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Articles About Writing Better

Good, hard writing at its finest. Tips for writing efficiency, systems for best practices, and generating good ideas.

How to Write for a Business

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How To Write For A Business - Sarah Greesonbach - Five Figure WriterIf you’ve clicked around much, you’ve heard me squawking about how to write for a business for a few weeks now. First touting the lucrative benefits on The Write Life, then a free webinar with Andrea Emerson on how to get started, and then today on the Horkey Handbook.

Now, all this talk about making a great income doing great writing is well and good, but most writers don’t have experience writing for a B2B audience. You can make your own experience, but there are some basics you need to get a grip on so that the spec work you develop is as compelling as possible.

Today, I’m going to dig a bit deeper into the nuts and bolts of B2B writing to help you get your head on straight and write for a business. So, please let me introduce three important business concepts for writing for businesses:

Write for a Business Concept One: Understand the Hierarchy of Business Needs

The mindset of writing for a consumer is very different from writing for a business. While consumers have certain needs — to get a deal, to solve a problem, to avoid a danger — businesses have others. Fortunately, Seth Godin put this into an easy-to-remember hierarchy of business needs:

  • Avoiding risk
  • Avoiding hassle
  • Gaining praise
  • Gaining power
  • Having fun
  • Making a profit

Every business is motivated by different variations on these six goals, and this helps you write for a business in two ways:

First, you’ll use this list to inform how you approach writing when you write on behalf of a business. You address the business’s customers need to avoid risk and hassle and have fun and make a profit, etc.

Second, you’ll use this list to inform how you approach a business to write for them. You show them they are avoiding risk by working with you to market their company effectively and having fun and making a profit because you’re such a great writer, etc.

Write for a Business Concept Two: Don’t Be Afraid to Come Back to the Bottom Line

Last week I had a phone call in which the client explicitly told me that they’re investing in their content to help them grow their revenue. And here’s the thing: even if your client doesn’t say this out loud, this is what they’re thinking.

So while “making a profit” was already mentioned in the business hierarchy above, it’s worth it’s own bullet point to encourage you to think about your writing from this perspective.

Even if your client doesn’t say it out loud, they’re thinking about the ROI of hiring you.

It’s very American of us, but business writing always comes back to the bottom line: What the business does for its customer and how you can communicate that in the most compelling format, tone, and style possible.

As you write a white paper, article, or case study, you must keep this mindset at the top of your mind and every word you write must refer back to the bottom line.

How To Write For A Business - Sarah Greesonbach - Five Figure Writer

Write for a Business Concept Three: Understand How Businesses Are Structured

If you’re like most people, you’ve been an employee all your life. You know that HR is in charge of benefits and if you have any question about your salary you should check with payroll. But other than that, we don’t really think about what a business wants and what it does beyond how our job plays into it.

Every department within a business has its own identity

In reality, every department within a business has its own identity. If you want to be hired by one section, you need to understand its values and its place within the company. Here’s a very, very simple and basic breakdown of the different departments and stakeholders within a typical corporation that you can use as a jumping board for researching potential clients and B2B writing markets:

How to Write for a Business - Sarah Greesonbach - Five Figure Writer

What you write and who you target will depend on the type of writing you do and the client you prefer to work with. Understanding that target client’s motivations and place within the company will give you deeper insights into that client’s specific business needs.

For example, since HR is often seen as a necessary expense within a company, the department is likely more concerned with gaining praise and avoiding risk than it is with making a profit, while sales is definitely concerned with making a profit over all the other factors on the hierarchy of business needs. How those departments interact with others will determine how you can talk about them, to them, and to their stakeholders.

Again, this insight helps you in two ways:

First, you’ll want to identify which groups you prefer to work with within this organization chart. You may be more comfortable with HR or accounting, or you prefer to work with leadership directly.

Second, when you’ve identified the person within the company you prefer to work with, you need to understand their motivations and challenges based on how they interact with other departments within the company. In general, this means understanding how that department reflects its value to the C-Suite and how it works interdepartmentally to accomplish its goals.

Not Quite B2B-Ready?

These three concepts can go a long way toward getting your feet wet in the B2B content world. However, if you’re going from newbie to B2B, this post alone won’t help you feel confident about writing for businesses. The best way to do it is to do it (AKA create homework for yourself and practice, practice, practice) and continue to research and try new things. Check out these awesome B2B writing resources:

Ask Away… and Check Out the B2B Writing Institute

You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers. Let me know in the comments below if this post leaves something to be desired and I’ll add it!

And of course, I’d be silly not to mention The B2B Writing Institute, which explores the art and science of B2B writing with a forever free foundations course.

How Normal People Make $150 an Hour Writing

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When you first start freelancing, you’re grateful just to get out of “working at Whole Foods” territory of about $15-25 an hour.

After all, when you do your salaried employment math, it comes out to about that much after taxes, right? And who ever heard of a writer making $150 an hour writing?

Pish posh. (Yes, pish posh.)

Freelancers should never charge less than $50 an hour for their services. And I’m going to take it a step further and say that $50 an hour is the minimum you should ever charge. Like, even for your best friend or your best friend’s boss’s nephew.

How Normal People Make $150 an Hour Writing - Five Figure Writer - Sarah Greesonbach

I say $50 minimum (and up to $150 and above) not as a fancy, 40-years expertise, award-winning freelance writer. I say this as a former English teacher (with the matching sad salary) who learned how to write about different topics in different formats using the Internet and a few library books.

Success as a freelance writer is possible with hard work, persistence, and writing talent — and today I’d like to share the four fundamentals I’ve picked up over the last two years that help me make $150 an hour writing (or more).

Because at the end of the day, what’s awesome is not my hourly income rate. What’s awesome is that my hourly income rate allows me to work 10-15 hour weeks, take doctor’s appointments when I need to, take days off when I need to, and generally write my own script for what I do in the day.

Isn’t that why you started freelancing? Isn’t that why we all work a job in the first place (“working for the weekend” comes to mind)?

Well, freedom isn’t free. It comes from upping your hourly income so you can spend as many (or as few) hours working as you want or need to in a given week.

Let me put this out there: this post is mostly a soft-shoe for the Make $150 an Hour Writing mastercourse coming out in May. However, a discerning eye could totally read this post, do some extra research, and DIY the crud out of this topic without needing video, instructables, webinars, and candor from me.

So, here goes. The four pillars of making $150 an hour writing that lets you work the way you want to work:

Positioning Your Attitude & Pricing Like a Professional

First, to the dismay of all the literal learners in the group, you need to accept that high-income earners don’t charge by the hour. Like, at all. We charge by value or we charge by project. We exchange expertise for money, not time for money.

We charge by value or we charge by project. We exchange expertise for money, not time for money.

The name of the course still stands, though, because we’re focusing on what you’re earning, not charging. I earn $150+ for my hours of writing, but I never bill $150+ per hour (and frankly I don’t know any clients who would pay that).

I have a few retainer clients for whom I bill a low hourly rate for meetings and very time-focused things when I’m stuck in that corporate box, but otherwise I charge exclusively by project rates. It’s better for my clients and it’s better for me.

Making this transition can be difficult. The world runs hourly, even though they’re all stressed out because of it. But when you really buy into the value of project or value based pricing, you simply can’t go back. Start with this free eBook from FreshBooks and go from there.

PS The course covers way more (like actually transitioning clients into a project rate), but it’s too much to get into for a simple blog post.

Writing Quickly (Not Badly)

This principle actually proves the first principle. When you charge based on value or the project, when you work faster, you make more money.

Read that again.

You’re rewarded for being fast and efficient. It’s the American Dream.

When you charge based on value or the project — working faster means making more money. You’re rewarded for being fast and efficient. It’s the American Dream.

Compare that to the corporate world where finishing early means getting more work assigned to you (for no more money), or in the freelance hourly billing world where working quickly nets you less income because you can’t bill as much.

The trick here, of course, is that you’ve got to be a fast and efficient writer. However, the fact that you are already freelancing means you know how to hustle and work your hardest whenever possible. How can you write faster? By taking care of a few productivity basics that I’ll dig into in the course:

  • Writing based on templates and outlines (such as the classic 5-paragraph essay from high school)
  • Understanding and applying your unique flow state factors so you’re “in the mood to write” more frequently
  • Using technology to help you move through your work faster (like FreshBooks, Google Drive, and Calendly)
  • Eating better to enhance concentration and mood (no, seriously)

How Normal People Make $150 an Hour Writing - Five Figure Writer - Sarah Greesonbach

Getting Clips & Crafting a Designer Portfolio

For established writers, getting clips and crafting a designer portfolio is more nuanced. You’ve written for clients and they don’t want you to link to their site because it’s ghostwritten, or you have tons of clips and you don’t know how to organize them in the most professional way possible.

In this part of the course we’ll talk about brainstorming spec work, creative strategies for getting published in this contributor-happy world, and designing a portfolio that helps you land clients you want instead of the clients that you’re getting now.

The goal is to remove barriers between pitching clients and them saying “Heck, yes, this is a writer we want to work with.”

All in all, the goal is to get your portfolio up and running and as professional as possible so that you remove barriers between pitching clients and them saying “Heck, yes, this is a writer we want to work with.” Here’s a great collection of resources on getting your writing portfolio up to speed:

Finding Clients & Treating Them Right

All the preparation and project pricing in the world can’t help you make your goal income if you don’t actually find clients and keep them. That’s the focus of the final week of the course where we’ll outline all the different ways to find clients (from content mills to elite networking) and highlight which are most worth your time.

I can’t stress enough how important this part of the process is. If you attract clients who want to call you at all hours of the day, they could never pay you enough to make up for the disruption in your lifestyle. Finding and keeping the right ones is a huge skill to master.

I’ve already covered where to find these mythical high-paying clients. In the course we’ll expand on that concept and put more juice in the “Oh, I never thought of finding a client that way!” engine with specific examples for specific niches.

Most importantly, we’ll also look at how to maintain relationships with your clients to give them the experience that goes along with a higher writer price tag. Like, how to make better conversation in those awkward first 5-minutes of a call and how to get comfortable being yourself (and reaping the rewards of being yourself) in your business.

Make 150 an Hour Writing - Mastercourse by Sarah Greesonbach

Take the Next Step

If this resonates with you, I want to invite you to download the course summary and consider signing up for the real-time course.

It starts May 16th (enrollment closes May 15th) and runs four weeks through June 10th, 2016. It’s all by email, video, and PDF download, so you can complete the work on your own time and then catch up with the class for live Friday webinars. The lessons take your talented, normal self through the rigamarole of strategic freelance writing and into a place where you can maximize your hourly income and work on your terms.

Until then, tell me: What are you charging right now? How much do you think you should be charging?

 

Get Better at Business With These 4 Psychological Shifts

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Get Better At Business With These 4 Psychological Shifts - Five Figure Writer - Sarah Greesonbach

Everyone reading this post has benefited from experiencing a psychological shift in the past. Think back to the time you realized you really could float in water, ride a bike, or do math homework by yourself. One minute, you didn’t believe it was possible… the next minute, you were doing it, and couldn’t imagine your life without it!

The longer I freelance, the more deeply I understand that your psychological and emotional state has more to do with your success in business than pretty much anything else.

How you talk about yourself, your work, and your clients will determine how much you can charge, who will work with you, and who you will want to work for. It’s all inter-connected, and — the best news of all — it’s all malleable according to the information you consume and the habits you practice.

So, today I’d like to share my favorite four (actionable) attitude adjustments that can help you be more efficient in the psychological and emotional side of freelancing.

“Make your choice the best one.”

This story had me absolutely speechless when I first read it. First, because it was actually a piece of good advice coming from a crappy Self or Women’s Health-style magazine. Second, because I knew right away that it was a powerful lesson for my career and life in general.

The story goes something like this: a woman was a creative director in charge of the cover of a large women’s magazine like Cosmo or Vanity Fair. Every month she’d have to choose two final covers from a set of several covers, and eventually choose one cover out of the two final options.

When the time came to choose between two covers — let’s say a green one and a gray one — it’s not like she could make a bad choice. Both covers had a lot of work go into them from the finest photographers and stylists in the industry. Both had pros, both had cons. It was almost certainly a 50-50 split.

So, what she did next was genius: she picked one. And then she made it the best one by the way she talked about it.

The cover could have been green or grey. But she chose green. And you know why? Because the timing of the magazine was spring and green is a very spring color. Green also plays up the color of the magazine font, making it easier to read. Green was also the color of one of the featured outfits inside the article, and hey, five years ago we also did a green cover so it would be a nice throwback.

We all make choices every. Single. Day. Decide that the choice you’ve made is indeed the best one, even if you could have chosen differently. Then, magically, it will actually become the better choice!

All of these reasons for picking a green cover are true — but they are also not true; they could easily have been reasons for the grey cover to be the chosen one. It’s all in how you present it and carry out your decision.

Use This In Your Business

We make choices in our businesses every. Single. Day. But sometimes we also get caught up in worrying about whether or not a choice was a good one, or, if something bad happens, we think back to that choice and start doubting ourselves.

Forget all that. When you make a choice, decide that the choice you’ve made is indeed the best one, even if you could have chosen differently. Then, magically, it will actually become the better choice!

Own it. Don’t dally with the decision and wring your hands after you make it. Once you’ve decided (assuming there’s no threat to your business or you don’t receive new information and need to make a new decision) make your decision the best one by the way you talk and think about it after the fact.

“Level the playing field.”

Another psychological minefield in business is the art of competitive advantage. For many of us, we read a writer’s bio and get intimidated at their degree, their school, their experience, or their press photo. We think through all our weaknesses — being sick, being new at this, coming from a completely different career background — and we talk ourselves out of being confident because there’s so many other people out there doing this freelance thing.

The things you think are downsides can actually be positives if you position them correctly.

Well, there’s good news: it’s all in your mind! The things you think are downsides can actually be positives if you position them correctly. It’s just a matter of deciding to level the playing field in your mind and turn your perceived negatives into obvious positives.

Use This In Your Business

Whatever you’ve got, own it. Position it as an advantage, because once you do so, it is an advantage.

Do you have children at home? You’ll be an especially attractive option for clients who also have children at home. You can identify with them and be extra flexible when scheduling meetings (or having meetings with screaming babies in the background). Don’t apologize for that or try to downplay that fact — embrace it and your clients will follow your lead.

Do you have experience outside of writing, such as teaching or account management? Then you have a diversified background and can help your clients educate their audience or give their clients a better experience on the corporate side. Don’t harp on your lack of applicable experience — explain how you’ll use that experience to deliver the highest quality project now.

We’re all unique little snowflakes, and that uniqueness can be translated into a competitive advantage if you only choose to position it that way.

I could easily scare clients off by talking about being a teacher, an editor, and a writer in my past life. Or I could weave it into an About Me page that brings all of those careers into the context of being a seasoned writer with agency and government contracting experience. We’re all unique little snowflakes, and that uniqueness can be translated into a competitive advantage if you only choose to position it that way.

“‘Busy’ = Wasting Time.”

Let’s just drop the mic with this quote from UC Berkeley’s Christine Carter:

“Busyness is not a marker of intelligence, importance, or success. Taken to an extreme, it is much more likely a marker of conformity or powerlessness or fear.”

This is a message we all need to get over and over again: busy means you’re spinning your wheels and you don’t actually know what you’re doing. It’s not a sign of progress or growth or success. It’s just plain time mismanagement mixed with bad boundaries (AKA I can’t say no to anything, so I don’t feel like I am making progress on my real priorities).

Instead of viewing busyness as a sign of significance, top performers interpret busyness as an indication of wasted energy and they’re doing everything they can to stop it. But the trick is actively making this psychological shift from “busy” to “priorities and non-priorities.”

Use This In Your Business

The next time you write, think, or say “I’m sorry, I’ve been so busy lately…” stop. Think about what’s really happening and what you’re actually doing with your time. Use language that matches what you’ve really been doing and stop using busy as a bucket of paint that white washes you from responsibilities. If you stop using busyness as an excuse, you’ll start evaluating why you feel so busy… and hopefully take some steps to eliminate that sense of frenzy from your everyday.

If you stop using busyness as an excuse, you’ll start evaluating why you feel so busy… and hopefully take some steps to eliminate that sense of frenzy from your everyday.

Get Better At Business With These 4 Psychological Shifts - Five Figure Writer - Sarah Greesonbach

“Decide you will.”

You know that really big issue you’ve been struggling with for the past 6 months? The one that, in a movie version of your life, would be the hero’s great “Will She Or Won’t She” plot point? Let me blow your mind (courtesy, I think, of Steve Slaunwhite, Pete Savage, and Ed Gandia’s book The Wealthy Freelancer):

Decide you will.

Yes, that’s right. Decide right now that you will make it through this plot point, achieve that big goal, whip this problem into shape. That the conflict is over. The battle has been won. You’re on the path for victory, you just need to keep following it.

(And by the way, Christians have an extra easy time of it with this one — not just our business, but life itself has been won for us already. We just need to get to a place where we feel that way and act accordingly!)

Use This In Your Business

This concept has been incredibly effective with helping me handle stress, particularly the religious side of it. That huge tax bill that already came in? I definitely got a whiff of “Will I or won’t I be able to pay this off!” when in reality, of course! I am already paying it off, it will be paid off, it is done. Next problem, please?

More often than not, it’s not the problem itself that holds us back — it’s the tension of wondering whether or not we’ll make it through.

But so often it’s not the problem itself that holds us back — it’s the tension of wondering whether or not we’ll make it through. Answer this question for yourself today: you will. And then go get some work done!

Sharing Is Caring

I can’t be the only one out here learning the tough lessons. If you have a psychological shift that’s helped you work through some business challenges, be a pal and share it in the comments below!

P.S. Heavy promotions for the Make $150 an Hour Writing course start soon, which means the $100 off coupons are going to be snapped up faster than you can say “gone fishin’.” If you’re tired of the grind and want to position your business to work on your terms, download the course summary today to see how I used simple, solid writing skills to boost my income from $35 to $150+ an hour.