog doesn’t have to be for the audience of your prospective clients — about the sigh of relief.
If there’s one law of blogging, it’s that if you choose a topic you hate, your blog is not going to succeed — not in getting you clients or in becoming a viable business of its own, either.
Writers really underestimate the amount of effort required for building a blog…you’ve got to LOVE your topic or you won’t be able to come up with the volume of interesting post ideas you need to make it work.
Great article – and would have to be with a title like that
As a news editor for several news site in the UK, I receive a lot of press releases, and read a lot of blogs. I’d say above all – the title and opening paragraph have to catch the reader’s imagination, or your doomed. You can often tell there’s something wrong if you have a high ‘bounce rate’ on Google Analytics – when people find your blog and instantly return back to the search results when they’re not impressed. Counter-intuitively, very good blog sites which provide the answer to a Googler’s question immediately will also have high bounce rates… so it’s important to find out which one applies.
Another really good point earlier about bearing in the mind the audience you’re writing for.
Great post Carol, strong points and really informative.
I just recently jumped back into freelancing full time as a web designer after being at a salary job for two years. I’m at a point where I have a project or two to keep me busy, but there is still quite a bit of down time.
I have turned to writing for my blog to help with marketing and strengthen my relevance in local searches for any small businesses looking for web design services. This is the niche I’m going for at the moment, so I consider small business owners my target audience. I actually published a post earlier today aimed towards restaurant owners with outdated websites.
Hopefully some education can reel me in some more website redesign projects.
Anyway, completely agree. Blog writing definitely requires a certain style to engage with readers. As you mentioned, the trick is to almost ‘distract’ them with interesting headlines, skim-able paragraphs and pretty pictures.
Look forward to your next one, Carol.
Awesome set of suggestions. What are your thoughts on tutorial blog posts? Do people want more video embedding or screen-shot step-by-step? I myself prefer to do screen-cast tutorials, but still haven’t fleshed out a pro speaking voice. Thoughts, anyone?
Images are so important to a blog, never mind an article. A good article must at least have one image or more to it. Visually, this makes it more appeasing to the reader’s eye and helps him understand a little better.
Great post and amazing tips! I’m always struggling with what/how to write, but these concise suggestions will come in handy; I’ll definitely be keeping these in mind next time I write a post
Thanks!
really thanks for the tips. actually I have a blog but I didn’t know how to modify it . to have some interesting theme and contents. I am glad that I have read this article.