Clean up Your Email Communications:
Your Email Address: Use a professional email address. badbtch206 is not a great email address to use when trying to get work as a freelance writer. Some editors and potential clients will delete your email based on your address alone. If it is unprofessional the recipient will wonder how serious you are about working. Don’t allow that thought to enter their heads. Use an email address that has your name in it. Stay away from numbers. Just use your name. It could be firstlast, lastfirst, first.last, last.first, firstmiddleinitiallast, etc. Go! Change it now. I’ll wait. 🙂
Grammar Free Emails: Use spell check with every email you send out. Sometimes a typo or misspelling can come up and catching that BEFORE the email is sent can save your behind. Imagine losing a nice writing job because of a silly typo! It happens. The good news is that it is easily preventable. In Gmail a misspelled word will show up with a red underline. Just right click for the correct spelling. If you use Outlook you’ll have to go into options and turn on the spell checker. If you don’t have these options either sign up for a Gmail account or prepare your email messages in Word before sending.
Proofread Again: Proofread every email message you want to send. As a freelance writer you should be proofreading anything you write. Get used to it. There are many grammar problems that a spell checker will not catch, and it is important to fix those before sending it.
Use a Signature: Create a signature. After every message you send you should have your full name and website link. Go into settings and create a signature so that this information will automatically be there when you respond to a message or create a new one.
Write a Letter: Use a proper letter structure in your emails. Start with the person’s name. If it is someone you have never communicated with before use Mr. or Ms. for respect. It always feels great when someone sends me an email that starts with Mrs. Maco. It shows that they took the time to write my name, even if it’s just Ali or Alyse. Next comes the body of the email, and end with a conclusion. End with your signature. For example:
Best Regards,
Ali
You will see a difference in your responses when you use email etiquette. Demand respect by showing respect first. It will be reciprocated (by most people anyway)! You need to use professionalism in your freelance writing career to become successful.
What is your email username? Do you use a professional email address? Have you seen a difference when changing your email address to a professional one? I want to hear from you! Leave a comment below!
