It takes this freelance writer just a few minutes to make her every client pitch 100% personalized
This article was originally published on Authory’s blog.
Maya Middlemiss has been a freelancer for many years and has written for a wide range of publications and businesses. Given her extensive experience as a freelance writer, she even published several books helping others in similar work setups to make the most of it.
When you are as experienced and prolific as Maya, you’ll naturally cover numerous different topics over the course of your career. That posed a challenge to Maya when applying for new gigs or when presenting herself to potential new clients: while it’s fantastic to have such a strong body of work, a link to her portfolio that covers all aspects didn’t seem the way to go.
My portfolio is now quite extensive, and includes a range of different media, as well as range of niches. In many cases I will see someone who has a need which is a great fit for me — but that need isn't necessarily reflected in my most recent work. They might even look at the front page of my portfolio, and quickly decide I wasn't a fit at all.
In other words, Maya felt that by relying on her portfolio alone, she wasn’t necessarily highlighting the right area of expertise to the right prospective client at the right time.
The problem: How to display precisely the right content to clients with different requirements
Let’s assume Maya comes across a prospective client looking for editorial help on a specific topic. Maya has the expertise and has done the work to prove it, but she needs to be able to showcase the exact pieces she did on that specific topic.
As Maya says, she wants to be able to “handpick a selection of clips which are directly relevant and aligned to what the prospect is seeking, and make it easier for them to see exactly why we'd be so perfect to work together.”
That goes beyond what a portfolio page can do. Instead, what Maya wants is more akin to having a custom portfolio specifically made for each and every prospective client.
The solution: A platform that has all of Maya’s work indexed and enables her to curate and privately share it in seconds
After Maya started using Authory, pitching her work became a breeze. To begin with, Authory automatically found, imported, and indexed all of the content that Maya has created for various publications and clients over the years, no matter where and when they were published.
As of now, she has a total of 613 articles and 35 podcast episodes from 35 different sources in her Authory account.
Maya's Authory account contains her 613 articles and 35 podcasts from 35 different sources.
In order to manage this impressive body of work, Maya uses the Content section in her Authory account. It’s like an email inbox, only that instead of her emails, it’s displaying a table with her articles and podcasts.
Thanks to the Content section, Maya can easily browse and filter her work. For example, she can search her entire body of work for “work remotely” and quickly find all her pieces on that topic.
The Content section enables Maya to search and filter her entire body of work in seconds.
Now, whenever she wants to respond to a specific pitch for a prospective client, Maya starts in her Content section and follows these four steps:
1. Maya uses the Content section in her Authory account to find the exact content pieces that best match the prospect’s requirements.
When you can see all your content arrayed in a table, you can reflect on it from the prospective client's point of view: what will be the most relevant, interesting, and important clips, which demonstrate exactly what you have to offer? Once you put yourself in their shoes, it's usually obvious which items should be included.
2. She then creates a collection and adds the respective pieces:
Maya can easily select content items to add them to a new or existing collection.
3. She adds a meaningful description to the collection and styles it:
Besides a description, every collection can get a custom header picture.
4. She creates a private share link and sends it to the prospect:
The share link is private and only somebody with knowledge of this link will have access.
Thanks to Authory, this entire process takes Maya a few minutes only. And the result is a highly personalized, efficient experience for her prospects. Here is an example:
The benefits of creating a custom collection for each prospect instead of simply sending a link to her generic portfolio page are manifold:
1. Standing out
Prospective clients and their editors are often bombarded with links to portfolios when they look for writers to work with. Sending over a personalized collection makes Maya positively stand out from the crowd.
2. Appearing like the ideal fit
By pre-selecting the pieces that are an ideal fit for what the prospective client is looking for, Maya increases her chances of working together considerably.
3. Saving prospects’ time and showing respect
The medium is the message: by sending a personally curated selection of her work, Maya signals to prospective clients that she is not only very efficient but also aware of the fact that their time is valuable.
4. Saving time yourself
The process of creating a personalized collection for a prospective client is “very quick and easy,” according to Maya.
Here is how it’s played out for Maya in practice
Maya came across an invite to pitch her work on Twitter recently. And she used exactly the process described above, with great results!
I was responding on a Twitter thread, which received over a hundred public replies. I could see the shout-out was already attracting a high volume of responses, and I knew that it wasn't realistic or likely that they would follow through to find the relevant content on every link sent or 'check DM' response. So being able to spin up a custom collection in a few minutes was a great way to stand out, and attract the prospect's attention.
Doing this was easy for Maya, so she created the personalized collection and added it to her submission:
Maya replied to the initial tweet with a link to a personalized collection.
Even though dozens of others submitted their information within a short period of time, Maya stood out with her personalized collection. And the prospect took notice:
The prospective client took note immediately because her pitch was personalized.
They appreciated the customisation and personalised introduction, which was easy to add to the collection.
What about the portfolio?
Personalized submissions are the way to go when responding to specific pitches. For more generic situations (email footer, social media bio, etc.), a link to Maya’s portfolio is more adequate, as she can’t know who is reading.
The good news? Authory hosts Maya’s general portfolio too. And on her portfolio, Maya has:
… a range of tabbed collections there which are one click away, for anyone who wants to rapidly drill down into specifics, and this also showcases the way my preferred niches intersect (for example, the 'future-of-work' and 'future-of-money' may seem unrelated at first glance, but they're both about the impact of emerging technology on society and behavior, so have more in common than people might think!).
Maya’s magic formula: personalized collections for specific pitches. A well-sorted portfolio for everything else. All built with Authory.
Authory offers even more
Maya’s use case highlights very nicely how Authory can help content creators be more successful when it comes to pitching their work.
The good news? That’s only part of what Authory does.
In fact, Authory is a real all-you-need solution helping content creators automatically handle everything that’s important after their content has been published. Besides amazing analytics features, Authory also offers the following:
- Automated article backups of all your past and future content
- Extensive search and filtering options
- An integrated newsletter system
- … and much more!
Join Maya and thousands of other content creators and be on top of your content game while saving countless hours of manual work every month: Try Authory for free!