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SXSW Panel: Personal Blogger to Professional Marketer

Many bloggers are giving away their stuff for free when they should be charging, according to SXSW Interactive speaker Melissa Lion.
Photo by Liang Shi for KUT News
Many bloggers are giving away their stuff for free when they should be charging, according to SXSW Interactive speaker Melissa Lion.

Many people blog, but how many get paid for it? That was the topic of Melissa Lion's panel at SXSW Interactive.

The most important thing is never to accept offers to write content without charging a fee, Lion said. The problem is bloggers aren't asking for anything, and marketers are able to get content out of them for next to nothing. Lion says the only solution is to say, "No."

The next step is to revise your resume as a content creator. Blogging, tweeting and making videos are all forms of content creation, Lion said. Once you establish your abilities to sell to your audience, it'll be more appealing for companies to hire you as a marketer.

Lion started off as a blogger who wrote about her experiences of being a mom. After freelancing for four years as a blogger, a consultant and teaching private classes on social media and narrative as well as blogging, she revamped her resume to highlight the blogging skills in which marketers would be most interested. She was hired by CMD Agency in 2010 to do what she's been doing all this time: producing content for the web and networking with other bloggers.

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