Examples of content marketing by editors (not specific to academic writing):
- Hannah de Keijzer‘s blog post “3 Common Fears of Hiring a Freelance Editor,” which was published on Jane Friedman’s blog, is content marketing for de Keijzer’s book, How to Enjoy Being Edited.
- Crystal Shelley’s interview on The Deliberate Freelancer podcast is content marketing for her Conscious Language Toolkits for Editors and Writers.
- My Editors Weekly blog post “The Ethics of Online Portfolios” is content marketing for my Editors Canada webinar about building an online portfolio.
Examples of acwri-specific content marketing:
- My column for the magazine University Affairs, “Ask Dr. Editor.”
- “A Primer for Prepping for Tenure Review,” Inside Higher Education – Kate Vacek & Letitia Henville, May 22, 2024
- “How and Why You Should Build a Style Sheet,” Inside Higher Education – Tess Ranking, December 10, 2024
- “Write for the Field Next Door,” The Chronicle of Higher Education – By Leonard Cassuto, September 17, 2024
- “How to Publish a ‘Timely’ Scholarly Book,” The Chronicle of Higher Education – By Rebecca Colesworthy, June 26, 2024
- “The problem with the ‘gap in the literature’,” LSE Impact Blog – Pat Thomson, July 16, 2021
- “A guide to writing grant proposals,” Times Higher Education – Kaycie Butler, July 27, 2022
- “Why is no one listening?,” Times Higher Education – Simon Hall, September 2, 2024
- “3 Ways to Make Your Writing Clearer,” Harvard Business Review – Jane Rosenzweig, April 9, 2020
Where to publish content marketing?
I recently collected and analyzed all articles about academic writing and editing that fit the general shape of content marketing that were published in Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Times Higher Education and University Affairs.
I published my findings (including links to 36 recently published articles about academic writing) to my email newsletter, The Shortlist; to read my analyses of my findings and access my spreadsheets, click on these two screenshots:
If you’re interested receiving in similar resources in the future, please join my mailing list using the link below. I think I send maybe 15 emails a year, so I swear I won’t overwhelm your inbox.
Content marketing in different forms:
- Case study: “Delete and Retreat” by Jane Rosenzweig
- Webinar: “How to Publish a Book from Your Dissertation” by Laura Portwood-Stacer
- Printed book: The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook by Katelyn E. Knox and Allison Van Deventer
- Interview on a podcast: Jane Jones’ interview on The Social Academic blog and podcast is content marketing for her coaching and editing business, Up In Consulting.
- Interview on a YouTube channel: Cara Jordan’s interview on The Editor’s Half-Hour Podcast is content marketing for her co-edited book and her academic editing agency, Flatpage.
- Conference talk or booth attendance: the Ideas on Fire team attends and sponsors conferences regularly (see their events page) and even publishes in advance (precise, timely, practical & actionable) guides for the specific conferences they’ll attend.
- Tool: my own writingwellishard.com
- Social media: Sarah Dobson shares advice on LinkedIn, such as this post from December 2024.
Pitching:
- Letitia’s pitching framework for written content marketing
- Sample Pitch 1: “The First-Time Faculty’s Guide to Prepping for the Tenure Review”
- Sample Pitch 2: “Sample Pitch 2: No More Job Postings!”
- Sample Pitch 3: “Sample Pitch 3: The PhD Entrepreneur”
- Sample Pitch 4: “Helping undergrads see the ‘flip side’ of research”
- “How (and Where!) To Pitch Your Writing” – from Ann Friedman (who Letitia thinks is all-round excellent)
- “I’m An Editor And Here’s What I Want From Your Freelance Pitch” – from journoresources.org.uk
- “Here Are A Load Of Successful Journalism Pitches To Help You With Yours” – from journoresources.org.uk
- “How to successfully pitch The New York Times (or, well, anyone else)” – from niemanlab.org
- SuccessfulPitches.com
- WhoPaysWriters.com
Learning more:
- Bly, Robert. The Content Marketing Handbook. Although Bly’s intended audience is large companies that make widgets, his advice about what constitutes good content marketing, and his recommendations for titles of content marketing pieces, transfer well to the freelance editing context.
- Burnett, Bill, & Evans, Dave. “Good Time Journal – Activity Log.” Some folks hate Designing Your Life, because they find it too self-help-y. For someone like me, who isn’t naturally reflective, Designing Your Life was incredibly helpful in enabling me to collect and analyze data about my own needs and values. The book is a fairly quick read, and is available at a lot of libraries; I recommend really spending time with the exercises, even if that means you have to suspend your disbelief for a little bit. Burnett & Evans have published multiple books since the original came out, but the original book has all the info you need, and many libraries hold copies of it, AND most of the worksheets can be downloaded for free from the designing your life website (like the PDF linked to above).
- McMakin, Tom, & Fletcher, Doug. How Clients Buy. McMakin & Fletcher’s book describes the buying decisions made by people who purchase services from experts. Their seven-step process emphasizes clients’ need to understand, respect, and trust service-providers. Content marketing is an excellent strategy to foster understanding, respect, and trust, even if McMakin & Fletcher don’t discuss it in much detail. Their seven steps that they argue clients need to follow, sequentially, before they purchase expert services are awareness, understanding, interest, credibility, trust, ability, and readiness. In my own content marketing, I usually focus on fostering some combination or subset of understanding, interest, credibility, and trust, although I have on occasion also done ability, as in, for example, my 2021 piece, “How to hire an editor.”
- Roenker, Robin. “How to Create a Content Calendar.” Dragonfly Editorial. While Roenker’s post imagines that you’re creating content for your own website or social media, her recommendations for calendar-driven and evergreen topics would work equally well in the context I’m recommending, in which you pitch your work to venues where your ideal clients spend their time.
Get everything I have for editors:
I put together a list of fourteen resources, blog posts, and free and for-pay webinars, and two free workbooks for business retreats, all for editors from any field — and then I also added seven other resources specifically for editors of academic writing.
If you sign up for The Shortlist using this form, I’ll know to email you when the free-for-you course is ready.
Thank you, I love you, good-bye.