Market Yourself for Power and Profit

So, you want to be your own boss? Great! Unfortunately, you don’t pay yourself anything and have to convince someone else to select you over the thousands of other freelancers out there. The good news is there’s virtually unlimited contract work to be had for all types of communicators. All you have to figure out is how to get your slice of the pie.

IWPA members and nonmembers will have that opportunity during the Feb. 20 meeting, when Marion Gold, award-winning author of The Personal Publicity Planner: A Guide to Marketing YOU, shares the secrets of "information marketing." Gold will join a panel of editors who will discuss how they purchase freelance services. This also will be a great opportunity to network and exchange ideas with other freelance professionals.

Get the Gold

"Whether your goal is to increase your visibility to editors or publishers or to gain professional recognition, without a positive public image too many professional goals become more elusive," says Gold, president of Marion Gold & Co. in Chicago. "The solution is to use information marketing carefully targeted to create an image for success."

Succeed magazine called her book "a fire-starter of your quest…creatively generating thoughts and…devising a marketing strategy that works." Self-Employed Professional said: "Gold guides you through the process of developing an image and using it to get the recognition you deserve."

Since launching her company in 1994, Gold has been featured in Working Woman magazine, The Soroptimist of the Americas, and named by Today’s Chicago Woman to its list of 100 "Women Making a Difference."

And the Silver

Joining Gold on the panel will be Cary Silver, managing editor of The Rotarian, Rotary International’s monthly magazine that boasts a circulation of 500,000. Based in Evanston, Ill., Rotary is one of the largest international service organizations. It has a membership of 1.2 million professionals in 159 countries.

Rotarians are dedicated to providing humanitarian service and promoting international goodwill. They have contributed more than $860 million to humanitarian, health, and educational projects worldwide.

Silver has worked as an editor at Rotary since 1984. Traveling throughout the world to cover stories for her magazine, she has visited 26 countries. Assignments have included profiling a Rotarian environmentalist in the pristine rain forests of Venezuela, covering polio immunization projects in Nigeria and Ethiopia, and accompanying surgeons on a medical mission to the mountains of Peru.

Silver holds a master's degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She is also a member and past president of the Rotary Club of Evanston Lighthouse and the Toastmasters Club of Evanston, a public speaking group.

And a Phenom

Also on the panel will be Kari Lydersen, who works as a stringer and researcher for the Washington Post in its Chicago bureau, as an associate editor of Streetwise, and as a contributing editor and writer for Swimming World magazine. Lydersen freelances for the Chicago Reader, Centerstage Web entertainment guide, Just Sports for Women Web magazine, Chicago Ink, the Oregonian, PerformInk, Splash! The Official Magazine of U.S. Swimming, American Forests magazine, the Daily Northwestern, Punk Planet, Lip, and others. A graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Lydersen received a Hearst Journalism Award for feature writing in 1997.

Jim Slusher - Daily Hearld

As Assistant Managing Editor for Training and Staff Development, Jim Slusher produces and supervises programs that promote an atmosphere of learning at all levels in the Daily Herald's 290-person newsroom. His efforts range from regular critiques and one-on-one editing to a slate of 50 specifically targeted workshops scheduled throughout the year.

In addition to these duties, Slusher works closely with other newsroom managers to establish and monitor policies of the news operation, oversees recruitment of new staff and sits on the paper's editorial board, helping to develop the paper's positions on various community issues.

He joined the Daily Herald in 1989 as news editor. In that role, he managed the staff responsible for designing pages, writing headlines and editing copy for all aspects of the paper. In 1992, he became associate editor, expanding his oversight of production issues and increasing his role in newsroom operations. He assumed his present position in 1998.

A 1974 graduate of Western Illinois University, Slusher taught high school for two years in the mid-'70s, served as news director of a small Iowa radio station and worked in all newsroom capacities at newspapers in northwestern Illinois, Michigan and California. Today, he and his wife Patty are raising three young sons from their home in Mount Prospect.

Silence Counts

IWPA also will host a silent auction during the meeting to benefit the scholarship fund supporting the high school contest winners (see story on page 2). Please bring your donations by 10:45 a.m. (crafts, jewelry, books, T-shirts, and novelties are always popular items) and then join in the bidding from 11:00 a.m. through lunch.

Keep in mind those spring holidays and graduations just around the corner or just treat yourself to a shopping spree. Contact Peggy Grillot, 847-706-3504 (phone) or pgrillot@soa.org (e-mail), if you plan to bring items for the auction.

Mark your calendars and join us at this exciting meeting.

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