After many years of freelancing, I still haven’t overcome the feast or famine cycle. It always seems that I either have so much work that I can barely breathe or I am super slow with barely any projects lined up. And in many ways, I am totally to blame because when I am busy I typically forget to market myself. When the projects on my plate are completed, I then find that my calendar is pretty empty. One of my goals this year is to remember to do one marketing task every day, but I am still struggling to fit marketing into my day when I am busy.

Here are five tricks that I am using to try to help fit marketing my custom content services into every day:

1. Make a marketing plan at the beginning of each month. There is nothing more unproductive than sitting down to send out LOIs and having no direction on what type of markets you want to target. At the beginning of each month, spend a little bit of time mapping out the overall markets that you want to target for the month. For example, last October my goal was to send out emails to all of the agencies on the custom content list and in January I targeted agencies located in the Raleigh-Durham area. Last month I contacted local law firms and, next month, I want to start focusing on marketing myself directly to B2B technology companies in my area.
2. Set a goal for each week and reward yourself. I love to get takeout from my favorite grill on Fridays so I have started only allowing myself to make the call if I have met my marketing goal for the week. Based on my workload each week, I set a goal for the number of LOIs that I want to send out that week and I write it in a bright color on the top of my to-do list. For me, having a set number written down really increases my odds of meeting it. And I have to say that the reward of eating my favorite hamburger doesn’t hurt either.
3. Look for markets while watching television or waiting in line. If I am watching mindless television or waiting in carpool line at my kids’ school, I will often pull out my smart phone or tablet and search for new markets. I will then copy the information into Evernote so I can easily access it later. Sometimes I will do Google searches and other times I will check job boards. Another favorite strategy of mine is to search through the LinkedIn job listings for companies looking for full-time content marketing writers and save all of the jobs from companies that are a fit for my skills. Then when I sit down to send LinkedIn Inmails to these companies, I have all the information and am ready to go.
4. Find time each day or each week that is not productive. I am slow on Mondays. It usually seems that I am waiting to hear back from sources or trying to figure out my direction for a story. So I will often try to kick off my week on the right foot with a marketing blast. I have also found that my most productive writing times during the day are typically early in the morning or after lunch, so I will often take a few minutes late morning when I find myself opening Facebook as a distraction, to send out some emails. Taking advantage of the time that I used to waste has been a huge key for me.
5. Hire a Virtual Assistant. Yes, this isn’t possible for everyone, but if you are in the position to do it, it can be a huge help. I’m going to talk more in a future post about using a VA, but wanted to through this out there as an idea for marketing. A VA is an assistant who you can hire for either an hourly rate or retainer to do tasks ranging from emails, social media, editing, research or pretty much any administrative task on your place. For marketing, you could use a VA to find names as well as send out your LOI to target markets. If you use the VA for sending out the emails, be sure that you still customize each email. I prefer to use a VA for the research and actually send out my own emails, but I know writers who have used a VA for both.

What are your tricks for continuing to market? Have you used any of mine? What works for you?