Dont Be Everything to Everyone - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Dont Be Everything to Everyone - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Yesterday, while out with friends, I ended up talking to a young guy who is trying to break into the copywriting field. What kind of writing do you want to do? I asked him, trying to get a sense so I could give him useful advice. Whats your focus? I dont know, he told me. Ill do anything. I just want to get started. Thats your problem right there, I blurted out, not even stopping to consider that he might not be interested in how to get a writing gig advice at 11:30pm on a Saturday night. But Ive been there and I know. When youre just starting out in a field, you want so badly to get hired that you will do anything for anyone who will hire you. If youre a copywriter, youll write radio ads, or press releases or blog posts or articles. Youll even spend hours applying to every project posted on websites like Elance.com. If anyone has any writing needs, you can fill them! Right? Except that doesnt work. It actually hurts your chances of getting work. (This isnt just a problem writers face, by the way. Anyone who is trying to break into a new field has probably faced this issue.) Wont you rule out potential opportunities? The main reason its hard when youre a jack-of-all-trades is that its nearly impossible to find clients. That sounds so counter-intuitive isnt it better to keep your options open so that you dont accidentally rule out a potential client? What happens though is that you make it less likely that youll connect with someone who wants to hire you. This happens for a couple reasons. First of all, when youre completely unfocused, you dont know where to look for potential clients. On the other hand, if youre a copywriter who focuses specifically on (e.g) small to mid-sized companies who are looking to get into Business-to-Consumer (B2C) social media, its relatively easy to find companies that could hire you. All you need to do is find events and associations that will attract people from those small to mid-sized companies. Or, if you use a sales tool, you can find a list of companies that fit your parameters and then find out if they could be a potential client by checking out their website. Its a lot easier to start with a small, focused list of potential clients (and expand it later), than to not know where to start. Or worse, to start with a list of all the local companies and to weed out the bad fits by contacting every single one of them. (Its very depressing to hear No all the time when youre starting out.) The watered down effect Secondly, when you insist that you can do anything, people dont think youre very good at what they want you to do. I saw this demonstrated really well in a product my mom reviewed for her blog. It was a small, portable projector that (according to the press release), could be perfect for businesspeople, teachers, home theaters, kids playing video games, etc, etc! But those are all really different environments, and its physically impossible for a product to be the best when its designed to be used in many different ways. Companies dont want to hire someone who is only marginal at a job. And theyre not stupid. They know that a person who spends 30 hours a week writing press releases will do a much better job on their press release than someone who regularly writes in 24 different writing styles. Anything, anyone or anybody Finally, it looks desperate when you insist that youll do anything (anything at all!) if they just hire you. Desperate is bad because it tells a potential client that no one else is hiring you. If no one else is hiring you, why would they take the risk? (See the thought process on this?) Theres a lot of power in looking a potential client straight in the eye and calmly saying, I work specifically with (size or industry) companies who want to accomplish (a goal) through (a writing medium). That says to the potential employer that youre a professional, that you specialize in a certain type of work, and that youre busy enough to be able to focus on a certain topic. Choosing to focus in on specific companies is a scary decision because it closes the door on potential deals. But it will actually make you far more likely to succeed than if you leave all your options open. Author: Katie Konrath writes about creativity, innovation and “ideas so fresh… they should be slapped!” at www.getFreshMinds.com.