Is there room for me in your network?

I recently met a copywriter at a business breakfast I was speaking at and she was keen to talk to me after the event.  She was looking for more ways to get clients and was wondering if I accepted copywriters into my Virtual Assistant network.  I told her I would send her some suggestions that would help her with her business and then I realised that it might help some who read this blog as well.

We met at the breakfast last Tuesday and you were wondering if my Virtual Assistant network would be suitable for a Copywriter.  It is in some ways but we don’t get a lot of requests for that kind of work. More secretarial but a small number of my team do provide copywriting services when the opportunity comes along. We do get people needing briefs, blogs and websites written for them.

But I want to suggest to you options that are open to you. Do you spend much time on the Internet?  Because I feel it’s important you do.

I believe there are 2 major audiences out there these days – those you meet face to face, as in the breakfast last week, and those you meet online and probably will never see face to face.

You have a website but it really doesn’t demonstrate your ongoing commitment to writing.  I would encourage you to start writing a blog explaining the benefits of having a copywriter and sharing case study stories of clients you’ve assisted or know other copywriters have assisted.  You don’t have a newsletter either – how do you build a list of subscribers or a database?  If you had a blog though you wouldn’t really need to worry about a newsletter as the blog would be effective.

Another way to gain attention online is to join some discussion forums. You don’t have to chat in them every day but it’s important that you are mixing and mingling with two types of people – your peers, and your target audience.

If you go to www.yahoogroups.com and do a keyword search for ‘copywriter’ you should find discussion forums where others like you have discussions about how to run a business like yours, find clients, and what’s happening globally in your industry. And then start seeking out your target audience.  Who are they? Who have you serviced before? Check to see if those type of people also have discussion forums and join them and get to know the members but don’t blatantly do promotions, rather just offer advice as it is sought.

I belong to over 30 discussion forums, 20 of which are via yahoogroups and others are board type forums through ning.com or other avenues.  www.linkedin.com is the world’s largest business database to my knowledge and would be worth joining – if you go to my blog at www.soho-life.com and search on linkedin you’ll find hints and tips on how to set up an account and make use of this system.  www.twitter.com and www.facebook.com are more possible avenues for finding clients and associates – my links are below and I encourage you to look at what I’ve done and how I use them.

I hope this gives you the reader, some worthwhile food for thought as I’m sure it gave the lady I was sending this information to.