Beyond Words

It’s self-promotion time again, and this time it’s more about sprucing up our image. Let’s look at it as a sort of spring cleaning-tiding up, taking care of neglected things and putting a little plant food into your website, resume, Facebook page and blog.

Here’s what I’ve done in the last few days:

• I’m planning a new Facebook page for my writing business, to allow for wider publication of my writing services.

• I just ordered new business cards with a name for my writing business: Beyond Words. I want to expand my offerings to clients beyond merely writing content, or blogs or other publications.  I’m primarily a writer, a wordsmith, but I can offer a perspective on marketing, creative ideas and other brainstorming possibilities.  I want to show my versatility and allow potential clients to think of my services with a broader view.

• Updating this blog to fit with the new name. You may have noticed that the blog name is now Beyond Words, though the web address still has A Page of My Own-which requires a little more work to change. My FB page will have Beyond Words as it’s name, so there’s another bit of consistency.

• I currently use Twitter under my own name and that will have to stay. The key to remaining visible is to … remain visible-so people know who you are, how to find you, and what you do. I will add the new name to my profile so that it begins to draw associations.

• I’m talking about this change..here with you and I’ll announce it on FB when I get my new business cards.  There will be other ‘announcements’ as I go along to draw some attention and let people know what I’m up to. The goal is to enhance my  connections and bring in more clients.

• Today I played around with my LinkedIn account and added a few new connections. I’m moving more slowly there because one can only do so many things at a time. But, I will need to add the updates there very soon, in order to not  look disorganized. Again, the need to be consistent.

These were all fairly basic steps, but pulled together they look bigger. It was simple really and necessary at this stage of my business development. Next I need to step back and review everything; are they all linked together? Will people be confused? Is there another step I haven’t considered yet? I’m thinking about setting my blog up to a static front page with a blog link. This gives searchers or first-timers a chance to see the freelance writing services I offer. It’s in the planning stages.

Going too slow isn’t good but going too fast and getting sloppy could be detrimental to a business image. There are always little chores we can schedule to help improve our blogs, our networking, our potential clients. The next step is to review blog posts, check for malfunctioning links and misspelled words.  Sloppy blogging will not win me new blog clients! With more time I can go in and add a few strategic keywords on posts I think are more valuable from driving traffic.

What kinds of tasks do you schedule for your ‘job’ maintenance?  Feel free to share some of our tips here.