Collecting those Cold Calls

The past 2 weeks has been pretty busy fielding calls from new potential clients. While I typically get a few every month, just last week I had 4 which seemed a little on the busy side.

This tells me that people are probably looking for some relief from this economic crunch. Revising or building new stuff is a great way for them to improve their businesses.

The cool thing, is that of the cold calls I have received, only one has been from here in Atlanta. I can see by my web traffic analytics that I get people from all over the world looking at my stuff.

In the past 3 years, I have maintained almost 70% of my traffic from the organic search engines. And these recent inquiries prove it: I am hardly local.

Why It Matters
The fact that I get people from wherever calling me about business means that I want my message to reflect this. While I don't think it necessarily does at the moment, as I revise and rewrite my stuff I will need to keep this in mind. Much of what I do has no geographical specification, but I want to purposefully remain aware of what my message might mean, depending on who is reading it, where.

So for you, o' my aspiring freelance seo writer, this means a couple things:

1. NEVER underestimate the power of the Internet and a decent site on it. Remember: I am not reaching out to these potential clients, they continue to find me. And my site is old, pretty weakly written and was only halfway optimized over 4 years ago. But it still works!
2. Remember: you are likely talking to more people than you realize, and many messages you might think are short lived will actually find a way to stick around for years.
3. Start early with good habits regarding refreshing your own content. I am horrible about this, and so my site doesn't as accurately represent me as it could. So while I may be having some great calls lately - how many am I missing? How many more could I get?

Hopefully, a few of these calls turn into new relationships. I liked the people I have been speaking with - we'll have to see if I make the right fit for them.

In the meantime, I am starting to revise and reform my own messaging. And my new direction will assume that I can get people from all over the place to see it, and that it might live much longer online than perhaps it should.

This week, I was wrapping up 3 clients websites, and realized I will finally have time to restructure my own site.

It's funny - I started this blog over a year ago, when I realized too much time was passing without me attending to my site. But time hasn't magically appeared - I have less of it than ever. So be it- work comes first for a freelance SEO writer.

But now I am back around to that starting point again - I am looking at rebuilding/redesigning my own site as soon as I can cut these other 3 loose. It is both daunting and exciting - I am looking forward to rebranding myself and my company.

How it has Changed
A lot has changed about the way I do business in the last 5 years. 5 years ago, I was very heavily a web copywriter. My gigs rarely strayed from me cranking out content that was put into other people's sites. Business was great, and I was fat and happy.

Then, as time wore on, my own interests ranged more toward the strategy and development sides of things. I was building more, involved more in the concepts and execution of larger initiatives, and stretched my wings a bit.

Creatively, this was great. While writing was still my strongest suit, being able to develop strategies and plans and technically execute them was becoming really attractive (and lucrative) for me.

Cut to now: In the past couple years, open source code is changing the way people develop websites. My ability to use various open source solutions, to modify and optimize a variety of solutions, is again changing what I offer my clients. So it is time to reflect this in my marketing, particularly in my website.

So in the next two-to-three weeks, I will be rebuilding the Articulayers site. I will be blending open source code with my own tweaks, and will build something that has modular growth as part of the design. I will be catering to aspiring SEO copywriters, as well as giving my clients a menu of related services that I can offer. I will have some advice, some case studies, and some freelance seo tips.

Great fun!