Hi Reader,

Last week I wrote about nurturing your Client Family Tree. This week I want to share one of my favorite ways to actually do it. And it doubles as a way to attract new clients too.

Our blog.

A good blog, hosted on your company website, serves a few purposes:

1. It keeps you top of mind with your existing clients. They see you're busy, they see what you're up to, and most love getting a peek at the other fun projects you've been working on. It deepens the relationship and increases the know, like, and trust factor. Next time they need a crew, they don't go shopping. They call you.
2. It still helps with SEO. Even now, with AI changing how people search, blog posts still drive real traffic to our website. Especially the evergreen ones (more on those below).
3. It provides social proof. When potential clients work their way around your site, they see your work, maybe a few testimonials, and then they get caught up in an article about a project you completed for someone else. Maybe it's even a project similar to theirs. So they're more likely to hire you. Marketing folks call this the bandwagon effect, the idea that people are more likely to buy a service that others are already buying.
4. It becomes a journal of your work. After a while your blog turns into a collection of your most interesting shoots, full of challenges and how you overcame them. When you're slow, or feeling a bit of the imposter syndrome we all sometimes get, it's a reminder of what you've already done and what you're capable of.

Here's ours, we call it Behind the Scenes. It drives traffic to our site and keeps us top of mind with our clients. Plus it's a great journal of our work. We pair it with a periodic email newsletter that goes out to our clients with links back to whatever article we're referencing.

A quick note before we go further. You might be thinking, "what about Substack?" Substack is great if you're building a public audience. But for our purposes, this blog lives on your own website. The whole point is to keep potential clients on your site while they're evaluating you, not send them somewhere else. SEO, social proof, the bandwagon effect, all of it only works when the blog and the work live in the same place.

There are two main types of blog posts we do, and I recommend you do as well:

Behind the Scenes. Tell the stories of a shoot or a production from your first-person point of view. Include the interesting moments, the challenges you faced, and how you achieved a certain look or style. If the production later wins an award, or you finally have a clip of it, or a broadcast date, add that to the bottom. Fill it with some fun BTS photos.

Evergreen Posts. I just started doing these over the last year and they've been very successful for us. An evergreen post answers the questions your clients might ask. For example, our post How to Find a Great Camera Crew Anywhere in the World answers a question they might search for, "how do I find a video camera crew in Denver?" You'll spot a few other evergreen posts among our BTS ones in our blog, and we plan to write more in the coming months.

Evergreen post take a bit more work, but they sit there and gather clients forever. Just give them an update every once in a while.

I highly recommend the book They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan, which takes a deep dive into this kind of content marketing. And if you think this doesn't matter in the age of AI, I'd argue it matters more. This is exactly the kind of content AI pulls from when it answers questions. In fact, we just got our first client who actually found us through ChatGPT.

One quick tip: turn off the date display on your posts, especially the evergreen ones. Most blog platforms have a setting for this. A 2022 date on an otherwise timeless article makes it feel stale, even when it isn't.

So how do you write these posts?

First of all, I suggest you write them yourself first, using your voice, your real experiences, and your knowledge. Just start writing. What was the shoot like? What challenges did you face? What was super cool about it? This last one can be your hook, and you should open with it. Get all that down. Just freeform. Even record it if that helps.

Then if you like using AI tools, you can use your favorite to help organize it, edit it, and maybe trim some fat. I tend to be a bit verbose, so it helps me there. That’s a great use of AI, but do not let it be your primary voice. Just my humble opinion. Your readers can sense it, and it robs you of your own story in a way.

Finally, writing and maintaining a blog is really fun, and you should approach it in that spirit. Think of it as sitting around a campfire telling your buddies about what a cool job you have.

Because let’s face it, being a filmmaker really is a cool job!

That's a wrap for this week's Freelancers Friday. I'll see you back here next week with more real-world lighting breakdowns, freelance business tips, and behind-the-scenes fun.

In the meantime, I hope you have a great weekend. And happy writing!

​Cheers,

Tom Miller
​Freelancers Film School

P.S. If you've recently joined Freelancers Friday, and would like to check out some of our past newsletters, you can explore them here - Freelancers Friday Collection​
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P.P.S. in the coming weeks I'm opening up a free workshop on the framework that's transformed how I light and shoot interviews. The Cinematic Interview Academy waitlist gets first access. If you're not on it yet, you can hop on here. More details coming soon.