How to Get the Most Out of the Guild’s Member Directory

By Jen Grogan, Guild Administrator

As a member of the Northwest Editors Guild, of course you want to make sure that your profile in the member directory presents you in the best possible light to potential clients who might find you via our search page, but there’s a lot more to that than just selecting your areas of specialty (and keeping them updated as your career progresses). For example, did you know that clients can leave recommendations on your profile? Below are a few top tips on how to get the most out of the member directory.

First, Help Your Profile Catch a Visitor’s Eye

Of course you’ve already filled out your areas of interest and specialty and written up a bio that tells potential clients who you are as an editor and includes keywords that aren’t included in our tag system—right? If you haven’t, go do that right now (there are instructions here to help you). 

Don’t stop there, though! Before you even look at any of the other suggestions on this post, upload a profile picture that will represent you on the search page. This can be a headshot, your logo, a photo you took of your cat or your car or a favorite vacation spot… anything you feel represents you. If you’re not a savvy photographer, ask a friend or family member to take a nice photo of something, or use something from one of the many free stock photo sites that are around nowadays (CreativeCommons.org, Pexels.com, and Freeimages.com are just a few to get you started)—just be sure to follow the site and artist’s guidelines for use and giving credit where it’s due. Why do we emphasize this so much? Potential clients are more likely to click on a name in the search list that has an image next to it.

Sample search results from our directory—the search box shows the words “Giant Pencil,” and the profile for the Guild’s mascot, Giant Pencil, shows as the result.

Bonus Points: If you love the way your profile looks with just one image, try creating a gallery of images related to your work! This could be photos of books or other publications that you’ve edited (with the client’s permission, of course), pictures of your #StetPet(s), your office, your garden, your calligraphy project… anything you can think of that might give clients a better idea of who you are as an editor. 

Giant Pencil’s directory profile, with profile image and tagline, bio, photo gallery, website, message link, and social media icons.

Get Recommendations

Now that your profile is absolutely stunning, reach out to a few of your best clients and ask if they’ll write a recommendation for you. Not only can you put these recommendations on your website, but you can ask them to enter the recommendation on our member directory. Just have them go to the bottom of your profile, where they’ll find a button that says Recommend [your name]. Alternatively, you can enter existing client recommendations (from your website, for example) into the text of your member profile—but if you use the built-in recommendation engine, our directory will show a neat little thumbs-up icon (as seen in the directory search results example above) on your listing in the search results, and that could easily attract more attention to your profile. 

Bonus Points: Recommend a colleague! If you’ve worked with another editor on a project, write them a quick recommendation on our site—and consider one on LinkedIn as well. Our network of editors is better and stronger the more we support each other.

Refer a Colleague, Build Your Karma

We can also build our community by sharing work and clients. This benefits everyone—the client gets a reliable referral for a service they might not otherwise know how to hire someone for, your colleague gets work and a new client, and you get the joy and warmth of being able to help both of them out. If, for instance, you’re a copyeditor, and one of your regular self-publishing clients really wants to get a developmental editor’s take on their work in progress, but you don’t do developmental editing or know anyone personally who does, you can use our member directory to find colleagues to contact about a possible referral. 

Photo by Jens Johnsson from Pexels.

Let’s say that work in progress from your client is a memoir. On the member directory you would select developmental editing under type of work, then select biography and memoir under type of project and subject/genre and get all of these wonderful editors as your search results. That’s a lot to choose from, so let’s select CMOS as our style guide, and then select LGBTQIA (because our imaginary client’s memoir is in part about their sexuality) and then religion/spirituality, because the memoir is also about that. And then let’s say the client is in Portland and might want someone local, so we’ll search within 10 miles of Portland, OR. Now we have a manageable list of editors who might be interested in this job. From here, you could look through the profiles of the editors and select a few who might mesh well with your client, or you could just email all of these editors, describe the project, and ask if anyone is interested. Then once you have replies, facilitate their contact with the client, and bam—you’ve done everyone involved a favor, and you can bask in the warmth of your newly expanded network and karma for the rest of the day. 

Bonus Points: If you love the feeling you get from referring clients to colleagues, think about building on that by becoming a mentor! You don’t need to be a thirty-year veteran of the red pencil, just an editor who wants to help out others and share your special skills. Are you a social media guru? A project management genius? A business administration savant? Someone else needs what you know. The Guild’s Editor Mentor Program is always looking for mentors, and you’ll get the pleasure of getting to know another editor and helping them to grow in their career.