Time for Step 5 of the “Beginner’s Medical Writing” series – a step-by-step guide to getting yourself started in freelance medical writing – an extremely basic guide for making the first move into medical writing.

If you’re just arriving, feel free to check out the earlier steps:

 

Back in Step 3 I mentioned the benefits of considering some aspect of social networking when you start up in medical writing – I think this is really useful whether you are considering freelance work, or if you are a full time employee somewhere.

I thought I’d give Twitter a plug today. I never thought I’d use Twitter – socially I’ve used Facebook for a couple of years, and whenever I’d hear people talk about Twitter, I just didn’t “get” it – I couldn’t wrap my head around how it operated, or what use it could possibly be.

 

 

A few friends who use it for business had told me I should definitely give it a go. I resisted the idea for a few months, but then decided to try it out – what harm could it do? If all else failed, surely I could abandon it, and at least know I’d tried?

So I joined a couple of months ago, and I love it!

 

How Does It Work?

Twitter is basically a service for sending and receiving status updates – so if you’ve used Facebook, you’ll be used to writing and reading these short communications. Twitter’s short communications, however, are capped at 140 characters (letters, periods, dashes, etc).

So it makes for a great way to get a short message out to people: “Free coffee at the cafeteria, 2-4pm”, or maybe a link to a cool photo. And for business purposes, people often use it to share links to web pages – whether something useful that they came across and want to share, or a link to their personal site to share an article, announcement, or product.

Due to the 140 character cap, you have to not only get creative in how you make your announcement sometimes, but you also need to shorten your weblink, otherwise this will quickly eat into your 140 characters. There are numerous applications that you can use to shorten your links (you can do a Google search to find one that you prefer), but I use bitly – it’s very simple to use:

  • Copy and paste your desired weblink into the search box
  • Hit the “shorten” button to the right of the box
  • A shortened link will magically appear
  • Copy & paste this into the Twitter text box
  • Add a short accompanying message before tweeting

 

Why Join?

I was skeptical, I just didn’t see how useful it would be – I thought it sounded quite bizarre, all these “status updates”! What use could that possibly be!? But I have been very pleasantly surprised. It’s been a wonderful way for me to meet up online with other medical and freelance writers, other medical professionals, blogs, and organizations that I feel are useful to follow.

So I’d urge you to give it a go – and like I decided for myself previously – if you don’t like it, you can abandon mission. Join up today – come up with a short Twitter handle (that’s basically your username – it’ll have a “@” preceding it) – mine is @ParryMedWriting – don’t worry too much about choosing the perfect Twitter handle, you can always change it later if you feel like.

 

Some Useful Guides To Using Twitter

Rather than go on ad nauseum on how to use Twitter (and I’m still getting the hang of it myself!), here are some links to very useful articles that describe it much more concisely than I could!

 

The Beginner’s Guide To Twitter

The Writer’s Guide To Twitter

How To Use Hashtags

6 Tools To Grow Your Twitter Network

How To Get Noticed On Twitter

 

Hope to see you over at Twitter!

 

 

 

Time for Step 3 of the “Beginner’s Medical Writing” series – a step-by-step guide to getting yourself started in freelance medical writing – an extremely basic guide for making the first move into medical writing.  

If you’re just arriving, feel free to check out the earlier steps:

So, where are we up to now? Hopefully by now you have a blog or some kind of website “out there”. And I haven’t forgotten that I left you with some assignments to get you started with writing for your blog.

If you haven’t yet posted them to your blog, then go ahead and do so – this is the start of your showcase, so the sooner they are up and running, the better. As for the next step – it’s time to link up with some other folk in your field.  Gathering a new social circle can be a wonderful way to help propel your new business.

 

SOCIAL MEDIA

Does the very thought of being involved in social media leave you kicking & screaming? If so, you have a big decision to make. On the one hand, if you are social media-phobic, then it might be a waste of your time setting up accounts for your business – there’s no point pretending you’re going to give it a go, if you already know you’ll never use any of them. On the other hand, however, this is 2011 & like it or not, social media is now part of our online business DNA.

So before you dig in your heels & declare your business a failure when it’s just getting started, I’d urge you to give it just a little thought. These days, many small businesses are successfully using Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn (amongst others) to promote their services. So it is absolutely in your best interests to at least consider using one of them. Decide which of the social media sites might appeal to you most – take your pick based either on which will be a better choice for your type of freelance business, or which of the networks you are most likely to actually feel content about using.

 

Some benefits of social networking to help persuade you in the right direction:

  • Improves marketing of your services
  • Allows business networking with others in your niche
  • Increases visibility of your business
  • Drives traffic to your website/blog
  • Builds credibility for your services
  • Provides a simple method of enabling feedback on your services
  • A great way to gain moral support

 

Just One?

If you are looking to maybe just take on one of the social networks, I’d advise using LinkedIn – this will at least expose your business to the world (including potential employers) and is probably the one that requires the least maintenance once you’ve set it up appropriately. So this might be the choice for you if you absolutely know that the Facebook, Twitter, or other universes are simply not where you want to place your energy.

I use 2 networks for my business, so feel free to link up with me at any of them:

 

There are also direct links to my LinkedIn and Twitter profiles at the top right of the screen.

Whilst the situation will be different for different individuals, I have to say that I tried a business Facebook site, and this has been the least useful for my business purposes – although LinkedIn & Twitter have proven to be great ways to network and for me to be found.

So go ahead & explore some of the social networking options for yourself, & see which you might be interested in trying out. Your assignment today is to set up at least one social networking profile and link it up with your business site online.

Which of the social networks have you used, and which has been most useful for your business?