How to Build a Brand for Your Freelance Writing Business

Your friends know you’re the one to beat on Scrabble, your classmates used to ask for your help when writing essays in college, and some even asked you to write love letters for their Significant Other. This is your thing, you’re the master of words, and you’re now a freelance writer starting a business, but you have no clue on how to build a brand.

When looking for creative writing jobs or starting a freelance writing business, is really important to focus on building professional branding essentials. Since there are tons of options from online marketplaces for freelance professionals, you need to stand out and catch the eye of those looking for your expertise.

Define Your Brand’s Personality

This is the essence of your brand; it doesn’t necessarily have to be yours. Perhaps you manage a team of freelance writers who are very different from each other, so try to create a bigger character with human traits that represent the brand’s values.

You’re starting with a blank slate so to get this done, ask yourself: If this brand was a person, who would it be? How would it speak? Alongside this, you should create a tone of voice, which is how you will be communicating with customers and overall through different platforms and channels.

Give Your Brand a Unique Name

First, let’s go to the basic stuff: A brand is the term, symbol, design, or a combination of both, used to differentiate a company, a business or any kind of entity from the rest. It’s as simple and complex as that. You’ll need a name that resonates, that is also bold, memorable, sums up what you do, and sounds unique as well.

Have you sat down looking at a blank page wondering how to create a brand name? Start by making a list of words you’d like to represent your business, take a piece of paper with you and wait for inspiration to strike, give it a day or two. Naming is not easy and should not be taken lightly. Trust your gut if a name sounds perfect for your brand, if you succeed at this, chances are you’ll be doing this for a living.

The deal on how to create a brand starts with naming things accurately and being original at it. A brand’s name should stick to people’s minds and somehow make them feel an emotional connection to it.

How to Make a Name Resonate?

To create brand awareness you need words that stick. These are the types of brand names, their pros and cons; you can choose one to help you find the perfect ones:

• Descriptive names. Pro: These are effective to clearly state what your business is about, your potential customers will be able to find you easily and it’s also easy to memorize. Con: It’s hard to come up with an original name when being descriptive about your business.
• Made-up words. Pro: You can make up an original, fun, or interesting word that’s not already taken by any other brand. Con: If it’s too complicated, it may be hard to remember.
• Statement names. Pro: They deliver powerful messages and become a symbol for the brand. Con: Potential customers may not associate the word with your writing business.
• Acronyms. Pro: These are short and perhaps easier to trademark. Con: They don’t mean anything by themselves, you need to build a powerful brand to fill it with meaning.
• Personal names. Pro: Really easy to remember and relatable. Con: Your brand can be associated with a similar name or even confuse your potential customers.

When feeling unsure about using certain words or if you don’t know if people will remember your brand as much as you’d want to, try gathering people with different backgrounds and invite them to a focus group. Though this might sound outdated for 2019, but this is a really useful tool when picking up a correct name for your brand.

Pick the Ideal Colors to Represent Your Brand

Just so you know, the colors will define your brand’s identity just as much as the name and the logo. Either you can rely on your personal taste if you know the basics of color theory, or try color palettes inspired by others to choose your own palette.

What are people looking for when seeking professional writers for hire? Pay attention to the current demand, ask fellow writers what they’ve done to make their businesses grow. Perhaps they’re looking for a technical writer for academic essays instead of creative writers to work on children’s books. Make sure your brand color palette suits your area of expertise.

Be sure to choose a harmonious palette that can make your brand stand out. Whereas positively, negatively, or neutral, our minds will respond to colors. Know that the colors for your branding material will carry a message too, according to Color Matters, 60% of the time people will decide if they are attracted or not to a message based on color alone.

Create a Perfect and Memorable Logo

You want potential customers to remember and find your brand among a bunch of other people trying to land writing gigs.

To create a logo that stands for your brand, think about the shape you want if you want it to represent an object, an animal, a geometric shape, a person… just try to keep it minimal and choose one element only and, if possible, leave negative space.

How to create a brand logo? Create one that reflects who you are as an author so people can tell your style or if you have special topics to write about. There are plenty of online tools to help you complete this task and, though you can always call your designer friends, you can save time using a logo maker.

Build an Eye-Catching Website

What would Hemingway do? He’d probably have a massive online presence and a strong, visually appealing website. You don’t need to be a design expert to create your own website either. There are lots of website builders that offer hosting and domain, and also have a variety of templates for you to work on.

After you choose your favorite builder, outline the sections you’ll divide your website into and the content you’ll write for each one: About, Services, Products, Fees, Blog… and don’t forget a call to action button! You want potential customers to be able to reach you on their first visit to your website.

For the About section, briefly explain who you are as an author, what’s your professional background and your experience in writing for others.

When describing Services, Products, and Fees, it is very important to be specific and carefully explain the services you offer and if you can be flexible to work on custom-made requests or if you have special offerings for bundles. Make sure you give details and accurate information for a variety of services, due dates, the estimated workflow, and payment options.

A piece of advice from the pros: Keep your fees updated, clear, and visible!

Start Your Own Blog

Your blog will work as your book or portfolio; people want to see how you write and if your style meets their needs.

Make sure you include different types of content so your customers can see how versatile you are or, if you prefer, stick to one kind if you’re only taking specialized orders.

Here are a few reasons why you should start blogging to benefit professionally:

• Attract potential customers. People will get to know your style and decide if you’re a good fit for what they’re looking for.

• Promote your services. Besides displaying your ability to write, you can validate your expertise by blogging about your services, your success stories, and the lessons you’ve learned. Your blog can become your business card.

• Create shareable content. Make sure to choose interesting, current topics that make people want to share your content, include share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

• Engage your audience. Dividing a blog post into 2, 3 or 4 parts and publish them weekly will keep your audience interested. Be careful when choosing this kind of posts; try to write them once you have a decent amount of subscribers.

• Partner with other professionals. Reach other freelancers and start networking! You can always offer them a space in your blog and to be a contributor in theirs.

• Make money from it. Apart from having your freelance writing business, you can diversify and make money from your blog posts if you’re up to writing sponsored content.

You’re Open for Business… Start Writing!

Once you’ve mastered how to create a brand identity and finished everything listed above, it’ll be easier to start getting gigs and requests.

Make your freelance writing business profitable by spending time on promoting your services and keeping your content updated, enjoy your writing and keep in mind that somewhere there’s a person looking for what you’re offering, you just need to catch their attention and be clear about your services.

If you need a little extra help, take this article as a guide and write a list of the things you’ll need before launching your brand and then your freelance writing business is ready to thrive!

If you are already a successful freelance writer and want to share useful insights, please share!