Who’s Doing it Right? Social Media for Freelance Writers

Posted by Marci Hotsenpiller Sep 8, 2009

For a lot of online writers, learning to write for the web is one thing; learning to promote their writing via the web is another. Maria Schneider, former Editor-in-Chief of Writer’s Digest magazine and founder of the blog Editor Unleashed, has recently written about this topic—specifically about her successful attempts at using different social media tools as a writer and as an editor.

We spoke to Maria about how writers can benefit from using tools like personal blogs and Twitter.

Suite101: A lot of Suite101 writers are looking at ways to use Twitter to promote their online writing. Any tips you can share from your own experience?

Maria: Absolutely, I am a huge fan of Twitter for writers. It's the kind of low- key, conversational marketing that most writers can do well with. The thing I like about Twitter is that being sales-y and overly promotional is considered bad form and definitely won't get you the results you want. The way to succeed on Twitter is by offering information that's relevant to your niche.

Twitter is a long-term commitment though. I've been writing 10 or more tweets a day for almost 10 months now. And it's almost always links that are relevant to the niche I cover-the writing and publishing industry from the writer's perspective. If you do that consistently, you earn the right to promote your own blog posts as a part of that mix and that's when you'll start to see a following develop from Twitter.

On any given day about 20% of my site's traffic comes from Twitter. I hear all the time from people who find my site through Twitter and have become regulars. I've seen other writers and Bloggers succeed this way on Twitter too.

Suite101: At Editor Unleashed you've just done a poll about best writing blogs. What have you found in the process? In your opinion, how far have writing blogs come since their early days?

Maria: There are so many more quality writing blogs and online resources for writers that have sprung up in the past few years, it's stunning. I wrote one of the first print magazine articles about blogs, back in 2001 for the now defunct Personal Journaling magazine. Blogging was definitely a weird, fringe concept for people to embrace at the time. Back then blogs were primarily used as journaling vehicles.

Now, of course, we've seen blogs go completely mainstream, and it makes sense because really a blog can be whatever you want it to be. It can be a diary, a news source, or a magazine-style resource for people who are interested in a particular niche, among other things.

But writing blogs in particular have really come far in the past few years. I think the fact that writers have been taught never to write without being paid has held them back from the blog movement, unfortunately. Lately, though, I've noticed a lot of writers realizing that blogging is the absolute best way to promote their work, and some great blogs are springing up.

Read more from Maria at her blog Editor Unleashed, or follow her on Twitter @mariaschneider.

And of course, you can follow Suite101's editorial team on Twitter @Suite101