By Emma Garofalo
If you're a writer, you may have heard of Muck Rack. Here, we'll take a look at how you can use the platform to maintain your network.
Most freelancers maintain a shortlist of clients, at least a few at any given time. When wheeling, dealing, and trying to talk shop with new connections, compiling all of your best or most recent bylines can often devolve into a messy process.
Muck Rack gives you one central profile where all your work can be hotlinked for your clients. It's a great first impression to make when you're trying to demonstrate the fact that you're an active and experienced member of this industry.
Here, we'll take a more detailed look at how you can use Muck Rack to maintain your network as a writer.
What Is Muck Rack?
Muck Rack is a site that helps you collect all the live examples of your work on the web and keep everything all in one place. It's a service designed for journalists and freelance writers of all types.
A Muck Rack portfolio is better than just sending samples to a potential employer. An active and frequently-updated portfolio shows that you're alive, concerned, and writing a lot, which always looks good to somebody who may be considering you for hire.
You can even link up your Twitter feed to your profile if you want. Once you're a member, you'll see why Muck Rack is such a popular tool for freelancers and journalists, anybody who writes words online for a living.
Related: How to Build a Great Freelance Writing Portfolio
How to Create a Muck Rack Portfolio
The most exciting part about creating a Muck Rack profile is adding everything that you've written to their portfolio builder. To get started, grab the URL of your latest published piece. At the top of the page, click Your Profile and select Add to Portfolio from the dropdown.
You'll land here. Copy the URL of the article that you would like to add and hit Add Item.
The next page lets you fine-tune the title, source, snippet, URL, date of publication, and header image. Once everything is as it should be, click the Save Changes button. The article will now be included in your Muck Rack portfolio.
Continue until you've got all of your best work listed. We recommend that you sort your bylines by date.
Related: How to Manage Freelance Clients on Trello
If this is your first time using Muck Rack, and you're still building your profile, the site also asks that you answer a few interview questions. This, alongside your author bio, is a fun little glimpse into your personality outside of what you write for a living.
The Benefits of Using Muck Rack
As we've already looked at briefly, Muck Rack can be a really useful tool for keeping your portfolio up-to-date. But, there are plenty more benefits to using the platform.
Networking on Muck Rack
If you thought that Muck Rack was only good for showcasing your portfolio, think again. This site is home to a huge community of writers, as well as potential clients and new connections to be made.
Big-name platforms like Wikimedia and The Motley Foo use Muck Rack to build media contact lists and to recruit new talent. It's one of the most candid ways that you can stay on the radar when it comes to the beats that you cover frequently, and it always pays to have your profile updated with your most recent work.
Related: How to Balance Freelance Work With a Full-Time Job
Who knows? If you manage to make a big enough splash, you might actually hear from one of the many companies that make liberal use of Muck Rack. The service lets representatives pitch directly to you through the site—the Muck Rack pipeline keeps everything together in one place.
Industry Research on Muck Rack
If you're doing some research or are on the prowl for fresh talent or inspiration yourself, you can use Muck Rack to find new names that cover only the topics that interest you.
On the homepage, you'll be able to scour their directory for people, publications, and even for specific articles and subject matter.
Here, you can see that we've tracked down my all-time favorite newsroom personality, but you don't have to stick only to the names that you already love. This is the perfect tool to find new writers and platforms to follow, and perhaps even new topics of interest to pursue.
If you cover a beat and want the latest on a recent event, a quick search here might bring you material from sources outside of the ones that you check daily yourself.
There is nothing like reading an alternative viewpoint or the opinion of the opposition. When you can't stomp the pavement yourself, Muck Rack is one option that you can utilize right from home.
Related: How to Find Your First Freelance Job as a Writer
Muck Rack Rankings
If you're still new to the trade and would like to build up your library of resources, you'll actually find a huge collection of some of the most trusted sources for news and information on the internet. Even if you're just looking for your next job, this is an extraordinarily valuable resource.
You'll see a lot of “Top X Publications/Stations/Newspapers in X” articles, lots of which are curated by topic, such as food and beverage. Whether you're scoping out the professional opportunities in your city or simply interested in something new to read, you will not leave this page empty-handed.
Muck Rack maintains a constantly-growing roster of media outlets that use the site. On each publication's profile page, you'll be able to sink your teeth into its most recent stories and even see listings for every journalist represented by the brand, which is pretty cool.
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Muck Rack Trends
The Muck Rack Trends page lets you plug a keyword in and see how much buzz the subject is generating on a graph; you can add as many as six different keywords at a time.
This feature is a really useful source of context; you can use it to compare different topics, analyze spikes in the past, and find articles about a given topic from all over the web.
Not only does it show you what's hot and what's not—you can also see who's covering your pet topics currently. It's a great way to find other writers similar to you and get a glimpse at what they're doing differently (Or very much the same!).
Related: Why Do Freelancers Need Personal Branding?
Your Next Big Break
In the world of media and journalism, half of the battle is getting a shot. On a site like Muck Rack, you're able to start small and build up a portfolio strong enough to land you somewhere where you really have a voice.
If you're already writing and want to push your career further, a writing portfolio is the perfect place to begin. You can get it all organized on Muck Rack—it looks slick and professional, and you'll be able to showcase only the best of what you have to offer.
