Eight Tips for Finding Corporate Writing Clients

Leslie O’Flahavan, E-WRITEASJA 2011New York - May 1, 2011

Be the whale

• Eat the krill

• Befriend the dolphins

• Get to know the HR folks at SeaWorld

Eat the krill

1. Participate in online and face-to-face communities

• Don’t hide behind your monitor. • Go to at least one face-to-face meeting per month.• Join 4:

1 org. for writers – International Association of Business Communicators

1 org. for your subject area – Education Writers Association

1 org. for prospects – International Society for Technology in Education

1 org. for your community – Greater Silver Spring Chamber of Commerce

2. Build a detailed online presence

• Site, blog, social media• Samples, portfolio, recommendations,

methods• Sticky stuff about you, the personal and the

professional

3. Write for free, but only for yourself

• It’s called marketing

• All the free stuff you write – blog, comments, posts, articles – raises your profile

• Try to reuse everything

Befriend the dolphins

4. See yourself as part of a team

Be prepared to:

• Bring in other writers

• Form coalitions – across disciplines

• Recommend people with design, project management, data-crunching skills

5. Use tools and software to manage projects and enable collaboration

• Recommend tools and software to make projects easier

• Know how to use the tools your clients have

• Be like Andrea: GoogleDocs, Dropbox, and conference calls on Mondays at 11 a.m.

Get to know the HR folks at SeaWorld

6. Develop a “tasting menu” for your writing services

• Peel off a part of a prospective job.

• Offer try-on pricing.

7. Get comfortable with the long sales cycle and short turn-around time

• It’s hard to tell which sales efforts are working, even when they are

• There’s a lot happening on the client’s side while she’s trying to work with you

• Once you land the job, slow turns to fast

8. Be open to unusual projects

• It’s not all annual reports and quarterly newsletters …

• Unusual projects for solid clients are a safe choice

Thanks!

Leslie O’Flahavan, E-WRITE

www.ewriteonline.com

www.WritingMatters.typepad.com

Leslie@ewriteonline.com

Office: 301-989-9583

Cell: 240-472-1179