VOLUME 24, ISSUE 6 – JUNE 2025
THIS MONTH’S MENU:
I. Treat Client Businesses as You Would Treat Your Own
Doing more than the bare minimum can lead to long-lasting client relationships.
II. Why Specialization Isn’t Always Optional
PA FLCW to generalists: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
III. Is Your Writing “Visible?”
A book designer offers relevant advice to writers.
I. Treat Client Businesses as You Would Treat Your Own
Doing more than the bare minimum can lead to long-lasting client relationships.
A long-time client once shared feedback that stuck with me.
He shared a key reason he loved working with me was I treated his business as if it was my own.
This wasn’t a one-off. It’s how I treat all clients, though I hadn’t thought much about it before then.
When you treat a client’s business as you’d treat your own, you build more trust. You can end up in a sort of hybrid writer-consultant role.
These relationships can be both lucrative and lasting.
3 Ways to Increase Your Value, and Build More Trust, with Clients
Here are a few examples of how you can make clients feel you value and respect their businesses as much as your own:
1. Build a deep understanding of your client’s business.
Know who they target with every project and how their target customers are influenced. Understand business goals behind everything you write. And learn what you can about your client’s competition, what they’re doing, how successful they are, and how your client’s efforts compare.
2. Be willing to share your thoughts.
The added value you bring to a client will depend on what kind of feedback you’re qualified to offer.
In my case, it often comes down to PR concerns, SEO opportunities, and addressing issues with research design or data (such as from client surveys) before we work on a report, press release, or some other project to share results.
What business skills, strategy, and specialized insight can you offer clients that other writers can’t?
3. Anticipate your client’s needs.
Think a step or two ahead. Don’t focus only on what your client is doing now. Think about what they might need in the future so you can get in on key projects early.
For example, if a client ran a successful project last year related to a particular season, holiday, or event, reach out to see if they expect to do something similar later this year.
Building these kinds of relationships comes down to two things: identifying and solving client problems and identifying opportunities clients haven’t considered.
If you can do that, you’ll be booked early and often.
II. Why Specialization Isn’t Always Optional
PA FLCW to generalists: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
I’ve long encouraged freelance writers to become specialists rather than generalists. This week I came across a post from long-time friend and colleague, Lori Widmer of the Words on the Page blog, where she talked about this and how specialization isn’t always optional.
As Lori put it…
“There is a level of competent understanding that you as a freelancer need to have in order to write about a topic.
“In my niche, knowing insurance terms is a very small part of the job. I have to know the language, the acronyms, the jargon, the regulatory landscape, the various industries that feed into that niche, and how it all ties together.”
“The regulatory landscape” is an important example.
Some niches, industries, and even project types demand expertise generalists can’t provide. No amount of “on the fly” research is enough in those cases. And, as Lori noted in her post, “you don’t know what you don’t know.”
Here’s an example related to project types. I’m a long-time specialist in PR writing, including press releases.
Many writers assume they can write press releases. Some see it as little more than plugging a client’s news and quotes into a template.
Jumping into press release writing (in the U.S.) without understanding the implications of SEC rules around things like financial press releases and those involving publicly-traded companies, however, could cause legal headaches for clients, and potentially you as well.
“I can write about anything” isn’t a badge of honor. And it could, rightly, scare away your ideal clients.
It’s OK to write about a variety of niches or industries. Specialization is not the same as “niching down.”
It can also mean you specialize in project types or working with specific types of clients (or any combination of those things). Even being a “freelance commercial writer” is a form of specialization.
Don’t be one of those writers who doesn’t know what they don’t know. Before pursuing contracts in a new area, do some research into what sets the specialized experts apart.
At the very least, you’ll have a better idea of what projects you can responsibly take on and which ones to pass on (or pass along via referrals).
Read Lori’s full post: The “I can write about anything” Fallacy
III. Is Your Writing “Visible?”
A book designer offers relevant advice to writers.
The following story comes from Well-Fed Writer founder, Peter Bowerman. He shares a lesson from an interior book designer on the importance of making our work disappear.
A few months back, I read a wonderful book, Save Me the Plums, by Ruth Reichl, who was the longtime editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine (now defunct).
It’s a great glimpse into the publishing world, that’ll be appreciated not only by anyone who enjoys “inside looks” into unfamiliar industries, but it’s a food lovers’ celebration as well.
One passage jumped out as having particular relevance to folks like us. She was recounting a conversation she’d had as a child with her father, a successful book designer (i.e., the interior layout, not the book cover). She wrote:
“‘I want all traces of my work to vanish,’ he once told me, explaining that he was most successful when you did not notice the design. ‘All I want people to feel,’ he’d said, ‘is that they’ll keep turning the pages because they’re so easy to read.’”
Dead on. I’d highlighted the same thing, in one of the reports (“Write Better, Earn More”) included in The Deluxe Well-Fed Tool Box (companion e-book to TWFW).
In point # 6, “Make Your Writing Disappear,” I wrote:
“When you write something, your goal should be to disappear from the process of information dissemination… The reader should just get the communication, without even noticing the words. Words should be the vehicle of a thought or idea, but they shouldn’t be a distraction.”
That means making your writing simple, clear and unadorned.
Do you have a FLCW success story or quick tip you’d like to share in a future newsletter? Email your story to epub@wellfedwriter.com and tell me about it (in fewer than 200 words), and it could be featured in the EPUB.