Using Scripted’s topic pitching feature is a terrific way to take control of your content and build relationships with customers.
If you’ve been working with Scripted for any length of time, chances are that you’ve received at least one email or communication from our staff waxing poetic about topic pitching. Scripted loves pitching, and our customers do, too — but why should you care about it as a writer?
Here are three reasons why topic pitching is an essential part of the Scripted writer’s toolkit.
1. Topic pitching lets you control the narrative of the piece.
As a content marketing writer, much of the work you do is dictated by your customers. They set the area of focus, the keywords, and sometimes even the specific subheads or paragraphs that they want you to narrow in on. While you may get to write the prose, it can often feel like you’re just turning instructions into text, which can make for an unfulfilling experience.
With topic pitching, customers may provide some high-level guidelines, but they’re looking to you to craft the story. All they know is that they need content that is related to a particular concept and will rank for certain keywords; they may have very little idea of how to turn that into a compelling narrative that will engage their audience.
When you pitch an idea, you take control of the story and the vision behind the post, which gives you more influence over the structure and the tone. This lets you do what you do best: take a spark of an idea and turn it into beautiful words that your customers’ readers will enjoy consuming.
2. Topic pitching helps you build a closer relationship with customers.
Many of Scripted’s most loyal customers swear by topic pitching. In fact, some of our customers never post jobs at all, relying entirely on topic pitching to drive their content needs. What leads them to do this?
For these customers, the most fulfilling part of working with Scripted is developing relationships with a specific group of writers — and the way they find those writers is by seeing who generates intriguing ideas for their content needs. If a writer can suggest a topic and then execute on a terrific blog post, then the customer is likely to favorite that writer and continue with that working relationship.
As a writer, not only does this give you greater access to customers’ projects, but it also reduces the work associated with completing them. Once you get to know these customers and their preferences, you can spend less time on reading guidelines and more time on building the right narrative.
3. Topic pitching gives you access to more work.
The unfortunate reality of being a content marketing freelancer is that the availability of work can vary greatly from day to day. There may be days when you log in to your Scripted dashboard excited to get to work — only to find that there are only a few jobs that you are eligible to claim.
However, our most prolific writers know a secret: just because there isn’t a job available for you to claim doesn’t mean that there isn’t work to be done! There are always open pitch requests from customers needing ideas, and these opportunities are available to you regardless of your writer score. You can also take advantage of the Topic Marketplace, which lets you generate your own ideas that Scripted customers can browse and choose to purchase.
There is nothing more satisfying than working on a job from end to end, from idea generation all the way through revisions and publication. While being a freelancer can cut you off from parts of this process at times, topic pitching helps give you the closest approximation of a full, rewarding writing experience.