TCC Podcast #374: Publishing a Magazine with Sophie Cross

Copywriter and Publisher of Freelancer magazine, Sophie Cross, is the guest for the 374th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira and Rob asked Sophie why she decided to publish a print magazine in a time when many printed magazines seem to be struggling to find readers and advertisers. She shared what it takes to accomplish such a Herculean task each quarter. One of our big take aways from this discussion is that you may need to do something BIG to stand out in today's competitive world. Publishing a magazine is that kind of big idea that stands out. And this episode may give you a few ideas that you can use to stand out in your own niche or industry. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Important links to check out: Freelancer Magazine The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Want to build your authority? Then you need to be sharing your ideas, insights and content in places where your audience will find you. Linkedin. Instagram. Medium. Twitter. That’s good advice and it has helped hundreds of copywriters rise above the crowd and get noticed by the clients they serve. But if you really want to stand out… the way to do it is by showing up in ways that no one else has thought of before. Instead of posting on someone else’s platform, why not create your own? Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and magazine publisher Sophie Cross. Sophie is the publisher of Freelancer magazine, a printed quarterly magazine about the ins and outs of working on your own. As you’ll hear her explain, Sophie wanted to create a platform to help her get noticed. So she started her magazine and we wanted to understand what it takes to publish and mail a 100-page magazine 4 times a year. Turns out it’s a lot of work. We also talked about freelancing in the hospitality industry, creating courses and other assets, and Sophie’s advice for anyone working as a freelancer today. Stick around because this one is pretty good. But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the best membership for copywriters and content writers… let me just give you an idea of what you get for $87 a month… first there’s a monthly group coaching call with Kira and me where you can get answers to your questions, advice for overcoming any business or client or writing challenge you have. There are weekly copy critiques where we give you feedback on your copy or content. There are regular training sessions on different copy techniques and business practices designed to help you get better. And we’re adding a new monthly AI tool review where we share a new AI tool or a technique or prompt you can do with AI get more done. That’s on top of the massive library of training and templates. And the community is full of copywriters ready to help you with just about anything… including sharing leads from time to time. Find out more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu And with that, let’s go to our interview with Sophie. Kira Hug: All right, Sophie, let's kick off with your story. How did you end up as the editor of Freelancer magazine? Sophie Cross: I ended up with the editor because I made the magazine and made myself the editor. Rob Marsh: That is a very good way to start. Yeah. Sophie Cross: I I was already making a magazine, had a little bit of experience in my backgrounds in hospitality marketing before. Yeah. Well, when I went freelance and went freelance, I had the experience making hotel brochures and collateral and things like that. You can only look back at the stepping stones, can't you can't sort of see where they're taking you. I sort of didn't think much of it at the time, but actually now realizing that I had this real passion for printed collateral and things like that, I then started making a magazine for quite a big hotel group in London. And that got pulled at the beginning of the pandemic. So I had a little bit of experience, but not from anything to do with journalism or anything like that. And yeah, I started making courses for freelancers, marketing courses when the pandemic started. And I was thinking about how to create content for freelancers that would put me at the forefront and would show me as an expert in freelancing and marketing. And I was thinking about doing a podcast or a blog. And yeah, I'm definitely more writing than speaking. I already had a newsletter blog that felt a bit past it. But then I went even more past it and went back to I thought, I know how I'll get people's attention. I'll post it through the boxes. And yeah, I just suddenly had the thought that there wasn't already a magazine like it for the community. I was part of quite a lot of freelance communities online. So I knew I would have heard of it, but that was also great to launch it because I was already quite a big part of quite a lot of freelance communities. So, yeah, that's how the magazine came about. Rob Marsh: I'd love to back up just a little bit and talk a bit about hospitality marketing before we come back to freelancing in the magazine. Hospitality marketing strikes me as a really challenging niche because it's in so many ways, it's a commodity. You're buying a room or a restaurant and there are so many options. And yet, there's also sort of interesting ways to differentiate. So will you just tell us a little bit about your experience there at the kind of work that you're doing? how you helped the different brands and companies that you were working with to grow? Sophie Cross: Yeah, sure. So my, I mainly worked with hotel groups before I went freelance, I mainly worked with hotel groups. And then even when I went freelance, largely hotel groups. It's really interesting from the respect that you have rooms to sell, you have a bar to sell, you have a restaurant to sell, you have a spa to sell, so you have all of these different things. I worked with Hilton for a long time, I worked with Holiday Inn for a long time, I worked with Park Plaza, so I've worked for a lot of big hotel groups. And yeah, I think the challenge really is, I think the biggest challenge in hospitality marketing is getting marketing and operations to work together, because it's really easy to put these amazing things in place. But if you haven't got front of house supporting you with that. So I think one of the main things is the relationship building and the training between marketing and the front of house teams, because you can be doing as great a marketing as you like. But if people aren't picking up the phone in the restaurant, then that's not going to do you any favor. So I think Just making friends with the restaurant manager is always helpful. I think just getting back to basics and building your database. I just think that's so important for so many companies, but actually, you know, hotels and restaurants and everything, they have such an opportunity to capture data, which they probably don't take and then create a really interesting newsletter for their local market. And it'd be quite easy to target even if you have a business audience and a leisure audience. You can be creating two different newsletters. If you're a restaurant, then you could be putting some really interesting stuff together about the local area to be making people open that newsletter. I think on top of that, you need to be creating events, you need to be creating packages. So whether you're a restaurant or a hotel, giving people reasons to come and visit you. So with Hilton, we created mini breaks. So we would create heritage, spa, golf and theme park packages. And you're going to other local businesses and asking to get a discount on bulk tickets. And then you're creating a package for people to come and stay. But you could also do that if you're a restaurant, you could do it if you're a bar. I've seen some great things like hotel bars and bars and pubs even, turning themselves into co-working spaces during the day when they've got spare capacity. I mean, it's just reminding people that you're there and putting them at the forefront when they're actually looking to book their birthday dinner out and things like that as well. So, yeah, hospitality marketing is still a bit of a passion of mine. I keep thinking about going back into it in one way or another, but yeah. Kira Hug:  I feel that passion and I'm excited to do it. So are you working in it now? It sounds like maybe you hit pause on it for now. Sophie Cross: Yeah, I did. I hit pause on it when I started the magazine, actually, and really was focused on productizing like before. Before the pandemic hit, I already had half an eye on productising my business and I was really interested in not selling your time one for one. Know how you create, I didn't know quite what it was, whether it was courses, or packages, or I wasn't quite sure. But then yeah, the pandemic gave me the opportunity to go for it with the courses and really start from. I was making, I don't think there's anything wrong with Canva in a lot of ways. I don't know if you guys, do you guys use Canva? Are you familiar with it? Yeah. But I was using it quite badly to make courses. And yes, it gave me the opportunity to really test. Like, I think the content was good, but graphically and things like that were not good. And yeah, just really started from scratch. And yeah, started creating courses and then had the idea for the magazine. So it was then focused on creating this business that was productized and scalable and looking at automating it as much as I can really. But yeah, the consultancy and everything is like, I was actually thinking of starting a newsletter for the hospitality industry next year, but I'm not quite sure. Kira Hug:  Breaking news right here.