Andrea Durrheim

Passionate about writing? How passionate are you about writing for clients? After all, they’re not just a necessary inconvenience: they’re the reason why you’re able to stay afloat.

Passion does matter. It always matters. You have to be able to feel it to express it. You need to express it to achieve reader engagement. You need to love your clients’ businesses as much as you love your own. Hate your customers? Then it’s time to find other customers. If you don’t love what they do, you can’t love what you do!

Need a bit of help to get your Mojo working? Here’s what you need.

1. Be Interested

You don’t just need the “what” to understand what your clients do. You need the “why.” What makes your clients tick – and how does that address what their clients want or need?

Let’s suppose that your clients sell life insurance. It’s a grudge purchase. On the surface, it’s a dull topic. Nobody says “Yippee! I just got life insurance!” All the same, it can make a positive difference to their beneficiaries when they die. But if all you can think of is the cliche “taking care of your loved ones,” you need help, and so does your customer.

So, given that life insurance is nothing new, what do your clients offer that other companies don’t? Why do they offer it? The answers to these questions might enthuse you. If you’re enthused, your readers will pick up on it. If you aren’t, don’t expect to generate enthusiasm.

Writing for algorithms and making it readable just in case someone actually reads what you wrote? Shove in the keywords. String together some logical-sounding sentences, but accept that what you’re doing is entry-level stuff.

2. Have Empathy

If you can’t genuinely empathize with people who experience situations you’ve never encountered, you don’t have enough imagination to be a freelance writer. Harsh? It’s a reality. Without empathy, you can only trot out formulaic text that means nothing to you. Don’t expect it to mean anything to your readers.

Anybody can say what’s expected of them. But the expected is unsurprising. If you’re only saying what your readers expect you to say, your text isn’t worth reading. Think about what your readers want, and give them something that offers even more – as long as there’s truth in it.

3. Ask Questions

Not in love? Then it’s time to ask some questions. What makes your customer’s company unique? Why would their customers choose that company above all others? And, in rare cases, what does your customer actually do? There are businesses that cater to niche needs, and you may not understand their reason for being or their methods.

As a freelance writer, you become your customers’ “voice.” You can’t say the right things if you don’t understand what they do, who they serve, and what makes them special.

4. Avoid Cliches But Touch on Universal Truths (Tricky)

If you don’t have enough imagination to take content beyond cliché, your client might still accept it. But choosing less frequently used terms and seeking fresh, meaningful perspectives can help your work stand out to your readers. Using legal content as an example, you’ll probably find hundreds of examples structured in nearly the same way.

Some of those repetitive points will matter to readers, but others are not much use. For example, “What to do After an Accident” sections tend to be pretty bad. Very few seriously injured people are going to start googling lawyers from the scene of an accident. Even if they do, telling them to get out of their car and start taking pictures is frankly dangerous advice if they’re badly hurt.

What they need to know is to follow their doctor’s instructions and consider involving a lawyer early, especially if their injuries may have long-term consequences.

5. Talk to People vs Talk At People

Have you ever met somebody who has very strong opinions and seems to think your perspective doesn’t matter? How engaged did you feel? When you’re a freelance writer, you need to imagine the reader’s perspective and opinions, and you have to find a way of writing that resonates with them.

This goes a lot deeper than using the word “you” when talking to your readers. It comes back to empathy. Think about the reasons why people are reading your article. Show warmth and understanding. Tell them what they need to know without coming across as “preachy.”

6. Be Willing to Turn Customers Down

Not enthusiastic about a project? Realistically, there will be times when you’re slogging along for the sake of having paid work to do. But if you can’t find anything exciting about your client and their business, you should still consider turning down the commission.

Why? That’s because it will benefit both you and your customers if you refuse work that makes you feel unenthusiastic.

If you’re bored, you’ll sound boring. If you’re disinterested, you’ll sound uninteresting. And, let’s be frank, you’ll be hammering away at your keyboard just to get finished. Expect your readers to notice this, if only on a subconscious level. Are they engaged? Probably as much as you are.

Connecting With Invisible People

Can you connect with people you can’t see and whose opinions you may never hear? I think it isn’t as impossible as it may sound. But it does take imagination. I often question people who see me as being “creative” when all I try to do is to reflect facts. But being able to engage an audience definitely takes a degree of creative thinking that goes beyond the facts you’ll use in your writing. After all, you’re trying to interest people you don’t know and can’t see.

If there’s a magic bullet for engagement, I’d say it’s having empathy for both your readers and clients. As a writer, it’s your task to find ways to bring them together. The more genuinely you believe that your clients’ customers will benefit from the union, the better you’ll be at writing the words that encourage that connection.

If you think your business has something special to offer its clients and need someone to find the right words to express that, drop me a line. It’s what I do – and if I can see reasons to like your business, I can help your target market to like it too!