Friday, July 4, 2014

Make an Action Plan

It's freelance Friday here at  the 'real' Beth. I very recently decided to offer freelance writing and editing services, so I can be at home with my daughter. The prospect of essentially starting my own business was terrifying. After years of being an author, I understood I would need some sort of business plan, but I didn't even know where to begin. So I spent days researching it on Google, and figured out I needed an action plan. I wrote down goals. The action plan should help me achieve them. Your action plan should include things like a list of services to offer, price points, equipment needed (you may already have this), your "unique selling point" (what makes you really stand out from the competition), and a marketing plan. I realized someone looking to hire business writers might not be lured in by my purple YA/romance book blog and quickly started a second blog with new topics. My marketing plan includes building an actual website (not just a blog), ads, and any free promotion I can get. (For example, I'm going to get on lists of service providers for indie authors as manuscript editing is a service I offer). Your marketing plan should work with the service you're providing and be possible to accomplish. And it's a good idea to be able to track the results. I'm still working on this.
Do you do freelance work? Do you use action plans or marketing plans? What marketing tools have been the most helpful?

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