Use Your Copywriting Blog to Attract Potential Clients to Your Portfolio Site

One of the biggest challenges any copywriter will face is finding a steady stream of clients. And while active prospecting can’t be beat, there are also a few other tactics you can use for attracting interest and nurturing potential clients.

You already know that having an online portfolio is non-negotiable—if you want to be seen as a professional, you have to have a site to which you can direct prospective clients or employers. And you know that you need a bio, contact information and, of course, images of your work. But what else can you do to set your online portfolio (and yourself!) apart?

One great way to attract more targeted traffic to your site—and to set yourself apart as a pro—is to, essentially, become your own content marketer. That is, put together a content plan to attract your ideal clients to your site.

Now wait—before you roll your eyes and leave the page, let me explain exactly why a blog can be an amazing tactic for getting prospective employers interested in you. A blog—and a blog with a very specific purpose—can give readers an insight into your mind and allow people to see how you think about advertising and marketing and the ways that you’re invested in creating great copy, even when you’re not working.

You Need to Understand Your Ideal Copywriting Client

In order to create content geared to your audience, you need to have a good idea of who your ideal client is.

Are you looking to work with small businesses, solopreneurs, design studios, or large businesses?

And are you looking to work with clients, or are you trying to attract full-time job interviews?

What to Post on Your Copywriting Blog

Once you know who your client is, you need to start thinking about the kind of content that would be useful for them.

Your blog needs to be geared toward your audience of prospective clients and employers and the express purpose has to be to demonstrate your thoughts and insights about marketing and advertising. Don’t post pictures of dinner, don’t include your episode-by-episode breakdown of Game of Thrones, don’t talk about your trip to Greece—unless they somehow relate to advertising, marketing and/or copywriting.

You need to come up with plenty of topics that would be useful for your target audience and that allow you to display your copywriting expertise—without giving people the impression that they can just do the copywriting work themselves.

Sample Content Ideas

If you’re trying to attract small businesses in need of copywriting and marketing help, you don’t want to write about how to track your copywriting invoices. That would certainly be useful to other copywriters and would attract other copywriters to your site to read it, but it wouldn’t get any clicks from your target audience.

Topics That Solve a Problem for Your Target Audience

Instead, a post about “How to Write Great Subject Lines for Small Businesses” would probably be very useful for small businesses (and other copywriters, for that matter). But if they think they can write great subject lines on their own, they’re not going to think they need you.

Instead of “how to” posts, consider topics that identify problems or important things that businesses may be overlooking. Things like “5 Reasons Your Email Open Rates Are So Low” or “Why Every Solopreneur Needs an Incredible ‘About Me’ Page” are informative and useful for your target audience, but also let you display your expertise without giving any of your “tricks of the trade” away.

Ad Critiques

When you see ads you like (or ads you don’t like) post them and praise or critique them. What was done well? What could have been done better? (Just be sure to be kind and respectful; you don’t want to rip apart ads from a company that might be interested in hiring you later.)

Thoughts About Your Current Projets

Post thoughts about a project you’re working on, being sure not to violate any NDAs. Post links to resources that you find insightful or interesting and then comment on them. You could start with articles like ours on whether copywriting training really necessary or the truth about SEO copywriting and write about your thoughts on them; there are tons of articles on advertising marketing all around the web.

Come Up With Ideas Before You Start Posting

Come up with a list of at least 20 content ideas and then get writing. You want to be posting to your blog consistently—at least once every other week. So, you’ll want to have a good backlog of posts at the ready.

Promote Your Blog Posts

Now, of course, just because you’re putting these blog posts on your site doesn’t mean anyone is going to find them. Create a Facebook business page for yourself, and share the posts on your business page. Post on LinkedIn, too.

Medium.com can also be a great way to get your content out there and discovered. Medium asks that the content be unique, though, so you’ll want to make some changes to your blog posts before you post them up there.

The goal is to get your post out there as much as possible.

All of this will just make it that much easier for hiring managers to find you. And then, once they find you, there’s a treasure trove of insight into how your creative, professional mind works.

And, at the end of every blog post, be sure to include a call to action. Something as simple as, “Interested in talking about your own copywriting project? Get in touch with me today for a free consultation call” will do just fine.

The more quality posts you create and the more places you put them on the net, the more chances you have of someone finding them, visiting your site, and getting in touch with them.

Post Regularly

Be sure to post regularly. You could set yourself the goal to post once a month, once every two weeks, or even once a week. The most important thing is that you post according to a schedule and you keep your content fresh.

After all, if a prospective employer gets to your site and sees that the last time you posted was three months ago, the message is that you don’t keep your site updated, perhaps you’re not thinking about marketing and advertising all that often, or, worst of all, that you’re not really serious about your career.

Your turn! Do you post content to your portfolio site? How often do you post? Let us know in the comments below!

Last Updated on June 30, 2023