Once you step out to acknowledge yourself as a writer, the world will show up too. A lot of people will want to work with you.
You
should have decided what niche is best for you, or the areas you feel
you can handle. There are times when you have so much to do that you
have no other option than to use tools that will make work faster and
convenient for you.
A freelance content creator should have the following the following in their toolbox:
A Dictionary or Thesaurus
An offline/online dictionary helps you look through certain words,
synonyms, antonyms, etc. This saves you the time of assuming that you
are right, and free of mistakes. Writers must be humble enough to
acknowledge that they don’t know everything. A writer must seek to get
better in his/her craft.
A Note-Taking App
Microsoft Word is a word processing application that writers should
have; others include Evernote and Google Doc. They come with a lot of
features that are user-friendly and will enable writers to take down
certain points as they go about their normal duties.
Evernote allows you to even capture voice recordings and transcribe them to text, as you speak.
A Website/Social Media Handle
A serious writer should have a website/blog and/or social media
handles. How do you convince people that you write wonderful pieces,
when they have not seen your work somewhere or anywhere? The easiest
thing to do is to send them the link(s) to the things that you have done
for yourself or for others.
Websites should also bear compelling
bio or about-me pages. It is also necessary that writers choose social
media platforms that are necessary for their kind of market.
Automation and Scheduling Apps
What happens when you have so much to do in a day that you almost
forget other writing projects for the week, month or year? Automaion and
scheduling comes to your rescue, friend. With applications like
Hootsuite, Crowdfire, Tweetdeck, Postcron, Buffer, Social Pilot, Sprout
social, Zapier on your desktop or mobile device, you can schedule posts
to appear on your timeline, on the days you will not be available
online.
Editing Apps
It is one thing to
write, it is quite another to write a piece that your reader will always
talk about. So what if your pieces are filled with grammatical errors
and you cannot afford an editor for heavy editing? Hemmingway,
Grammarly, After The Deadline, Autocrit, Correct English, Editminion,
Slick Write, Smart Edit, Word Rake are editing tools that writers should
explore. I use the free version of Grammarly; it comes with its plug-in
for the MS Word software. Once installed, you can enable it on MS Word
and have it correct your pieces as you type. The advanced version of
Grammarly has a plagiarism detector that enables a writer crete unique
and original work.
Image Library
It is no
news that most people appreciate online articles with pictorial
representation. You are writer, but should a writer become a
photographer too?
Two options exist for a content creator:
• Create your images
• Use free images on the internet
The first option allows you make use of tools like Corel Draw, MS Publisher or Canva.
The second option allows you to use free images from piaxabay.com,
unsplash.com as well as so many other sites that exist for free images.
Community Engagement
A tree cannot make a forest. No man is an island. So, to grow and to
keep growing writers, should join writing communities online/offline
that would challwnge them to et better in their crafts
Offline
communities already exist. The one I know are Enugu and Abuja literary
socities. Online communities abound on facebook: Nigerian Writers,
Writers Unite, Story Strategists’ Nexus (my community), Pen and Ink
Masters, Creative Freelance Writerz, etc. Other online forums include
Writers Bereau, The Write Life, etc.
Business Cards
Serious creative writers should show the world that they in for
business. It is not enough to have social media profiles that speak for
you; have something to leave behind when you do the word of mouth
marketing. When you make new friends, attend engagements, offer someone a
business card and let them see that you are ready and available to work
with them.
No comments:
Post a Comment