It’s hard to find the time to market yourself when you’re busy writing. The more prolific and successful you are, the less time you have to update your website, push your stories out via social media, and network with colleagues at industry events. But, if you carve out a little time in your routine every day (30 minutes tops), your efforts will go a long way.

As a freelancer who is stuck working from home, here are a few things I’ve made a point to do over the years to help market myself:

1. Put your stories out there. Update your social media with your stories as they are published. With time management in mind, I say “as they are published” so that you don’t sit down one day at your computer and have 20 stories that need to be tweeted out. By constantly adding to all your channels (I’m talking all channels — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) you are increasing your clout and letting people know that you are creatively rich and busy doing your job.

2. School yourself. Over the years I have both attended and taught workshops. It’s good to attend writing classes to help fine-tune your writing, sharpen your editing skills, hear your words read aloud and open yourself up to criticism. If you have the knowledge and experience, teaching writing also is rewarding because mentoring and educating is important for the greater community.

3. Join committees and boards. Make connections with folks in the community by joining committees and boards. Here in Richmond, I’ve made all sorts of great contacts through serving on Faison Center’s junior board and The Visual Arts Center of Richmond’s Craft + Design Committee. The people you meet through other organizations will remember you when they need help with communications, or they might refer you to a friend in need.

4. Keep your portfolio up to date. Back in the day I used to update this WordPress site with every single story I wrote. What a waste of time! Last year a friend turned me on to Contently, an online portfolio that is extremely user-friendly. Just like Pinterest, you copy and paste a web link onto the site and it automatically generates a headline, dek and photo. Rather than wasting time creating a blog post about the stories I write, I now take five minutes each day to upload story links onto my portfolio.

5. Be the conversation. Post relevant content about your industry on LinkedIn. Tweet your reaction to a story on Twitter. Write posts relating to your field and expertise on your blog. As a writer you need to be an active participant in your field, so walk the walk and talk the talk.

6. Do a good job. You could have 10,000 Twitter followers and a killer online portfolio, but honestly, the best marketing is having a good reputation among your colleagues. Recently I’ve gotten some awesome new gigs because editors have passed along my contact to colleagues who were in need of writing and editing help. An editor saying “This writer does a good work” goes a long way. So do a good job. Be nice. And karma will bring you good fortune.

What are your marketing tips? Would love to hear them! Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. Best, Marissa