🌷🫧 Spring cleaning for your freelance biz

Happy Tuesday, freelance friends!

We are back to having a real, honest to goodness spring right here in central Virginia and I’m loving the cool mornings and evenings. And after battling a cold over the last week, I’m ready to give some of my freelance marketing outlets a pretty little refresh for the season.

Here’s what I’m working on in case you need a little inspo - and I’d love to hear any updates you’re making as well!

👋 Reintroductions on LinkedIn

I use LinkedIn a lot for connecting with clients and prospects, so last week I did a couple of introduction posts. One was a general “now booking” post listing out the types of clients and projects I work with. And the other was a roundup of some specific topics I’ve been covering for clients recently.

I made some quick and easy templates in Canva and plan to do post my projects/topics list weekly on LI, and then do a monthly booking post for consistency.

Actively posting on LI not only helps you appear in the search algorithm but it also keeps you top-of-mind when existing connections have new projects.

So this spring, I’m recommitting to posting at least once a week on the platform.

Here’s a blog post on how I use LinkedIn to find and attract clients.

🖌️ Portfolio Refresh

I use Contently to host my portfolio for free and my work on there is fairly outdated. When browsing it the other day, I even noticed some of the old links don’t work anymore. Plus, a lot of my clips are old and not representative of my current client list.

So it’s time to go through and really curate my best work and make it sparkling clean. I’m going to clear out the old stuff and instead of randomly adding new things, I’m going to pick 1-2 pieces for each of the topic areas I love to write about.

🗄️ Pitch + Clip Organization

This spring cleaning task falls under the category of “work smarter, not harder.” Whenever I respond to a call for writers, I often have to Google myself and keywords to find relevant work. And a lot of my work (especially on the B2B side) is ghostwritten, so I have to dig through old emails to find my samples.

The same holds true for pitches I’ve sent that either didn’t get a response or didn’t work out. Those are warm leads, so I want to implement a better follow-up plan to capitalize on work I’ve already put into getting clients.

So I’m going to start a spreadsheet of my actual writing samples with topic and audience tags, as well as a calendar for following up with prospects.

Do you have any spring cleaning plans for your freelance biz? I’d love to hear about them! Hit reply and let me know.

In the meantime, happy freelancing!

Lauren

PS: Get freelance opportunities delivered to your inbox every week with the All Things Freelance Writing newsletter! It’s now free and it’s a resource I use regularly! 👇

PPS: When you’re ready, here are 2 ways I can help with your freelance business:

1. Read The Fully Booked Freelance Writer to follow my exact process for keeping a full schedule (whatever that looks like for you).

2. Organize your business with my income tracker.