5 Places You Can Quickly Showcase Your Writing
So that you don’t have to overthink on setting up a website first
I could still recall that I excitedly set up my WordPress website in hopes that I can start firing up some posts and publish there. But man, it took me a lot of time to set that up, and I must admit, I could have spent the majority of that time focusing on writing the articles and samples, then showcasing them on free sites which I will list them out below. But for some reason, my excitement towards setting up WordPress, despite the steep learning curve, preceded the supposed priority of showing my writing ability.
If I have the power to turn back my time, I would want to showcase my writing ability by creating articles, blog posts, and other kinds of samples from scratch. After all, that is what a freelance writer suppose to do, right? At the same time, we would want to look professional in the eyes of potential prospects. So, we tend to look ourselves professionally by creating a website and do the writings later on. But do we need a website first to demonstrate our writing ability?
The fact is, you can start firing up your writing ability quickly and easily! Yes, especially if you hate setting up a website early on, you would want to kick start writing your articles and publish somewhere so that everyone can read them easily. Here are the places where you can start writing and post to the online world.
LinkedIn Pulse
Have you ever use LinkedIn? If not, now is the time. This is the chance for you to showcase your ability in your niche to potential prospects on LinkedIn. Unlike other social media sites, LinkedIn tends to be focusing on businesses and everything related to them. Thus, there are fewer unnecessary distractions that otherwise can make you lose focus on what you want to show and offer.
Within your LinkedIn account, there is a feature where you can start writing your article directly. Just click the “Write an article on LinkedIn” link on the dashboard, and you’re good to go. It is also recommended that you incorporate related hashtags and tag potential prospects that you are targeting so that they can see your article.
Medium
If you are reading this article right now, you know that it is published on Medium, which is right here! Don’t have a blog yet? You can start one immediately on Medium. You can freely write any topics you desire and hit the publish button. Of course, you would have to get to know the guidelines first before you start writing.
One great thing about Medium is you can also browse through and read articles about your niche. I personally read a couple of articles here whether to seek inspiration and ideas from others, as well as to get to know specific stuff out of my curiosity.
Want to expand your audience outreach and exposure about you? You can request to write for publications and let the followers get to know your article and read it. With that, it is even possible that you earn an income from your published articles through the Medium Partner Program! I personally haven’t successfully earned some yet so far, but you may want to check out this Medium help article for more information.
Canva
You might be thinking that Canva is mainly used for designing graphical images, posters, and social media images. But do you know that you can also create awesome infographics and PDFs there? I personally created an eBook on how to use the Moovit app and then exported it as a PDF document, which then can be utilized as a lead magnet. Rather than creating a full-text document that may cause the reader to get bored, you can make it more colorful by incorporating visuals and graphics into it.
If you don’t know how to start creating a document from scratch, you can choose from the pre-made templates available and edit from there. There are many kinds of format types you can export apart from the PDF. Also, you can even share the link of your created work to others, as shown in the screenshot above. It is easier that way if you have no idea where to host the downloaded graphics you made, which itself as a way to showcase your ability to write and design your document or infographics at the same time, for instance.
Genially
Not many people know or even heard about Genially before. It is a site where you can create interactive content that wows and amazes the audience. It is a bit different from Canva in a way that you can create content such as reports, presentations, infographics, and guides that are clickable and interactive.
If you are the preferring interactive content that can delve deeply into your audience, then this site is for you. Similar to Canva, once you have done creating your content, simply click the share button, and it will generate a link that you can share with anyone for viewing. You can also embed your Genially content on your website, as well as sharing on social media sites and collaboration platforms such as Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams.
GitHub Pages
When people think of GitHub, it is a site dedicated for developers to host their software projects. It is true. But you can also host your website on your GitHub repository, through GitHub Pages. It requires some setup initially, especially if you are using GitHub for the first time. But once you’ve set that up, you can start writing your content and push the edits to make it live.
I don’t use GitHub as I’m not a techie geek or a developer. In fact, I never tried it before. But if you like writing about your hosted projects or updates or whatever-related to it, then you may want to utilize GitHub and post your content there rather than on a separate site. There’s even a tool called Jekyll, which is a static site generator with built-in support for GitHub Pages. You can simply head to the GitHub Pages site for the step-by-step instructions on setting it up.
To wrap up, there are lots of ways to showcase your writing even in unconventional ways, and it does not have to be in the form of plain-text content or blog post. As long as you can prove your audience and potential prospects that you have the ability to showcase your writing potential and relevant to them, they will likely get attracted by what you do.
On second thought, maybe I should explore more on this further. Who knows if I can diversify my writing approach and presentation to the next level. Haha!
