Today’s post comes to us via guest blogger Anne Moreau, a freelance editor and proofreader. She and I met at an outstanding conference last weekend called “The Marketing Conference for Creative Freelancers: Finding and Keeping Work in a Tough Economy.” While I often write about excellent writing, I don’t often write about the nuts and bolts of finding paying work as a writer. But as I met many of these writers and editors last weekend, I was reminded that writing that gets noticed generally has a writer with a plan behind it.

Without further ado, here’s Anne.

The Marketing Conference for Creative Freelancers:
Finding and Keeping Work in a Tough Economy
Saturday, March 27, 8 am – 5:30 pm

This one-day marketing conference for freelancers, held at Bastyr University, was full of useable details and friendly people in allied industries. The organizers are planning future conferences of this type, and I recommend attending.

There were about 17 people in attendance, including the speakers, so it was a small group. Attendees included editors (several other Guild members), technical writers, copywriters, designers, a cartographer, and some indexers … and a few of those people wore multiple hats.

The small size turned out to be an advantage for networking in that nearly everyone met and talked with everyone else. I came away with a sense of who people were, what they do, and what they’re looking for. I’m a networking-event newbie and somewhat introverted, and even I found it easy to talk with people.

If you’re not an extrovert, consider bringing a friend to networking events; I went to this event with a friend and we both noticed it was far less exhausting than going alone because we could periodically take breaks from chatting with strangers.

Michelle Goodman (of Anti-9-to-5 Guide fame) spoke on diversifying to stay busy in a tough market. She offered some advice on how and why one might do this, but one of the most useful tidbits was her comment that Twitter, because of its low-commitment, 140-character, casual format, can be a way to connect with high-level managers who are otherwise hard to reach. And it can take some of the chill off a cold call. She also reiterated the oft-heard, seldom-heeded advice to read industry news, in part to get ideas about directions to branch into, but also because it gives you something to tweet about.

Did you know that Alyssa Milano (remember Who’s the Boss?) is known for tips and tricks on using Twitter effectively? Neither did I until Ed Marshall’s talk, “Effective Job Search Techniques for Social Networking.” His talk and notes were densely packed with details on how to use social networking tools and insights on why a freelancer would use them. While he offered enough step-by-step info to help a newbie get off the ground, the most valuable parts were his own observations and experiences on etiquette, security, and effective uses for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.

Some other highlights:

• TweetDeck: filter and manage feeds from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sources.
• Résumé tips: how to secure the PDF version and optimize the text-only version.
• Give Your Elevator Speech a Lift!: Lorraine Howell’s highly regarded handbook on the topic.

Staffing companies employ 2.01 million people every business day, and the field is growing. Cheryl Landes, one of the conference organizers, had extensive experience working with contract agencies, and she offered an abundance of practical advice for navigating this confusing (sometimes even Orwellian) world. Her talk covered types of contracts, reaching agencies and keeping your résumé out of the black hole of online application forms, red flags in your recruiter relationship and how good recruiters operate, and what to expect at the work site.

“Price Negotiations and Personal Brand Value” was the last formal talk of the day, and we were all starting to wane. But the room perked up noticeably as Jeff Barlow launched into a talk that was both about personal branding and a demonstration of personal branding. Within the first 15 minutes or so he

• read us an allegory,
• engaged us in a quick exercise, and
• told us about his own branding.

And by the end of those 15 minutes, everyone in the room had gotten it: the magic of branding. Next up? Okay, let’s talk about money: these (scary) words from the book The Designer’s Guide to Marketing and Pricing were the focus of the remainder of the talk. Using an example from his own design business, Jeff walked us through the steps described in the book, steps that change the client-freelancer dynamic from an adversarial one (client wants low rate; freelancer wants high rate) to a collaborative one (client wants business to grow; freelancer also wants client’s business to grow). Building brand builds your value and, combined with money-talk skills, it frees your work from being only about the money.

We wrapped up with more networking, this time facilitated by Nancy Gerth (an indexer who once sent 20 cold emails to prospective clients every day for months on end!). We had a chance to talk one-on-one with other freelancers in the room, learn about marketing techniques that worked for others, and get feedback on our own marketing plans. The One Page Business Plan for the Creative Entrepreneur came highly recommended.

It was a long day, but productive: the tips above are just a smattering of what I learned, and I now have a dozen more connections—on LinkedIn and in the real world.

Anne Moreau is a freelance editor and proofreader. She is also the administrative Pooh-Bah for the Northwest Independent Editors Guild.