One of the biggest challenges writers face today—and it's a repeated theme on the podcast—is getting noticed by clients and prospects. In the 433rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with Content Strategist Erica Schneider about how you can cut the fluff and get noticed by the people you want to work with. This is a good one, you won't want to miss. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

 

Stuff to check out:

Erica's Website

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

The Copywriter Underground

 

Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  What to get noticed? Want to stand out? Want clients to find you instead of the other way around? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.

A lot of the conversations on this podcast focus on the problem of getting noticed… standing out from the crowd of a million other writers—many of whom are willing to work for a lot less than you, some of whom, though hopefully not many, are simply better writers than you. There are lots of ways to do it… posting content on social media platforms, showing up at events, creating podcasts and video channels on still more platforms, building an email list… the many ways of getting noticed goes on and on.

And yet… many of us, maybe most of us, still struggle to break though.

There’s some unfairness in the idea that the most successful copywriters aren’t necessarily the very best writers or persuaders… they’re often the best at getting and keeping the attention of the clients they want to work with.

So how do you become the writer who gets the attention and the clients.

Often it comes down to creating content that is positioned to attract your clients on the platforms where they spend their time. And to share the best ideas for creating that content, my guest on today’s episode is Erica Schneider. We talked about a lot of ideas and insights to try in your own business—everthing from the mindset shift you need to make related to your personal brand and how to think differently about content in the age of growing competition and A.I. to Erica’s favorite hook frameworks and how to use them and why you absolutely need an email list even if you don’t plan to ever send an email. This is all good stuff so I hope you’ll stick around to hear it…

But before we get to all that, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. I’ve spent the few weeks rebuilding our content vault and adding a lot of additional training to it. New workshops include how to add a VIP day to your services, how to create a new offer, how to get more done, how to do research, how to develop your own frameworks, how to conduct discovery calls, how to get more referrals, how to build an email list, how to create a launch sequence and dozens more. The more we add the more I think we really need to raise the price because there is a crazy amount of helpful templates, workshops, and even monthly coaching in The Underground. But for now you can still get in for less than you spend on a dinner out with your family. Learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.

And now, my interview with Erica Schneider…

I'd love to get started just by hearing your story and how you got to where you are now as a coach, content maestro in some ways. You are an authority builder for so many people. You're doing a lot of things. So how did you get here?

Erica Schneider: I am doing a lot of things. So I was the head of content at a B2B marketing agency. for four and a half years. I started there as a contract editor, then managing editor, then head of content. And I have loved writing my entire life, but I never knew how to make money from it until 2018, which is when I kind of stumbled into the content marketing world. And so I am a self-taught marketer. never went to school for marketing, never studied like copywriting, content writing, any of that stuff. I learned everything on the job. Um, but I also sort of always wanted to be a teacher. So growing up, I wanted to either teach or write or one of those two things, but I just didn't know how to do it. Um, and so while I was head of content, which I was loving, uh, I realized as, uh, through the effort of building a personal brand that I was sort of teaching at scale. just by sharing content every day. And my audience was asking me, hey, you know, could you help me with this thing or that thing? Got my wheels turning, like maybe there's a way that I could actually go out and teach people and make money for it and write and teach other people how to write. And so that was a couple of years ago that I had that aha moment. The creator economy luckily is booming and I hopped on board. So that's sort of the short version of it.

Rob Marsh: Before we jump into all the things that you're doing now, there are a lot of people who would love that career track, you know, getting into content to head of content. And I think it's not as easy today as perhaps it was, say, 10 years ago or in 2018 when you started. Let's talk a little bit about how people could do that today if they wanted to follow in your footsteps.

Erica Schneider: Yeah, so with AI especially, it's getting easier and easier to create basic content, right? I don't think AI is fantastic yet even when it's well prompted. The best thing that you can do as you become a writer or an editor is to think why is this piece of content that I am tasked to work on even existing in the world? Just start asking yourself that question all the time. Um, when you start to dig into the purpose behind content, you start to force yourself to think a little bit more like a strategist. And when you understand how content actually affects audiences and potential buyers and clients in the real world, You can start to link that back to the decisions that your clients or the companies that you're working with are making and form your own opinions on whether or not you think it'll work or why. strategist mindset of, well, hold on a second. Why are we even doing this? What's the purpose of this? What's the goal of this? What kind of play is this? It just forces you to gain those skills that are necessary to either climb up the ladder internally or leave and help to serve people externally. I know a lot of people that They skip the whole, I'm going to work in-house thing and they just become freelancers, but then they get stuck there as well. And again, a lot of people are really worried about AI. And so my retort to that is always think strategically. AI is a fantastic brainstormer back and forth, but it shouldn't ever be the thing that clients or companies make decisions based on. It should be based on human input.

Rob Marsh: And if you do that, it seems like occasionally you're going to come across content where the answer, as you think about why is this existing in the world? The answer is going to be, it shouldn't exist in the world. A lot of times, yeah. Yeah. Well, and that seems to be an opportunity then to say, okay, so what would I do differently? Where you're stepping, like you said, into that strategist role where you're helping either your client or your employer improve what they're doing. And you're not just there as a writer, but you're actually solving a real life problem.

Erica Schneider: Exactly. Like, I think that there was a time when companies were just all following the same playbook, right? Like HubSpot created the, the SEO, you know, inbound play and everyone was just cranking out, you know, four to 20 blog posts a week and putting it on their site. And everyone needed a bunch of writers for that. That is starting to not work as well. Um, especially since AI can do that too. So like the whole, the whole, you know, trend, the whole, uh, setting is changing. And so again, like instead of just thinking, I'm going to write this because the client said yes, I want to write this. You can do that if you need the money, but just ask yourself, zoom out. Are they running an old play? Are they running a new play? What have I seen that's working? What have I seen that's not? And just familiarize yourself with marketing in general instead of just blogs or so to speak.

Rob Marsh: So also as head of content, it's not just about strategy. What other skills would you encourage content writers or copywriters to develop in order to step into a role like that?

Erica Schneider: So absolutely. It's definitely not just strategy. So self-editing is probably the best skill that you can develop as a writer because generally you're going to send it to an editor. And that editor is going to have a lot of questions for you, if they're a good editor. Otherwise, they'll just make changes and not tell you anything. I luckily had good editors that asked me questions and forced me to think hard. Like, why do you make this decision? Do you believe that this should really go here or there? Why did you choose this style of introducing whatever? And so if you start to ask yourself those questions, then you can get ahead of it. My favorite thing that writers did when I was an editor was an editor, which also was part of my role as head of content was to review all the pieces. They would come to me explaining certain decisions that they made before I had to ask them. That was huge. Like immediately if a writer did that, I knew that they were critically thinking about the work as opposed to just doing the work. So tell your editor, like leave comments on your document. Hey, I put this here because reason. I think that this example fits here because whatever, but I also think it could fit there. And so I'm letting you know, let's talk about it. Make it a collaborative effort where you're kind of leading the charge and making it easier for an editor to understand your choices as opposed to just sort of shipping it and saying, here you go. Again, it all comes down to like the strategic developmental viewpoint of why does this piece exist? And then within the piece,