A big blogging mistake that may be costing you clients!

When I first left my corporate job and began working solely as a freelancer, I was really excited to share how my new life felt and what I was learning. I wrote about landing clients, creating contracts, and offered lots of advice to anyone looking to follow my path. But I realized a few months ago (you may have noticed the freelance posts tapering off) that this was not entirely helpful to growing my business. Writing about being a freelancer, for freelancers was actually hindering it, but not for the reason you might think!

It didn’t matter that I was training lots of other bloggers and designers to get into the freelance game as well. Everyone has their own work flow and aesthetic – clients that want to work with them them will work them and clients that want my style and aesthetic will hire me. That wasn’t the issue at all.

I wasn’t until I took the time to nail down WHO I was writing this blog for that I realized my mistake….about a quarter of my blog posts were geared toward other designers or potential designers – the last people on earth that would possibly be interested in hiring me! I loved sharing what I learned as I built my freelance business, but I really should have been writing posts to show off what I know about design, business, blogging, marketing, or social media, which would be more likely to draw in paying clients.

I often call my blog my ‘big marketing machine,’ but it could have been doing a much better job drawing in people who wanted to work with me, not just learn from me.

If you’re trying to build a business and sell products, you gotta get clear on who your ideal reader is and create content for them, not other bloggers or business owners in your niche.

So tell me…does who you’re writing for match who you’re selling to?

(Or am I the only moron who screwed this up??)