Want to increase your freelance income in 2014? Consider inbound marketing: advertising your services via content. You can post your content on social media networks, your own blog, and on others’ blogs and websites.
You may be wondering how this differs from straightforward blogging. Surely it’s the same thing? When you’re blogging, you’re writing on your own Web property. This has many benefits for your writing, and it’s advertising too.
Consider however, if you wrote articles with your byline for high-profile sites. Those articles are advertising, and will drive traffic to your website… that’s the “inbound” of inbound marketing. A portion of your visitors will buy from you: your writing services, ebooks, and whatever else you’re creating.
Let’s look at four clever, free, and painless ways you can use this form of advertising in 2014.
1. Create profiles on social media networks.
Have you completed your profile on the social media networks you’ve joined? Each network offers you a profile: a page on which you can explain who you are, and can link to your own website.
If you don’t have a website, follow the strategy I explained in “This Is Me”: Quick Ways to Get Found With a Profile Page.
It’s vital that you complete your profile on social media networks, especially on Google+. Why Google+? Because that profile gives you AuthorRank, which we’ll discuss in a moment.
Engaging on social media networks without completing your profile on that network effectively cripples you, because no one knows who you are.
2. Become active on Pinterest: it’s growing fast.
Not only is Pinterest fast-growing, with 70 million users last July, users are extremely active. Hubspot reports: “Pinterest is now the 3rd most popular social network in the U.S. in terms of traffic.”
Since you can pin anything you like, why not create some boards for your writing? I discussed some easy, fast ways to use Pinterest for marketing:
Get connected: connect your other social media accounts to your Pinterest profile
Open Settings, and go down the page to Social Networks. Click the buttons to the social media accounts you want to link. If you’re a Gmail user, you can link your Gmail account too.
Why is linking your Gmail account important? See Tip 4: AuthorRank.
3. Guest post on high profile websites.
Guest posting has its detractors, and rightfully so, when it’s used just to score links. When you use guest posting as part of an inbound marketing strategy however, and post on high profile websites, some of that traffic flows to you.
Search out guest posting opportunities. Consider news websites, marketing websites, and any websites which appeal to you.
4. Build your AuthorRank.
In this article on Virante’s new Author Rank tool, I wrote:
If you’re a content creator, you’re aware of Google’s AuthorRank. It’s a way to build your authority online. To assess your “authority,” do a Google search for a piece of content you’ve written. If your image pops up next to your content in the results, you’ve got authority, in Google’s eyes.
You’re a writer. You need to be recognized for your content. Google allows you to do that, when you sign up for Google Authorship.
Inbound marketing is advertising. It’s a way for you to stand out from the writing crowd, and it may just increase your freelance income in 2014. Use any one of these four methods, or use them all. 2014 will be here before we know it. 
Writing Success In 2014: Merry Christmas, Dear Writer
Each year we have a “happy holidays” package which is packed with writing guides you need in the coming year – so here we are again.
I hope you enjoy this package made up of three of my most popular programs.
Join Angela on Google+, and on Twitter: @angee
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