How to boost your writing career over the holidays

You're about to enter a communications blackout with clients. Here's what smart freelancers will do.

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Dave Polykoff & Dusten Carlson
December 19, 2023

Hey, ProWriter!

It’s the end of the year, and this is our final newsletter before signing off for a short holiday break. We’ll return to full newsletter-ing on January 9.

It’s a time of reflection and predictions for the year to come, so we’re including some industry prognostications and career tips to help you stay on the same page as everyone you work for as we head into 2024.

To start, here’s a very confident prediction from the team at ProWriter:

Thursday, December 21, marks the first day of winter.

So grab your coziest blanket and pour a cup of hot cocoa. We’ve got a few last-minute items for you in the last full ProWriter newsletter of 2023:

  • 3 career tips for taking advantage of the quiet holiday season 🎅

  • Non-AI marketing trends of 2023, and other headlines 📈

  • A look inside the mind of a leading SaaS marketing voice 🧠

  • Some last-minute marketing round-ups to check out 👔

  • Our final list of selected writing gigs of 2023 ✍️

Ho ho ho!

- Dave and Dusten

#ProWriterTips 💡

3 things to do while your clients are on holiday

By now, your clients are winding down and heading out to take advantage of whatever accrued vacation time they have left.

Expect slim pickings and very little communication in the coming weeks.

For freelancers, this kind of extended downtime can be the stuff of anxiety.

Sure, you may still have some projects to work on, or maybe you’re in a good financial place and can take some much-needed R&R yourself.

But if the holiday communications blackout makes you a nervous nellie, here are 3 Christmas-themed career tips to help you take advantage of the seasonal hiatus.

These tips will give you a major advantage when everyone comes back online in early 2024:

  1. 🗒️ Make a list. It’s a great time to do some industry research and make a huge list of brands to pitch in 2024. Find companies and agencies in your niches using LinkedIn, make sure you follow their pages, and use their employee directories to identify people to connect with. Look for people who could hire you, but also, peer-level employees to rub elbows with to get a sense of what it’s like working there, or a way to get your foot in the door.

  2. ✌️ Check it twice. Once you have a list of superiors and employees to reach out to, do a deep dive. Look at their posts and other social channels to see if you have anything in common that you can use as an icebreaker to start a conversation. Some may also have instructions for sending a pitch in their About sections, or provide their email address or other ways to reach out to them.

  3. ✌️ Figure out who’s naughty and nice. Organize your list by priority. Who do you think you have the best chance of landing a new gig with? Did an Account Executive at a small agency post that they’re planning to expand their content operations in 2024? That’s a warmer lead than a gigantic corporation with 100 marketing employees, leaving you with no idea who to pitch to. We’re not saying don’t pitch those people, but, try to target your January outreach to make more effective use of your time.

If you’re starting new outreach from scratch in 2024, you’re going to have to do all of this stuff anyway. So use this time.

You want to be ready to roll in those first weeks of January. Top of the inbox and top of mind.

Hope this helps, and happy holidays!

If you have any questions, please reply to this email and ask! We read every reply, and if we see an interesting question, we’ll answer it in a future newsletter.

Want to check out all of our Writer Tips for free?

📺🎙️A word from our sponsor📲🤑

A writer is only as strong as their portfolio.

That’s why ProWriter built one that highlights your strengths and showcases your best samples.

ProWriter isn’t just a newsletter. It’s an entire resource for helping freelance writers launch their writing careers.

When you become a ProWriter member, you get:

✔️ A free portfolio to highlight your hard-earned skills and experience

✔️ Workshops, courses, and other resources to improve your skills

✔️ Access to a community of peers and coaches to help you succeed

Ready to grow your writing career?

Eye on AI 🤖

In this section, we bring you the top stories about AI that affect creatives. Mostly so you can stay informed, but also (hopefully) worry less.

Today’s robopocalypse headlines 🤖💀

100 content people you should be following 🤝

We made a big list of the most successful and influential voices in marketing.

The main thing they have in common? They post free content advice that will make you a better writer.

This week, here’s who we think you should follow + connect with on LinkedIn: 

#88 Ashley Faus

Ashley is the Head of Lifecycle Marketing and Portfolio at Atlassian, the software company behind team productivity tools such as Trello.

Why you should follow her

  • Ashley is a leading voice in SaaS marketing. She invests a ton of time into her thought leadership, regularly taking guest spots on podcasts and speaking at events. Her content is essential if you want to keep an ear to the ground on what’s changing in marketing.

  • She’s generous. She shares Atlassian’s marketing playbooks, strategic tips for developing brand content, and insights on personal branding and thought leadership.

In short, Ashley offers us the opportunity to see deeply inside the head of a key marketer within a major SaaS brand.

Makes you think 🤔

Retrospective roundup (to help you prepare for '24)

While you’re using the holiday quiet to build your outreach lists for 2024, it might help to freshen up your marketing know-how so you can look like a baller in a cold pitch.

So today, we’re using this section to provide some good retrospective reports and webinars that you can check out in your downtime.

These will help you get a good sense of how marketing changed in 2023, and where industry leaders think it’s going in 2024.

Note that none of these selections are affiliates (i.e., where they pay us to feature them). We read a lot of marketing stuff and just think these will be the most useful!

  • Marketing Brew and Marigold did a webinar yesterday brimming with copywriting and human psychology hacks. See the registration page here, and keep an eye out for a playback.

  • Deloitte's research is as good as it gets. Here’s a massive report on how content marketers have been using AI so far.

  • Executive thought leadership is going to be huge. Here’s a great guide for helping brands craft those messages.

  • LinkedIn released a sweeping “future of work” presentation in November with tons of original data. A lot of people read it, make sure you do too.

  • Here’s a Neil Patel webinar focused on how marketing is going to change in 2024.

Stay warm, folks!

Top Freelance Writing Jobs 💼 

  1. PrimoStats.com is accepting guest posts in 2024. Pitch your ideas to [email protected].

  2. Thermo Fisher Scientific is looking for science writers. Share your portfolio with Kylie here.

  3. Jennings Social Media & MarTech is a digital advertising agency and is on the lookout for a part-time writer and editor. Apply here.

  4. Chasing Foxes is looking for a ghostwriter for a single $230 blog post. Sounds like there will be more work if this works out. Apply here.

  5. The Pacific Institute is looking for a content marketing writer to help draft 3 impact reports. They estimate about 40 hours per report, and the total payout is $7,500. Apply here.

  6. The UGC Factory needs a social-savvy ghostwriter. Pays $45/h. Apply here.

  7. Email copywriter? Jolly SEO needs your help. Apply here.

Don’t forget — all the jobs we post here are remote and we privilege gigs with transparent pay.

A handful come from our personal networks and aren’t on any jobs boards… yet. So get on ‘em.

What’s on your 🧠?

Here’s your weekly reminder that if you’re one of our 5,000 subscribers, you can reply directly to this email.

That’s because we want to hear from you!

  • We want your feedback, so we can make this newsletter better

  • We want your questions, so we can create relevant content for you

  • We want to build relationships, so reply with whatever is on your mind

Send us compliments, concerns, complaints, questions, story ideas, memes, whatever you got.

Thanks for reading, ProWriters!

Let’s have a great week.

Dave & Dusten

P.S. Want to look smart to all your friends? Forward them this newsletter.

P.P.S. Want to really upgrade your freelance writing career?

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Until next week, see you on Twitter and LinkedIn.