Fran: What are we gonna do?
Joe: That’s what everybody wants to know.
Dialogue from Heist, by David Mamet

Why do some people do well, and others badly – whether in freelancing, or life generally? Our personalities play a part, as does chance. But far more important are the choices we make – our strategy.

What is strategy?

At the simplest level, business strategy is about choosing where and how to create and capture value. A business creates value when it does or makes something that people want or need. And it captures value when it benefits as a result of what it does.

Generic 'strategy' image No. 237

A freelance business is no different from any other business. In order to do well as a freelance, you have to make choices about where and how you will create and capture value. And you’re far more likely to make the right choices if you think carefully about them first – in other words, if you have a strategy.

Strategy focuses and channels our energies towards a goal. Without strategy, our actions are scattered and impulsive – things happen, but they don’t come together in a coherent narrative. With strategy, the things we do have meaning and purpose.

Who, what and how

In his book All The Right Moves, Costas Markides suggests that crafting a strategy is about answering three very simple questions:

• Who will you create value for?
• What products or services will you offer them?
• How will you make it happen?

Let’s explore this beautifully simple framework in the context of a freelance business.

Who will you create value for?

Deciding who your customers will be means deciding who you would like to work for – and, by implication, who you don’t want to work for.

You can define your freelance clients in many ways: their location, the industry they work in, the size or age of their company, their culture, their budget.

You might bring several attributes together to form an ideal client profile, or profiles. For example, an IT consultant might define their ideal clients as ‘SMEs within 50 miles of central London with 20 to 50 workstations’.

Defining your clients is an essential stepping-stone to a host of marketing activities: building a website, direct mail, networking and many others.

Many freelances probably feel that their careers are shaped by clients selecting them, rather than the other way around. That may be so, but there are still choices to be made.

For example, it helps to decide which new-business prospects are worth pursuing, or which clients are worth going the extra mile for, so you can put your efforts where they’ll bring most benefit. Attuning yourself to your ideal clients helps to identify or attract them; as the saying says, ‘chance favours the prepared mind’.

Finally, considering your customer base is a valuable reminder that you always have the choice about who you’re going to work for. That choice may get buried under financial worries, but it’s there – and staying in touch with it is crucial when you come to set prices.

What services will you offer?

Answering this question is about developing a service portfolio – which is just a flashy way of describing a list of things you can do for your customers.

At the simplest level, every freelance must know how they will create value for clients. This sounds obvious, but the nature of in-house careers means that many freelances approach their work from a different perspective: what they’d like to do, what they’ve done before or what they studied at college rather than what clients want.

Knowing how you can create value means matching skills with needs. What can you do that would add value for a client business? Answering this question often involves thinking outside the box of academic disciplines or job descriptions. Non-work skills and interests might be relevant.

If you’re starting out as a freelance, think about all the skills and knowledge you have and list them. Put everything into the pot, including out-of-work interests. Then discard the genuinely irrelevant ones, sort the rest into services, and see how they hang together as an overall offering.

Value innovation

Ideally, you’ll be able to offer some kind of value innovation. This simply means creating more value than competitors in one or more dimensions. For example:

• Price. You could offer a lower price than competitors, or more value for the same price.
• Focus. You could become a specialist in certain tasks, or working with certain types of client.
• Location. You could come to customers rather than them coming to you, or offer a very location-specific service.
• Convenience. You could offer online ordering, flexible payments or something else that makes life easier for customers.
• Service. You could offer a more comprehensive or responsive service than competitors.
• Format. You could add service elements to a product, bundle services in a new way or ‘productise’ a service by turning it into an off-the-shelf purchase.

An example of service innovation is First Direct, the first internet-and-phone-only bank in the UK. They realised that face-to-face interactions and fixed opening hours at bank branches didn’t suit every customer, so they got rid of them, instead focusing on adding more value in terms of convenience and service.

It’s easy to see how value innovation forms the basis for marketing messages. Whatever makes you different is going to be a big reason why people choose you.

Labelling yourself

Having defined your services, you’ll probably want to choose (or create) a description for yourself. Sometimes an established job title will fit – like ‘copywriter’, ‘web designer’ or ‘sound technician’. The advantage here is that people will easily understand what you do; the challenge is differentiating yourself from everyone else who uses the same title.

If you opt for an unusual or unique title, like ‘business content consultant’, you’ll have the exact opposite problem: you’ll sound different and exotic, but you’ll have to explain what you do. However, if your skillset or service is unusual, you might feel that an unusual title is essential.

How will you make it happen?

One view of strategy is that it’s all about obtaining and directing resources in order to achieve a goal. You decide what you want to do, assemble the resources you need, and get on with it. Resources are just the things that enable a business to create and capture value.

That makes it sound ridiculously simple. But the story of every successful business can be understood as a process of identifying, obtaining and using the right resources. Remember, resources aren’t just physical things like buildings and computers. Some are intangible – like ideas, know-how, relationships and brand equity. Unlike tangible resources, intangibles can’t be ‘used up’ – and they can enable you to access other resources in turn.

Consider a new freelance business. (It’s really just a person, but it’s helpful to think of yourself as a company sometimes.) It might have tangible resources such as a computer, a phone, a suit and a car, as well as intangible resources such as skills, motivation and professional relationships. To get started, it might need other resources such as premises, client relationships, marketing material, capital and so on. How can it use the resources it has to get the resources it needs? Well, the professional relationships might turn into, or provide, some client relationships. Premises can be sourced on the market. Buying marketing material requires knowledge of marketing, which can be found in blogs and books… and so it goes on.

The resource view of strategy makes everything simple. If you don’t have a resource, or if you don’t have enough of it, you need to find a way to make, obtain or access it. The resource mindset breaks everything down into manageable chunks.

Note that you don’t have to own or control a resource to be able to use it. Once, getting knowledge meant spending time and/or money visiting libraries or buying books. Now we have Google. Professional advice is easier to access too. Even tangible resources like premises can be shared through hotdesking.

Bringing it all together

For much of the time, your strategy will probably live in your head. But I’d suggest writing it down. Writing has an awesome power – whatever we commit to paper tends to come true! So a one-page summary of your strategy is definitely worth spending 30 minutes on. Here’s an example:

XYZ Web Design: Business strategy

I will serve small and medium-sized businesses in the London area – primarily those who do not yet have a web presence, or are new to digital marketing.

I will offer them a competent and competitive ‘off the shelf’ web design service, so they can get online for a reasonable cost. I will also offer some related services such as SEO, although for larger projects in these areas I will partner with other freelances.

To do this, I will draw on my experience as an in-house web developer. My experience running a small cleaning franchise will help me organise the business and also relate to my clients as a fellow business owner.

Resources available: web design skills, business skills, some SEO skills, laptop, mobile phone, website

Resources required: premises, bank account, local network of contacts, overdraft, mailing list, sales letter

A final thought: strategy isn’t a one-time deal. It needs to be revised and revisited. That’s why writing it down can be so productive. Return to your strategy document a year later and see how far you’ve come – and where you’d like to go next.

Stage 1

I build this site while still an employee, thinking of using it to find another job. It’s a simple online cv, but the graphics are animated in Flash. Although the design is lamentable, you have to bear in mind that this was developed around 2000 – lots of sites looked a lot worse than they do now.

The basic problem here – one that I wouldn’t solve for several years – is wanting to show off my feeble web skills rather than offer information in a way potential employers might actually like.

Stage 2

Freshly redundant, I create this site as a way to showcase my skills to potential freelance clients. The cyan and grey identity is done for me by a designer friend. Unfortunately the design I build around it is spindly, meek and rather self-effacing – reflecting my level of confidence at the time.

At this stage, I’m trading under my own name: this site was at the URL tomalbrighton.co.uk. (I think my reasoning was that success would be about selling my skills and building personal reputation.)

It’s still essentially a cv site, with none of the marketing copy you’d expect from a commercially minded freelance. Although I have given myself a tagline, ‘flexible editorial ability’ – I remember my sister laughing out loud at ‘flexible’, presumably because it evoked a circus contortionist.

The word ‘editorial’ shows that I’m still thinking of my skills in terms of the job descriptions I’ve had in publishing, rather than the words that potential clients might use to find someone like me. Lacking agency experience, I don’t yet feel I can use the word ‘copywriter’ to describe myself. Similarly, the ‘services’ are actually my own skill areas, rather than things a client might actually need done.

Stage 3

A slight improvement in design and a new tagline: ‘business content consultancy’, with a theme to match. I’m edging towards saying something clients might want to hear, but I’m still constrained by self-limiting beliefs about the applicability of my skills. Three self-indulgent pages on my ‘approach’ add nothing.

There are many more businesses calling themselves ‘content consultants’ these days, but I’m sure they all suffer from the same problem: ‘consultant’ sounds like someone who doesn’t do anything.

Stage 4

A new day dawns. I’ve now incorporated as a company – ABC Business Communications – and moved into a rented office. Having gained clients and confidence, my dream is to build my business up into an agency. (It never came true – or hasn’t yet.)

I’ve got a new logo (by the same designer) and some corporate colours, deployed to reasonably strong effect on this site. Unfortunately the domain I’ve chosen – abcbusiness.biz – is an absolute stinker. But I’ve still come on a lot since stage 1.

I’ve written a new tagline, ‘Are you reaching those who matter most?’ It’s not bad, but I’m not sure I’d use a question these days. It leads the reader into introspection and uncertainty, not clarity and action.

I even have some leaflets designed with this tagline and some more stock imagery. Nowadays I’d spend that kind of money on AdWords clicks rather than printed collateral – and I advise most sole-trader clients the same.

Stage 5

Now we’re cooking. I’ve finally woken up to the fact that, whatever my experience, potential clients use the word ‘copywriter’ to describe what I do. So I’ve adopted the trading name ‘ABC Copywriting’, got a new domain (this one) and built a new site.

Delighted at my discovery of <div> tags, I’ve built something that looks like it’s made from children’s building blocks. But at least it’s interesting, and shows signs of wanting to conduct visitors through information to an actual enquiry. It’s also the first site built with SEO in mind, and gratifyingly hits #1 for ‘copywriter norwich’ as soon as it’s spidered.

I’m still using the same tagline, but it’s woven into the copy much more tightly. If you’re going to use a headline, your copy needs to make good on its promise (or answer the question that it asks).

Stage 6

Boo-ya! How ya like me now baby? This is the first iteration of ABC Copywriting I’m really happy with; the first that looks and feels genuinely professional.

I’ve cleared out the solid colours and adopted a simple, flexible four-column layout (4x200px = 800px wide in total). White space gives a more relaxed feel, so visitors don’t feel so hemmed in by lines and blocks. Only the cutesy photographic images spoil the party – but imagery is a problem for almost every B2B site.

There’s another new tagline – ‘We’ll choose your words carefully’. It retains the second-person focus with ‘your’, but integrates some implication of skill on my part (which its predecessor didn’t). I’m still too close to it to tell whether it’s any good – you decide. The owner of a very reputable Norwich creative agency told me he liked it, and that’s good enough for me.

My blog’s appeared, but at this stage it’s still using an off-the-shelf theme (iBlog), so moving to the blog means encountering a completely different design style. It might as well be on a different domain.

Stage 7

Although I had a lot of enquiries with the site looking like this, I now regard it as a mis-step.

I feel the previous site is too self-effacing and discreet, so I make the home page different from the rest of the site and add these shouty all-caps headings to get in visitors’ faces a bit more. I also add a forceful (perhaps over-forceful) call to action, top right.

I scrap the imagery, realising that it serves no semiotic or cognitive purpose and also wanting to make a point about communicating only with words. But the end result is a bit obtuse and blocky, and arguably too copy-heavy too. In six months I will be itching to rework it again.

The biggest step forward at this stage is getting a custom theme built for my blog, so the WordPress pages have the same look as the main site.

Stage 8

You’re looking at it! I finally started looking at sites I really liked and thinking about how I could use those ideas on my own site. I’m not a designer, so I played it safe and kept things ultra-simple, ranged left, with lots of white space.

The 4x200px column layout is still here, but I’ve moved the navigation up top to make more room for content – such as the ‘Read more’/‘Where to go next’ column on the right, which aims to keep visitors on the site a little longer.

We’re back to icons again, but the design was just too dry without them. The ‘marker pen’ style just adds a touch of warmth and softness that acres of Helvetica can’t quite deliver.

The home page is much more tightly constructed, with the tagline, lead paragraphs and icon working together on the theme ‘words people love’. Time will tell whether this works better than previous iterations.

The blog theme is updated too, with more thought put into how lists of posts will look and a better home page. Also, the blog is more tightly integrated into the main site, with links from service pages to relevant articles. The aim is to build an impression of authority – I don’t really expect potential clients to wade through dozens of blog posts.

And that’s the end of the story – for now, at least. Your comments are welcome, but whatever you do, please don’t say you like an earlier version better than this one. It took me ages…

• It’s scary. Well, it is for me anyway. Walking up to strangers and introducing myself would be right up there on my list of least favourite activities, just ahead of sticking pins in my eyes and coming a close second to camping. Or ballroom dancing.
• It’s egotistical. For me, actively pushing my services has always gone against the grain. Yes, I know you have to do it, and I’ve got my head around doing it online. But in person, I always get the sickening sense of necessity clashing with personality. It’s just not me.

Wallflowers are attractive, fragrant and low-maintenance

• It’s expensive. OK, some events are free, but many aren’t. They remind me of the days when I paid a tenner to get into a club on a Thursday night, only to find myself in a dimly lit room with my mates and two other blokes even less glamorous than us.
• It’s ineffective. ‘I’m looking for a copywriter actually. In fact, that’s why I came here today.’ Just one of the things I will never, ever hear at a networking event. Because when my prospects want my services, they go straight to the web, or to a colleague for a recommendation. Not to a hotel near the airport.
• It’s a waste of time. Instead of spending an afternoon failing to sell myself, I could create a blog post that’s got a fighting chance of getting backlinks from authority or related sites in my niche. Or cold-call a few promising-looking prospects. Or take my daughter to the park. All arguably deliver more benefit.
• It’s insincere. No, I am not remotely interested in your rivet-making company, or its newly introduced rivet. Yet for appearances’ sake I must feign interest – as must you, hah! But the eyes are the window to the soul, and our mutual disdain cannot be completely hidden.
• It’s boring. Meeting a load of strangers at 7.30am? At a golf club? I might just take a rain check, thanks. Although, thinking about it, I don’t have that much work coming up… Now, where did I put those business cards?

Different writing projects require different skills, and writers evolve different skillsets, whether deliberately or simply as the natural result of their working experience. So the terms ‘copywriting’ and ‘copywriter’, although simple-sounding, actually encompass a range of specialisations and capabilities. This post lists some of the most common types of copywriting and copywriters.

Note that some of these copywriting disciplines have parallel job titles/descriptions, and others don’t. For example, while ‘SEO copywriter’ is now a recognised job title, I’ve never heard anyone describe themselves as a ‘long-copy copywriter’. Also, be aware that some of these labels are flexible – while there are different strands within copywriting, the distinctions between them aren’t always so clear-cut as my headings imply, and people may use these terms in different ways.

The freelance copywriter

The freelance copywriter writes in any medium directly for clients, usually operating as a sole trader or one-person company.

Businesses and organisations need a broad range of things written: websites, brochures, case studies, product descriptions, user manuals, press releases, presentations, internal documents and more. While many will simply use internal resource to get the writing done, many turn to a freelance copywriter to help them out.

Freelance copywriting is usually managed on an ad hoc, job-by-job basis, although some clients do strike retainer arrangements or set up longer contracts with freelances. Typically, the freelancer provides a price or proposal, does the work, revises the copy in response to feedback, and submits their invoice on approval.

Freelance copywriting typically requires ‘broad but shallow’ copywriting skills. For example, in the course of writing a corporate website, the copywriter might find themselves writing long copy for information pages, snappy selling copy for high-profile pages and journalistic copy for news pages. At the same time, they might throw in a company tagline and perhaps name a product range or two – in some cases, without even being asked, since the client may not have realised that they even need these things.

As a result of working for many different clients, the freelance copywriter also tends to develop broad but shallow knowledge of different business sectors, allowing them to get a handle on new clients’ requirements very quickly. This is one area where older freelancers can consistently outdo their younger counterparts – experience cannot be faked, nor bought.

Conversely, some freelances specialise in writing for a particular industry or sector – pharmaceuticals, charity and so on. This may be because they previously held a salaried position in that sector. It may be a deliberate choice, or it may just emerge as a result of the jobs and referrals that come along.

Since the freelance copywriter deals directly with clients who may have little or no marketing experience, they also need some skills in project management, consultancy and diplomacy. Like business knowledge, these skills take time to acquire.

Freelance copywriters come from a range of backgrounds. Some are ex-agency copywriters who wanted a change of lifestyle; some have experience in related industries such as marketing, journalism or publishing; some are just people with a talent for writing who have decided to give freelancing a go.

The agency copywriter

Agency copywriters work in-house for graphic design studios, full-service marketing agencies, digital agencies, search agencies, PR agencies and copywriting agencies, where they produce text to order for the agency’s clients. They’ll usually be briefed by an account handler, or perhaps a designer, and will produce whatever the client requires. In some cases, they may deal with the client directly. 

While freelance copywriters spend a lot of time on the nuts and bolts of their business – marketing, accounts, new business – the agency copywriter will do hands-on writing for the bulk of their day. Some writers prefer this, seeing it as their true vocation, while others might worry about the pressure of delivering creative ideas and high-quality content under the pressure of the clock – and the management.

Agency copywriters, particularly those who have worked in London or another media hub, will typically be able to show some impressive national or multinational brands on their cv. However, big companies require a range of content types, and the projects involved may not have been high-profile marketing campaigns. Also, the agency copywriter is given his clients and projects on a plate, while the freelancer has to go out and close deals directly with real-world companies, all on their own. Arguably, this gives the freelancer a better grasp of commercial realities. 

The in-house copywriter

In-house copywriters are employed by large organisations who have their own marketing departments and need the services of a writer, or writers, full-time.

The in-house copywriter, obviously, works only for one client, which may limit their opportunities in terms of selling different products or working in a range of media. However, they may get the opportunity to develop a brand’s tone of voice in depth, and they are also likely to enjoy a productively close working relationship with their internal ‘clients’ – those who use their copy and brief them on requirements.

Advertising copywriting

This is perhaps the kind of writing that most people think of when they hear the word ‘copywriting’: writing the content of press, TV and other forms of advertising. Ad copywriting includes the creation of memorable headlines, slogans and taglines that people remember from broadcast media – but it also includes the drafting of long-copy advertisements such as sometimes appear in Sunday supplements or on underground (subway) trains.

Since slogans are such a critical part of any ad campaign, the ad copywriter will spend a long time getting them right. The words in ad slogans are probably the most time-intensive writing to be found anywhere.

In short-copy work, the actual words that finally appear in an ad may be less important than the central idea. So ad copywriters sometimes do ‘creative concepts’ or ‘copy plots’ (brief outlines of what an ad will cover) as separate tasks from determining the actual content.

Since an advert is a highly concentrated format, where words, images and design work together very closely, the ad copywriter often works with a designer or art director to develop ideas that use both verbal and visual communication.

Ad copywriters who work at the highest level need to be creative, lateral thinkers who can come up with very strong, original ideas under pressure. Further down the advertising food chain, the copywriter’s work may involve a little more pragmatism and compromise. But whoever they work for, advertising copywriters need to be able to deliver ideas and content that sell products.

Long-copy work

‘Long copy’ refers to any advertisement (or other medium) that contains a lot of copy – whatever ‘a lot’ means in context. For example, a long-copy sales letter would be several pages long, rather than just one page; a long-copy press advertisement would have several paragraphs of text rather than just one; and a long-copy website might have longer articles (1000 words and up) rather than the usual 100- or 200-word web pages.

There’s no such thing as a ‘long copy copywriter’. I’m using this heading to distinguish long-copy work from the sort of highly creative, concentrated writing that goes into writing a consumer marketing slogan – because the skills required for each are very different.

As noted, the ad copywriter is likely to be a free creative spirit who can come up with an arresting, original and memorable three-word slogan that can work across an entire campaign. But they may not be the right person to produce all the content that’s associated with it – the website, the packaging copy, the press releases and whatever else is required. Doing so requires skills in structuring and planning content, achieving a uniform tone of voice and maintaining a high linguistic standard – the key abilities of the long-copy specialist.

The long-copy copywriter is less of an artist, more of a craftsperson. Rather than leaping to peaks of creative brilliance, their work is all about sustaining the right level of quality over long wordcounts.

Copywriting for publishers

‘Copywriting for publishers’ is a bit of a misnomer, since publishers do not refer to those who produce their text as ‘copywriters’, but rather ‘authors’ or ‘journalists’. However, many copywriters have all the skills required to write for online and offline publications: researching facts and turning them into readable prose that a third party then publishes, perhaps for profit.

Writing for publishers is usually a case of working to a brief. The client will need an article or book about a particular subject and will ask you to write it, either for a fixed fee or a royalty (payment per copy sold).

One key difference between copywriting for commercial clients and writing for (say) a newspaper is the additional level of editorial control involved with publishers. While a commercial client would expect their copywriter to submit editorially accurate text (i.e. to proofread it, or have it proofread), reporters and journalists are more accustomed to having their work rigorously checked, and often rewritten wholesale, by sub-editors. Hence they can crank out the copy much more quickly, for example by dictating it over the phone (‘phoning in’ their copy).

Increasingly, however, as content moves online, publishers are also putting the burden of accuracy on their writers, as well as trusting to luck by publishing unproofed content in the knowledge they can always amend it later. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Website copywriting

Website copywriting is simply producing text for websites. However, the skills of the web copywriter don’t end at simply producing the copy. They’re likely to get involved in structuring the site, planning the user’s experience, setting tone of voice, ensuring usability and getting design and text to work together. As a result, the web copywriter needs a good working knowledge of web design and usability, and ideally technical aspects such as HTML, CSS and SEO (see below).

Although some copywriters do present themselves as specialist web writers, all they’re really saying is that they’re strong in these related skills and have experience of writing a lot of sites. The core skill of copywriting is the same regardless of the medium involved.

SEO copywriting

SEO copywriting is the creation of web text with two aims: appealing to readers and achieving prominence in the results listed by search engines for particular results.

Views on SEO copywriting and its relationship to ‘ordinary’ copywriting differ sharply. Some regard it as a completely different discipline, while others feel that writing strong, well-structured copy that works for users will ensure that SEO takes care of itself.

My own view is somewhere in the middle. While SEO copy needs to do all the things that every piece of copy does – engage readers, communicate benefits, explain information, prompt action – it also needs to be written in the very specific way that indicates relevance to search engines. And, crucially, that may require some compromise in terms of phrasing and expression – for example, by using a keyword repeatedly rather than varying the usage through synonyms as a copywriter normally would.

SEO copywriters need a broad range of skills, some aesthetic and some technical. They need to be able to write reasonably good web copy that appeals to readers and generates sales. But because SEO is largely a function of the way a web page is coded, as well as the content it features, SEO copywriting shades into web design and web development. SEO copywriters need to understand technical issues such as meta tags, heading levels, anchor text, word-stemming and keyword density. These concepts might be a completely closed book to an advertising copywriter.

For more on the unique attributes of SEO copywriting, see this post.

Online article copywriting

On the face of it, writing online articles is the same as writing for offline media – there’s a brief, perhaps a word count, and the copywriter produces the text. However, because some SEO strategies require the creation of large amounts of on-topic copy, there’s a large market for mass-produced, relatively low-quality articles and web pages that are posted at article sites or used to add search-friendly content to clients’ sites. Sometimes, online press releases are also used to build search profile, and these are also churned out with an eye on speed and quantity rather than quality.

To satisfy this demand for content, so-called ‘content mills’ such as Copify and Demand Studios have emerged. These act as middlemen between clients (often SEO or digital agencies) and freelance copywriters, setting rates (usually by the word) and taking a percentage of the fee as their reward. It’s a high-volume, fast-turnaround business.

Writing online articles may be a good way to get started in copywriting, but it’s important to keep your eyes open. Because the content may be intended more for search engines than human readers, you’re not going to be widely read or build up a winning portfolio by creating it. And because the rates are low, putting too much care and attention into your copy simply reduces your effective hourly rate – potentially well below the UK minimum wage.

My article on the content mill phenomenon, What copywriting clients can’t get from content mills, discusses the drawbacks of paying for content by the word.

What you’re feeling is freelance fury. It’s always there, waiting to get out: the primal, all-consuming, incandescent anger that can only be experienced by the self-employed white-collar worker. Here are a few ideas for cooling your jets and redirecting your energies towards something more productive than chewing the carpet.

Email in haste, repent at leisure

First and foremost: don’t act hastily. Communicating with the client might well be part of the solution, but don’t grab the phone or send off that angry email just yet. Work through some of the ideas below first. While you might feel that the client ‘should’ hear what you’ve got to say, venting your rage is unlikely to resolve the situation to your advantage.

One way to release the pressure is to compose that email without sending it. Write it, but just save it as a draft. You can read it through tomorrow and then decide how much needs to be said.

When I do this, I usually find that 90% of the content is righteous anger or self-justification, and 10% is pragmatic stuff that the client actually needs to hear. So I cut the email to the essentials and then send it.

Control your response

Self-help guru Stephen R. Covey defines ‘responsibility’ as ‘response-ability’ – your ability to respond. His key point is that while there are always aspects of a situation that you can’t control, your own response (whether mental, verbal or physical) is always a choice.

Understanding this is the foundation of self-responsibility: our actions are never really forced by outside circumstances, however much we might like to think so.

In the context of freelance fury, response-ability means separating the events that have made you angry from your own response to them, instead of trying to grapple with a confused, seething tangle of thoughts, emotions and memories.

The table below shows how actual, real-world events (left-hand column) might be distinguished from the interpretation, speculation, imagination and judgement you’re bringing to the situation (right-hand column).

This is the first step to getting a grip on your thoughts and throwing out the ones that are unhelpful. Speculating on what the client might think, or what might happen in the future, is particularly pointless. You’re just fiddling about with imaginary ideas in your mind. Focus back on the real world and what needs to be done now (see below).

Another way to work through your responses is just to talk through the situation with someone else. When you have to describe events and reactions to another, the distinction between them becomes much clearer.

Experience anger fully

In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. You will have something remaining which is not completely burned out… That is what [Zen master] Dogen meant when he said, ‘Ashes do not come back to firewood.’
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

This quote, which may seem rather opaque at first reading, refers to the Zen idea of complete experience. In Zen, meditation is a way to experience existence in the fullest possible way. But other acts as well as meditation can – and should – be experienced in the same way: with a single-minded, focused concentration and appreciation.

Mr Angry was furious that he'd gone out wearing nothing but a hat again

Unfortunately, modern life is full of fragmented, incomplete experiences that are intrinsically unsatisfactory. Surfing the internet while watching TV, for example, or eating while reading a book, delivers an incomplete experience of both. Yet we persist with the idea that we can somehow kill two birds with one cognitive stone. In fact, as Suzuki points out, such incomplete activity leaves unwanted ‘traces’ in our minds and in our character; the firewood has not been completely burned.

Because anger can be so powerful, it can be difficult to experience it completely. As discussed above, our own reactions quickly cloud the waters, and before we know it we’re locked in an internal dialogue with our own fears and interpretations. As a result, a trace of the anger remains, and we can’t let go of it.

To remedy this, try ‘sitting’ with your anger. Just sit quietly and observe what’s happening in your own mind. (You don’t have to adopt the lotus position, but it’s worth finding a time and place without distractions.) Remember the events that made you angry and note your reactions. Don’t judge your client, or yourself – just observe the thoughts arising and passing away, like clouds passing the sky. After a few minutes, you’ll usually find that past events feel truly past, and your own perspective is much more balanced.

See yourself taking action

One of the most powerful anti-worry techniques is to vividly picture yourself taking action to address the situation. Instead of going round and round in your mind, fuming, focus on what you could actually do. For example, you could:

• talk to a fellow freelance and get their views
• go online to see how others have dealt with the situation
• call up the client or send them an email to raise your concerns
• tell the client you’re going to have to charge more to cover extra work or time
• decide to walk away from the client (perhaps without even charging for work to date, so there’s no dispute).

(I’ve used this last tactic recently and it worked really well. I proposed my best solution. The client didn’t like it. So instead of endlessly trying to revise it, or become something I’m not, I cordially ended the project, letting them use what I’d done if they wanted to. Quick, angst-free and effective, freeing me up to go where I can add more value. Nothing owed on either side, and the client at least respects me, even if they don’t like my work.) 

You don’t have to follow up on all your ideas – or any of them. You just need to give yourself a realistic set of options that you could take. Just having these options generates a sense of freedom and choice – and that takes the pressure off.

Criticise the act, not the person

A lot of the time, we react to our conceptions or perceptions of how people are, not what they actually do. We might also characterise them in particular ways – ‘difficult’, ‘fickle’, ‘demanding’ or whatever. If unchecked, this can become a feedback loop where everything they do just reinforces our perception of them.

The key is to criticise a person’s acts, not the person themselves. For example, instead of saying ‘They’re so critical’, say ‘They’ve criticised me’. This may seem a trifling or semantic distinction, but it’s crucial. The first sentence judges the person as being a certain way, while the second simply describes an action they took.

People’s basic characters tend not to change, but they can always choose different actions. If you characterise them as being a certain type of person, you’re shutting off the possibility of change. But if all they’ve done is take a certain action, they can always choose another action in the future. That gives you (and them) more options and a sense of hope and purpose about the whole relationship. (This technique is also recommended for telling off children.)

Hold on tightly, let go lightly

I’ve quoted this phrase before in another article aimed at helping freelance writers. I think it illustrates perfectly the balance of commitment and flexibility that freelances need in order to operate without going mad. Obviously, you want to put effort into your work, and do the best job you can. But in some situations, you need to switch to a more arms-length, practical approach where you’re less of an artist, more of a business person.

Personally, I find it easiest to cultivate a consistent sense of distance between me as a person and my work – although this can be difficult, particularly when social media is furiously muddying the distinction between personal and commercial. For me, deciding to trade as a company was a key step in establishing this distinction between what I might want and what’s best for ‘the company’ – even though the company is really just me.

While you might get enjoyment from doing a good job, if things go wrong you’ve just got to be dispassionate and work through the difficulties in an unemotional, clear-sighted way. Don’t invest too much of yourself, or you’ll end up being consumed by freelance fury.

I have commissioned freelances before, but not so much since becoming one myself. Naturally, my freelancing years have seen me acquire and, yes, perhaps even cultivate, the standard gripes about clients. So it was enlightening to see the process of working with a freelance from the other side of the fence.

At one point, the designer had produced some first layouts that looked great. But I felt they lacked a little something. So I asked him to go back to the drawing board and add in some more colours and graphics – to add some ‘movement and life’ to the design, or so I thought.

The result was complete rubbish.

Thankfully, he put up with all this with grace and tact. He understood the situation and had no doubt experienced similar ones many times before. But why couldn’t I accept that he might have found the best way forward? Why did I feel things would automatically get better with my input?

Seeing is believing

From my point of view, I wasn’t trying to steamroller or humiliate the designer – I just needed to see my ideas on the screen before I could evaluate them. To some extent, the problem was down to my own skillset – strong on words, weak on images and layouts. Lacking the visualisation skills to foresee the way things would pan out, I had to force a detour to a dead-end just to make sure it didn’t go anywhere.

On a psychological level, we could put my intervention down to illusory superiority, a decision-making bias that leads us to overestimate our own positive qualities and abilities and underestimate our negative qualities, relative to others. For example, 93% of US drivers rate themselves as having above-average driving skill, yet by definition only 50% can be above the median. Parents who raise a child together know the phenomenon very well, and from both sides of the fence (‘you’re doing that wrong!’).

From my point of view, my ideas felt ‘right’ – even though objectively, as I later realised, they added no value. We may know, on a rational level, that we’re dealing with an expert who knows more than us. But that doesn’t stop us from questioning them.

Of course, this is familiar to me from the freelance side of the fence. Many are the times I’ve been asked to try a rewrite, restructure or copy concept that I already know won’t work. But from the client side, I realised that asking for things to be reworked flows from a desire to improve things, however misguided.

Praise you like I should

Another thing I’ve realised, while writing this post, is that I haven’t complimented the designer on what he’s done, even though it’s fantastic. While reviewing his work, everyone else on the project has been raving about how great it is. But I haven’t yet conveyed any of that to him.

I’m really not sure why. Perhaps I’ve just forgotten, or I feel a need to be ‘all business’ when we discuss the project, or maybe I unconsciously fear that giving praise somehow weakens my hand. Whatever the reason, I intend to rectify the situation – because I know how much positive feedback means to freelances.

But I’ve also come to realise that clients who don’t give praise aren’t necessarily displeased – in many cases, it really is a case of ‘no news is good news’. If you’ve hit the target, and nothing needs changing, you hear nothing – but that doesn’t mean the client isn’t pleased. For myself, I’ve learned to interpret complete silence as rapturous delight.

Cut ’em some slack

My takeaway from all this is that freelances have to learn to give their clients a lot of slack – even more than they do already. A lot of the much-maligned ‘client behaviour’ can be put down to clients’ anxiety over the need to get it right. Attitudes that might seem pushy, tactless or self-regarding are just the manifestation of a deep concern that the project delivers what the client needs.

And I do mean ‘needs’, not ‘wants’. After all, what might be a ‘bread and butter’ project to you or me might be the only creative project they handle this year – or ever. It might be a website that’s going to be the basis of their livelihood, or a brochure that their boss has delegated to them for the first time ever. Small wonder that the freelancer’s delicate feelings aren’t at the forefront of their minds. 

True professionals know how to deal with their expertise being questioned. If you want to sell your advice for cash, you have to expect to make a case for it. Expecting clients to fully understand copywriting, or design, or any other discipline, is naïve and probably a bit self-centred.

And if you need to approach the goal by a circuitous route, so what – the point is that you get there, and (crucially) that the client is still with you when you arrive. And at that point, you might get a little bit of praise – but don’t hold your breath.

Please note that this post refers only to UK law on copyright.

Who owns copyright in text?

In simple terms, if you write something, you own the copyright in it. No-one else can copy, distribute, publish or adapt it without your permission.

Written materials – or ‘literary, dramatic and musical works’ – are protected by law under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA). They must be recorded in writing or otherwise to be granted copyright, and copyright subsists from the date at which recording takes place.

The fact that a third party is a subject of the work makes no difference. For example, if I take a photo of you, I hold the copyright in the photo, even though it contains your likeness. If I interview you and write it up into an article, I hold copyright in the article, even though it contains words that you spoke.

Only content can be copyrighted, not ideas. If you’ve written a book and I write a summary of the ideas in it, copyright in that summary belongs to me – regardless of how unique or new your ideas are. However, I can’t quote your text word for word, only quote short passages to review or refer to your work.

How do I acquire copyright?

You don’t have to do anything to get your writing ‘copyrighted’. You automatically have copyright in anything you write. You can assert this with a statement somewhere in the work (such as ‘© 2010 ABC Copywriting’) but this is purely for information – you hold copyright whether you say so or not.

How long does copyright last?

Under the CDPA, copyright in written works lapses 70 years after the death of the author. Given the likely lifespan of most written marketing material, that effectively means that copywriters hold copyright in their work forever.

Assigning copyright to copywriting clients

Even though a client might pay you to create some text for them, you still hold the copyright in that text unless you assign it to them. They have paid you to do some work, not for the right to exploit the product of your labour.

(Note that this only applies to freelance writers. If you are employed and you write something as part of your work, your employer holds the copyright in it.)

In practice, most writers and their clients act as though copyright passes to the client when the invoice is paid. But legally, that’s not the case. To make it so, you need to include a clause somewhere that explicitly states how and when copyright in text you write will pass to the client. You could put it in your terms and conditions, on your invoice or even ask a lawyer to draw up a contract (something you might consider for longer works, such as books).

Wherever your clause appears, you need to make sure the client actually agrees to it in writing – by confirming their acceptance of your terms in an email, for example. This is the method I use. My own terms and conditions include the following clause:

Copyright in all published content (such as text and designs produced on your behalf) will pass to you on payment of your invoice.

Before I start a job, I make sure the client confirms their order in an email, along with their acceptance of my price and my terms and conditions. Then, if there’s any query later on, I can state with confidence that they have copyright once they’ve paid.

In some cases, you might want to retain copyright in your work – for example, if you write an article for publication in a magazine and you want to retain the right to publish it elsewhere as well. In this kind of situation, it’s probably worth having some sort of letter of agreement that clarifies exactly what rights you’re granting to your client in return for the fee, just to avoid any doubt or confusion.

Protecting against copyright infringement

One interesting question is whether you could have recourse to legal action if a client uses your text without paying. For example, if they published your text on a website without settling your invoice, they would technically be infringing your copyright, and you could take (or threaten) legal action. However, I’ve never tested this in practice or received legal advice about it – so consult a solicitor before you consider it.

Another possible scenario is writing material as a sample of your work, or as part of a proposal. If you don’t know the client well, you might feel there’s a risk of the content being used without permission or payment. To give yourself ammunition for a dispute, you can send your content to a trusted third party (I use my accountant) and simply ask them to retain it. You need to use a despatch method that incorporates the date, such as email or post. This allows you to establish later on, perhaps during a dispute, that you had created the content at a particular time.

To make it clear that any copyright infringement will be challenged, you can include a warning somewhere in your proposal, alongside an explicit claim to copyright. I use a form of words along these lines:

The content of this proposal is © 2010 ABC Copywriting and is not to be used without permission. ABC takes active steps to protect its intellectual property.

Finally, just in case you were wondering – the keystroke for the © symbol is alt-G on Macs, and Ctril-Alt-C on PCs (in Microsoft Office). In Microsoft Word, you can simply type (c) and it will be corrected to © if you have AutoCorrect activated.

This post is listed at W3C Software Directory.

‘Pride only hurts. It never helps.’
Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction

A while ago, a long-standing and highly valued client asked me to write a web page for her. As usual, we spoke at some length about the audience, the messages and the tone. I went away, produced a draft and submitted it.

In response, my client produced an entirely new draft and sent it over. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

Marsellus (Ving Rhames) invites Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) to take a dive

The instant I read her version, I knew it was better. She’d got the right tone, the right choice of words, the right structure. Apart from a couple of minor grammar tweaks, it was good to go. And that left me with two options:

• Option 1 was to climb back on top of the situation by combing through her text, finding everything that could possibly be changed and mounting a persuasive case for a new version with my fingerprints on it.
• Option 2 was to step back, accept that I’d missed the target and simply endorse my client’s version.

I went for option 2.

It was less work. It didn’t put me at odds with the client. And, most importantly, it was the right course of action.

Was it humiliating? Maybe a little. But I reminded myself that…

• I’d done the spadework. On the face of it, it might seem that my client could have just written her version alone, without any input from me. But her version, though very different from mine, still came after it. I’d conducted the initial discussion and drawn out a brief from it. I’d conquered the blank page, allowing her to learn from my mistakes. And, before I even sent my draft, I’d already rejected a number of non-starter approaches.
• I was still involved. Again, on the face of it, my client could have proceeded to publish the content without me. But she didn’t. She still wanted me to be involved in the process, however tangentially.
• Approval adds value. A lawyer might read through a contract, confirm that it’s OK as it stands and charge you £1000. They might not have ‘done’ anything tangible, but they’ve still helped you. Without their input, you’d feel much less confident about going ahead. By confirming that my client’s version was OK, I was still adding value to the project.
• Only results matter. Often, the path to the goal is more circuitous and time-consuming than we would have hoped. Or perhaps it doesn’t allow us to shine as we might like. But the point is that we get there. Better to get something that works for the client – by whatever method – than something that just makes you look good.

It all comes down to a focus on adding value, rather than feeling valued. Ultimately, clients remember outcomes rather than processes. (They’ll only remember processes if you make them more complicated than they need to be.) It’s not all about you.

When I’m comparing my unique visitor stats to the number of leads I get through the site, this thought gives me pause. Are visitors put off by my Twitter content, or perhaps even this blog? And more broadly, does social media – even when done exactly as the gurus suggest – invariably enhance reputation?

Talking to strangers

Everyone understands that different online media require different tones (I’ve covered it in this post). For most businesses, Tweeting in the same voice as you use on your corporate site would be absolutely deadly, resulting in a desperately dry, po-faced and self-centred feed. While competitors were asking their customers what they did on Friday night, you’d be Tweeting about your dull-as-ditchwater product launch. You’d have no followers, no profile and no ROI.

Does careless talk cost reputation?

However, what works for friends and followers might look strange to newcomers. A prospect clicking through to my Twitter profile will see my last Tweet prominently displayed in 28pt type. If that Tweet is frivolous, or even offensive (a subjective judgement, after all), it surely won’t make a good impression. At the very least, the positive ‘he has a personality’ points could easily be offset by a ‘not very professional’ penalty.

I serve clients from all over the world. What would a visitor from Russia or El Salvador make of a conversation about liking cheesy biscuits, on Monday morning, from someone who presents themselves as a professional? In fact, what would a UK visitor who just didn’t know much about Twitter think of it?

For me, casual Tweets are the online equivalent of having the radio on in the background when you answer the phone. Some people just aren’t going to like it. That’s why, when I remember, I’ll try and make sure that I leave the feed with something relatively sensible or useful at the top, like a retweet from @econsultancy. Sure, it’s inauthentic, but it feels safer.

Unseen damage

I often point out to clients that a poor website can do serious harm to their reputation without them necessarily being aware of it. A site riddled with ancient content, inconsistent formatting and spelling errors won’t have the phone ringing off the hook with complaints. Instead, visitors will come, form a negative impression and leave – almost certainly without comment. If they judge by appearances – and why shouldn’t they? – you’ll simply never hear from them.

When I view some firms’ websites, I’m astonished at the substandard content they leave online for years on end, apparently oblivious to the impression it’s giving. If I work with such firms, it often transpires that they are aware of the problem, and plan to sort it out. But with no negative feedback from the prospects that got away, there’s no sense of a ‘burning platform’ to force them to act.

Reputation bomb

With that in mind, consider a Twitter feed that’s easily accessible from the home page, or actually visible on it (as it should be, according to the received wisdom). It could easily be a reputation bomb primed to explode.

If you’re an active Tweeter who combines business and pleasure in one account (as most sole traders and SMEs do), you’re Tweeting stuff you’d never dream of publishing at your main site (humour, politics, personal life etc) on an hourly basis. And if you don’t mix in some personal stuff, your feed will be too dry. Who’s to say a fantastic prospect might not click into your feed at a time when it shows something catastrophically trivial?

I’m relatively paranoid about Twitter. I aim for friendliness, humour and relevancy and set myself strict rules: no politics, no swearing, no arguing, no boasting about work, no chat about clients. (The one evening I did Tweet about politics, I lost a follower for every Tweet I posted.) But many Tweeters don’t police themselves in this way, giving their language, feelings and reactions free rein. I respect that – after all, I’ve argued before that we should market honestly and be ourselves in social media. But some Tweets are so pointed that they elicit a sharp intake of breath as you read them. Does the author really want those words online?

Broadcasting trivia

We’ve all seen the alarmist, ill-informed articles in mainstream media about the perils of Facebook, when in fact it’s easy enough to restrict access to your page (or at least it was, until the privacy options started to look like this). Twitter, as most people choose to use it, exposes your posted content far more widely.

Each Tweet lives forever at its own URL, and Google now searches Twitter in real time, more efficiently than ever before. And it might not index the Tweets you want it to. For example, my highest-ranking Tweet on a search for my name (mercifully on page 2) is this effort (presumably because of its keyword density for ‘Tom’):

Not offensive, but hardly inspiring, and undeniably trivial. On balance, probably not a URL I’d want a prospective client to see. And it could have been worse.

But it doesn’t end there. You can opt to have your Tweets syndicated to third-party sites. One such is LinkedIn, surely the most pin-striped and buttoned-down of all the networking sites. It’s a place where serious job-hunting and reputation-building is the order of the day (along, it seems, with an ever-increasing volume of discussion spam). But depending on when a potential client or employer visits, your carefully edited CV could be gatecrashed by the most hasty, drunken, offensive Tweet you’ve ever Tweeted. That’s why I haven’t, er, linked in my Twitter profile to the site.

Imaginary walls

In my experience, although most people’s Twitter accounts are unprotected, in practice they still Tweet as if their accounts were somehow private – everything is ‘between friends’ in terms of both content and tone. Others go further, treating Twitter like a confessional, or even a diary – despite having thousands of followers. Certainly, many Tweets clearly originate with the urge to unburden rather than the need to communicate.

You might regard your Twitter account as more ‘personal’ than your business content, with a clear division between the corporate and social worlds, but in reality the distinction may be largely in your head (and not in your client’s).

This can apply to other types of social-media content as well. Many of my blog posts, for example, are primarily of interest to other copywriters, marketers or media professionals, and not really aimed at general business readers (i.e. my potential customers). Sometimes, the resulting comment discussion will stray into areas, such as pricing, where an honest response isn’t something I’d really want my clients to read. So, as with Twitter, I have to think carefully about everyone who might be reading, rather than imagining there’s some kind of invisible wall between my main site and the blog. It’s important to remember that anyone could be reading anything, at any time.

What do you think? Should we worry about the reputational risk of social media, or have we entered a new, more relaxed age where saying something online is no different from saying it in the pub?

• Thanks to Sarah Turner of Turner Ink for the conversation that inspired this post.

• They’re broke. These days, many firms are tight for cash, or choosing to safeguard their reserves. Don’t take it personally. If you got paid, count yourself lucky that you got the heads-up in time.
• They got bored. B2B relationships are like marriages. First comes the thrill of getting it together. Then the satisfaction of developing deeper understanding. Before you know it, the spark is gone. The flip side of reliability is predictability, and sometimes people just want a change.
• They moved on. Businesses change. Their strategies, priorities and cultures develop. Perhaps your client, once a perfect fit for your services, is a different company these days.
• Your service wasn’t sexy enough. People like to feel cutting-edge. They don’t want to miss out on trends. Shallow, but understandable. If you’re an established player using proven methods, however effective, a new kid on the block can make you look staid and uninspiring. It may not be fair, but it could get them a foot in the door.
• You weren’t sexy enough. Buyers are people. All else being equal, they’ll go with the provider who gives them an emotional thrill as well as a tick in a box. What’s more, they’ll bend the rules for someone they like. Being fit for purpose might not be enough.

Now, here’s why all that doesn’t matter:

• Plenty more fish. There are always more clients out there. Look at your remaining clients, identify the common thread and profile your ideal customer. Now go and find more clients like that. Your existing clients might be able to introduce you.
• Everything flows. Companies are formed, go bust, merge, split, buy each other. People move on, change role, get fired, start companies. Change throws up opportunities every day. Remember: ‘every exit is an entrance somewhere else’.
• Go where you give value. If your client moved on, it could mean you can’t meet all their needs. But that’s a reflection on them, not on you. Now you need to find new clients for whom you can add major value. There’s no point chasing a gig that’s not right for both parties.
• You are still you. You’ve lost a client. You have not lost your ability to gain clients, or to add value. Your offer is still just as strong as it was yesterday.

The psychological theme here is attribution: the way we think about the causes of events. Natural optimists attribute negative outcomes to others, while taking credit for success. Pessimists do the opposite, blaming themselves for setbacks while putting success down to fluke, circumstance or the actions of others.

If you want to move on from losing a client, cultivate optimistic mental habits. The client has moved on for reasons of their own, not because you fell short. And you already have all the resources you need to find a replacement.