Frugal….not cheap!

I was caught off guard today.  Last week I found out from a friend who writes for the Enquirer, about a website that she was writing for.  I wanted to see if I could write for them, too, so I shot off a short email.  I got an immediate response to send them an example of my writing, and not just any sample, but one that was 350 characters long (an average blog length).  I had writing all over the web, but not only did I need one that was 350 characters long, it had to be on San Diego.  After several hours of searching and rewriting a previous article to make it fit, I was able to pull it off.  But, it made me realize, how you have to keep your own resume in order, before you start broadcasting your website or blog on the internet.

Most importantly,  decide where you are going to store everything.  Keep it all organized and in one folder.  It wouldn’t hurt to have the same resume in a text format and a word format.  Also, keep a few different headshots in that same folder.

Make sure you have more of a entertainment resume than a standard resume.  You don’t want to show all the brick and mortar places that you worked at or how long you worked there, you need a resume that shows your accomplishments.  A one line list of successful projects you’ve completed,  where your articles are posted with links and any media interviews.

Prepare several bios.  Most people don’t just work on one type of project, so do several bios.  For example, one that concentrates on your freelance writing and one that concentrates on your teaching.   Include any media attention that you may have gotten.

You also need to have examples or your best writing.  Not just from a freelance article you have written, but also a blog entry you have written that may have gotten a lot of comments on it.   Keep several example, based on different character lengths, and different subjects and possibly more than a few if you are not writing on a particular theme.

Have an online resume that you can forward to anyone at the blink of an eye that highlights your best online work.  I personally have one that has RSS feeds and will automatically update whenever I post a new article.  It shows a headshot of me and it is surrounded by all my articles.  This online resume is intended to help journalists that are looking for ideas to write on and can also contact me to do an interview.

Keep a library of video samples, too.  You never know when someone would like you to do be a guest on their show or lead a workshop and showing how you appear on camera could be the deciding factor between you and someone else.

Pick a day or a couple of days next week to get this all together.  If your worried about abandoning your blog, then bring in a guest blogger to write that day.