Kansas City Freelance Writer Liz Craig

The first time a new client offered me a couple hundred bucks upfront, I was surprised. Of course, I accepted the money (My motto: Never say “no” to money a client offers you, unless it’s to carry out a Mob hit.).

But I still wasn’t convinced it was necessary. After all, if you and the client hit it off, a long-term relationship seems probable, and they seem solid enough to pay you for work done, why bother?

Well, here’s why: It’s a gesture of good faith. It’s also a token of their esteem for you. And, like an engagement ring, it’s a symbol of engagement. You’re together, and you expect to stay together—at least until your fees for work done have exhausted the upfront retainer.

So there’s another question: Is the upfront retainer to be taken in addition to hourly fees or not? I favor the idea that it’s a down payment on work to be done, not a signing bonus. My Midwestern work ethic just won’t let me take money for not doing anything. But it also balks at doing anything for no money.

If a client wants to solidify his/her relationship with me, sure, I’ll take a small retainer upfront. If not, that’s okay, too. I’m easy to work with.

One thing I have been doing, though, is asking a new client to sign an “Engagement Agreement” setting out certain understandings about my fees and what types of activities they cover, billing procedures, payment, late payment fees, and so on. It gets everything on the table, so there are no surprises later.

Getting a written agreement from a client is a good idea (and less heavy than the Contract I tried that caused new clients to have instant panic attacks). But my business manager is telling me I still need to:

(a) ask for retainers upfront without blinking;
(b) turn down “spec” jobs, unless they’re for causes I support; and
(b) raise my fees to their pre-recession levels.

But my business manager is me, and I tend to ignore me. So if you’re thinking of hiring a Kansas City freelance writer, better do it now, while my business manager is in sleep mode.

When I have asked business owners who does the writing for their website, ads or brochures, sometimes I get the most alarming answers. Check out the following:

“What do I need to pay a writer for? I write my own copy.”
“Oh, I write my stuff, and my Web guy puts it on the site.”
“Nobody reads anymore, so I use a lot of graphics and Flash.”
“I want my ads to sound like me. I don’t want it to sound high-falutin’.”

Oh, dear. We’ve all seen printed or Web copy that is stunning, but not in a good way.

There’s writing, and there’s typing (pardon me, ghost of Truman Capote). As a professional writer, I have run into a few business owners who had the gift of superb writing skills. But generally, business owners are better at what they do for a living: running their business. And some are not so good at spelling, punctuation, grammar and syntax. Finally, some are very good at “burying the lead,” which means sticking the primary sales point or exciting news in the middle of yawn-producing text.

What can a professional freelance writer do for your business? See if you think these considerations are important –

• You know a lot. Maybe too much. Hire a naive writer.

A professional freelancer sees your business and the services it provides from a naive perspective, that is, as the average person would see it. That writer can ask questions your prospects may have in their heads, ones you never realized were important to answer.

• In other words, what you know can hurt you.
You know hundreds or thousands of factoids about your company. Which ones are relevant to a prospect? Interesting? Compelling? You may not be able to say, because ironically, you know too much about your company. A professional freelance writer knows how to pull a compelling narrative out of all your company info.

• Experience saves time and pays off.
An experienced professional freelance writer has written scores of communications, from ads to brochures to websites, about lots of different types of companies. S/he knows what works and what doesn’t and can create a custom-made approach for your company that will get your phone ringing, or people hitting your website.

• Hiring another brain makes sense.
Is there something amiss in your communications approach? Ask the writer. A professional freelance writer is also a professional thinker, a problem-solver. So brainstorm your brains out. And come up with a great solution.

• Don’t be afraid to reveal yourself in your company’s story.

A professional freelance writer is also a story-teller. Your writer can develop a story or narrative that goes beyond raw facts and interests people in your company. Some businesses try to hide any hint of personality from public view, thinking it’s unprofessional. But that’s not the case. People want to relate to a company on a personal basis. There are lots of companies out there communicating with their audiences in cool, innovative ways. Look at Apple. Personality plus, and professional, too.

• Your money or your time?
Do you spend days trying to find the time to write that Web copy or that ad or blog post? Do you struggle mightily with writing it? And maybe you try to squeeze it in between your actual job duties, which makes you stressed. Let me ask you this: Have you ever thought about how many dollars per hour your time is worth? How about your sanity? An efficient, reasonably priced, effective freelance writer can help you save both.

• Help is at hand.

So next time you’re sweating bullets trying to write your own ad or Web copy, remember that professional writing help is available. Feel that 100-pound weight lifting from your shoulders. Now, don’t you feel happier just thinking of letting go of that hated writing task? Of course you do. Now seek out the help you need, from me or from another professional freelance writer, and get back to your true calling: running your business.

Here’s a great article about how to keep them awake, involved and interested.

Often, I come across a minor proofreading glitch in the Kansas City Star. But seldom does the Star misspell a headline in 40-point type. It’s like screaming “I’m an idiot!” Take a look at this monstrous blunder which appeared in the Green Bay Press-Gazette recently.

“You only have one chance to make a good first impression.”

You’ve heard that before, I’m sure. So if your first impression with potential clients or customers is in print, you don’t want it filled with misspellings, improper punctuation and lousy grammar. To make sure your communications look intelligent and correct, have a professional proofreader eyeball them before they go public.

Proofreading, like thoracic surgery or window-washing on tall buildings, is something you don’t want to leave to an amateur. No offense, but that includes most people. Heck, you have a business to run. You’re in a hurry. You make a few mistakes.

I worked for a swell ad agency in Omaha awhile back. One of our clients was a local KFC co-op, and we produced window signs for them. As I passed by the window of the production department, I noticed a large KFC sign posted there for all to see. It read as follows:

BISUITS AND GRAVY

I asked the production manager what a “bisuit” was, and when she noticed the error, she blanched. She said, “We just printed 500 of those.” Nobody had proofed it before it went to the printer, and the agency had to eat the cost. Oops.

Correct spelling, grammar and punctuation are vital in every communication you send out. That includes e-mails, postcards, brochures, catalogs, letters, advertisements, TV spots or videos, signs, newsletters, business cards, point-of-sale pieces, and whatever else you use to promote your business.

Let’s put it this way: when prospective clients or customers look on the Web for a service you (and competitors) provide, which business will s/he choose to do business with—one whose website is filled with misspelled, poorly punctuated, poorly written text, or one with perfect spelling, grammar and punctuation? All things being equal, I’m betting the customer will go with the one whose website has perfect spelling, grammar and punctuation.

That’s because taking care with the communications you send out absolutely screams, “Professional!” It suggests you take care to do a good job for your customers.

Does correct punctuation really matter? Look at the difference a simple comma makes in the meanings of the following two questions:

Q1: What’s that in the road ahead?

Q2: What’s that in the road, a head?

Point made? Every communication coming from your business should be passed under the eagle eye of a professional proofreader. Even if you’re pretty good at English, it’s hard to proof your own writing. You miss things. Hire a professional proofreader. It’s relatively cheap, and it’s better than looking like a doofus in print. Right?

Did I mention I’m a professional proofreader? Hmm. Good to know. Call me at 913.236.7595, and let’s chat about your proofreading needs.

What’s the best way to rise in the Google page rankings? That’s the question I get asked. And I always say, “Blogging frequently and relevantly.” So why don’t I follow my own advice? Well, lately I’ve been busy with paying work. But that’s no excuse.

The project of this week may be done next week. The gaping maw of living expenses, like Seymour’s steroidal plant, Audrey, keeps screaming, “FEED ME!” And if you don’t keep blogging or otherwise changing content on your website, new clients might not find you on the Internets. So I say to all freelancers and independent contractors, even if you’ve got paying work today, keep on a-blogging to get work tomorrow.

You remember the familiar story about the ant and the grasshopper. When the grasshopper had collected enough food to feed him for a day, he kicked back under a big tree on a fallen leaf patio chair with a tall green grass Slushy close at hand, and now and then he would scratch out a happy tune on a miniscule violin. While he was hanging out, he observed an ant scurrying around feverishly, out of the anthill to forage, back with a leaf or a bug on his head to the anthill, and then out again to forage.

After observing about 30 of the ant’s round-trips, the grasshopper yawned and said, “Hey, ant. You’ll work yourself to death that way, dummy. Why not chill out, like me?”

The ant came to a halt, the leaf on his head quivering, and addressed the grasshopper.

“Well, grasshopper, I’ll tell you why,” the ant said, in a rather sharp tone. “All of us foragers keep working to gather enough food to feed the ant colony through the winter. When it gets cold, and there’s no food to forage, we’ll be inside the anthill, cozy and well-fed. Meanwhile, you’ll be freezing your fat rear and starving out here because you’re lazy and short-sighted. And that stupid fiddle won’t help you one bit!”

The grasshopper laughed and said, “Oh, fiddle-de-dee! I have enough food for today. I can’t worry about tomorrow, let alone winter!”

The ant scurried away, calling back over his shoulder, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, grasshopper!”

And so blustery winter came, and one day the grasshopper, shivering and hungry, rapped on the anthill door. The industrious ant opened the door, and the grasshopper begged to be let in to warm up and get some food. “Go away, freeloader! I warned you!” screamed the ant, slamming the door on one of the grasshopper’s antennae and snapping it off. Then, just as the ant had predicted, the grasshopper froze his fat rear and starved to death.

Moral: If you have a blog, keep blogging. Because you may have paying work today, but who knows about tomorrow? And you can’t count on ants to help you.

This time of year, some people are slammed with work to be wrapped up by year’s end, but some people are bored stiff with little to do until after the holidays. Which situation applies to you?

If you’re swamped with projects and wondering if you’ll reach December 31 without going stark raving mad, I sympathize. If you’re twiddling your thumbs until January 1, I can relate. But here are a few things you can do instead of sharpening pencils down to a nub and surfing the Net.

1. Make a To-Do List
Have you neglected some projects around the house? Little, niggly things that kind of bother you but aren’t extremely horrible? Like a loose doorknob or a burned-out light bulb in the garage? Put ‘em on the to-do list. Oh, yes—then do them.

Examples include:
• Clean grody-looking switchplates around the house.
• Organize your bureau drawers.
• Sort through your clothes, and donate things you don’t wear to Goodwill.
• Write a sweet note to your mom or dad, your significant other, your son or daughter, or someone else you love or appreciate.

2. Read
If you’re like me, your coffee table is littered with more magazines than you could possibly read. Pick up one or two and enjoy a few articles. Or how about making it at least to the middle of that library book on your nightstand before you have to return it?

3. Phone a friend
Is it kosher to call a person your “friend” if you never contact them except at Christmastime, with a few hurried lines on a greeting card? Why not renew your friendship with a phone call? Cards are cold; calls are warm.

4. Play mind games
Your brain, like your car, needs a tune-up now and than. Online, you can find dozens of free “Brain Games” that will help you improve your memory. And those games are fun, especially as you see your scores improve with practice. Get thee behind me, senility!

5. Take a walk
When my dad was stuck for ideas, he would do what he called “The Hat Trick.” It meant putting on your hat and going out for awhile. Sitting at a computer all day dulls the senses. Your fingers and eyes are active, but what about your glutes and quads—not to mention your creative mind? When weather permits, go out for a walk, even if it’s only around the block. Your mind will be refreshed, and you may bring back some cool new ideas or solutions to problems, too. G’wan, get out there!

Ever been on a blind date with someone who chatters incessantly about himself or herself, never bothering to ask a question about YOU? As the unrelenting drone of “blah-blah-blah-me-me-me” anesthetizes your brain, you plot to escape out the bathroom window. You wonder if your date would notice.

It’s amazing, but some companies sound like that boorish blind date, using business communications that “we” on their prospects. They unintentionally turn off potential customers by focusing exclusively on themselves. For example:

“Here at Acme Corporation, Inc., the Midwest’s largest widget manufacturing company, we produce 3.2 million widgets daily, and we ship them to more than 2,300 major customers across the nation with our fleet of 250 tractor-trailers.

“We have won more than 40 “Widgie”® awards from the Widget Association of America (WAA) for excellent safety records in our state-of-the-art production facility.”

As a potential widget customer, all I hear is “we-we-we.” What about “me-me-me?”

I’ll do business with a company that offers me ways to solve a problem, save money, or find a better way to get something done—not a company that just crows about how great they are. I’m thinking of buying widgets from Apogee Corporation. Their brochure says:

“You have a problem: leaky dolyflappers. The solution: Apogee customized widgets.

“Wouldn’t it be great if you could eliminate the safety hazard of dolyflapper leaks on your plant floor and the time and labor costs of cleaning them up? Now you can, with Apogee customized widgets.

“Customers told us their number one headache is leaking dolyflappers. Those leaks occur because most widgets are manufactured to such wide tolerances that they can’t possibly prevent leaks in every application. But Apogee widgets can, because they are custom-manufactured to your dolyflapper specifications. . . .”

As a potential customer, I think, “Hey. Leaking dolyflappers IS my biggest headache! These folks really know my business! I’m calling Apogee!”

To gain new customers or clients—

• Communicate using less “we” and more “you.”
• Be interested in learning about potential customers’ challenges.
• Develop a dialogue with them, as you would with a fascinating blind date.
• Find a way to meet their specific challenges, and
• Tell them about it in a compelling way.

Now, that could be the start of something big!

A prominent communication professional asks,
“Does this sententence make me look dumb?”

Well, yes. You need a professional proofreader to make you look as smart and professional as you are.

You might be the world’s greatest authority in marketing, communication, sales or Web 2.0, but if your blog posts, letters, ads or articles are shot through with errors in grammar, punctuation and word usage, well, you don’t look so authoritative.

Find a proofreader who can go over your writing before it hits the press, the Web or TV. (BTW, if you’re a TV news station’s graphics person, please have someone look over your work before it airs. I’ve seen some real knee-slappers in photo captions.)

Being a professional proofreader is being a consistent proofreader. If you allow a comma after the last item in a series one time, then you don’t allow it farther down the page, you’re not a professional proofreader.

Oh, yes, there are some cases where, in order to preserve the meaning of a phrase or sentence, you might use a comma before the final item in a list (Like “Christmas trees, decorations, plum pudding, and a chance to wheedle Santa for useless gifts”). But in most cases, modern usage says, “Don’t.”

One thing that buffaloes many writers is the proper usage of the hyphen, the en-dash and the em-dash.

A hyphen is used for a lot of adjectival word combos before nouns, as in “cost-effective approach,” “after-tax dollars,” and “post-haircut depression.” It’s also used for other wordbreaks, like “pooh-pooh” and “T-Rex.”

An en-dash is hardly ever used. Poor thing; it has an identity crisis. It can’t decide whether to be a hyphen or its longer, more popular cousin, the em-dash. The em-dash is widely used to indicate emphasis or a sudden shift of thought. As in “She went to the door—but was the dog in or out?—and turned the knob.” It should have no spaces before or after.

You may have noticed I’m avoiding talking about the en-dash, because it’s kind of silly. Also, it’s hard to make one on a Mac. But okay, it’s used in very specialized ways: between periods of time when you might otherwise use to, as in “The years 2001–2003.” Or between game scores, as in “The Eagles whupped the Chiefs 31–0 yesterday.”

In case you’re wondering where the names “em-dash” and “en-dash” came from, they came from the arcane world of typography. As you might expect, an em-dash is the width of an “m,” and an en-dash is the width of an “n.”

If you’re not a very good proofreader—or even if you think you are—get another good proofreader to check your writing before it appears anywhere. It’s easy to miss your own mistakes, because you just don’t see them.

Professional proofreading is one of the most cost-effective things you can buy to make yourself look smart and professional. In fact, it’s cheap, considering the damage to your image an error-ridden message can do. So give me a call. I’ll be glad to give you a ballpark estimate on making you look like the smartest person in any room.

Advertising was so simple back in the day. Just put together a combo of print ads, TV and radio spots, maybe a sprinkling of direct mail, and you were done. Expensive, and results were hard to judge, unless you had some mechanism to measure direct response (common in direct mail, but not so much in the other media).

Now, it’s simple again. Throw out all the traditional advertising and focus on social media marketing. Get your company on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo. Get yourself a website, mix it all up, and you’re set. Right? Well, not so fast there. You have to have a plan. Yes, the sad news is that you need a social media marketing plan, just as you used to have an advertising or marketing plan. You have to have a strategy and stuff.

And where above, I said it’s simple — well, it’s not. You probably need to incorporate some traditional media in your marketing plan, too. Bummer, huh? Depends on how you look at it.

Lots and lots of people are on social media for business and pleasure alike. So you can reach lots of people there. But to reach the right people, the ones who will buy what you’re selling, social media can either be a shotgun or a laser-guided missile. Not to be too martial, here, but it is a war out there — for your attention, your interest, your dollars.

If you do only social media for business, you’ll be missing a big slice of the pie. Direct mail still works about the same way it always has. If you put together a good deal with an enticing design and copy, you can count on about a 2% response rate, which is good in DM. This is great for businesses cutting a wide swath through a zip code or a target audience.

Figure out who your ideal customer/client is, then choose your print vehicle. Your selection of magazines, newspapers or inserts can home in on a certain demographic or psychographic group you want to do business with.

For example, newspapers tend to attract older readers, so there is an excellent chance your senior-oriented business can get a response from a newspaper ad or advertorial in a special section. Check out the schedules on those with the paper’s rep. A weekly entertainment tabloid like the Pitch or Ink attracts a whole different demographic — younger, more likely to seek out funky new restaurants and new entertainment venues, more likely to be in the market for cool new clothes to wear when they go out.

Radio and TV ads are more expensive, but again, different stations attract different audiences. So if you want classical music listeners (upscale, better incomes, more need for luxury goods or senior products), check the demos of your local classical music station and the cost, and see if you think it’s worth a shot. If your ideal customer is a suburban mom, maybe you want to advertise on a soft rock station.

But let’s look at what businesses are actually doing today. A lot of companies are starting with just a website and wondering, now that I have a Web presence, what do I do to get found on the Internet? Well, you can carefully construct your messages to appeal to your most likely buyers. And you can get to the top, or close to the top, of the Google page rankings when users go there to find a business or service. How? By blogging on your website.

Blogging for business is THE best way to get higher Google page rankings. If you’re at the top of page 1, you have an excellent chance of snagging the user’s attention. The farther down the page, or the farther away from the first page you are, the less your chances. So don’t you want to be at the top? Sure.

Blogging for business is rather odd. It’s not like you can just sit down and dash off random thoughts off the top of your head, like, “What I had for lunch today, and how it tasted.” You have to deliver compelling, useful information, change it regularly, and also incorporate keywords that a user might Google in order to find you.

What would YOU Google to find you? Make a list of those keywords and use a tool like Google Analytics to find out how common and popular those terms are. Choose only words that directly pertain to your business, that people would commonly use to find you. The name of your blog is terrifically important, too. Don’t make it “Rooster Tales” if your business is die-making, for instance. The title should contain keywords, too.

Blogging for business is information, yes, and it’s also a mechanical process of utilizing keywords to get page rankings. If they don’t see you, they can’t find you, and then they can’t buy from you, can they?

Blogging for business is something most company owners either don’t have the time or desire to do. So typically, they will either hire a freelance writer to write their blog posts, or they’ll rope some junior employee into doing it when they have time. Which turns out to be virtually never, since everybody these days is already doing two jobs to save the company money. Or they might hire a blogging company that offers package deals. But beware. Some of them employ foreigners who speak English, but not colloquial English. So when they do your blogging for business, it tends to feel stilted and repetitive. Probably not worth the money, even though the package is pretty cheap.

So if you think blogging for business is the way to go, hire a professional to do a bang-up job for you. Land on the first page of Google, where potential clients/customers will find you, and supplement your blogging efforts with other traditional advertising ingredients mentioned above as needed. Hire someone who can figure out the right mix for your business. Like an experienced freelance writer who knows how to do traditional advertising and social media for business. That’s the way to reach the most potential customers where they are looking for you, whether it’s in print, broadcast or on the Web.