We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dericka Miller a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Dericka, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

The biggest risk I’ve taken was diving into full-time entrepreneurship as a copywriter. But believe it or not, the signs that this was my calling were there well in advance, and I had no choice but to take the risk.

More specifically, there were three life instances where writing and entrepreneurship popped up along my journey that illuded me to doing full-time entrepreneurship with writing:

– The first came when I was in the 7th grade. By this time, I had endured so much unaddressed trauma that I had grown into becoming a more anxious and depressed child. Writing was introduced to me during a school assignment and served as my escape from reality.
– The second came a few years later when I was 15 and earned my first official “job.” My city was running this summer program for 15 and 16 year olds where we were getting paid to build our own business for the summer. At the end of the summer, we had to present our business to the public for a prize. My team and I won first place for our pretzel business.
– The third came during high school, when I focused heavily on writing. One of my teachers noticed my dedication to my craft and suggested that I enter a county-wide writing competition specifically for high school students. I won first place, which to date is one of my biggest and earliest achievements,

Despite all the signs being there, I did not end up taking the big risk of becoming a full-time entrepreneur until after college graduation. Around that time, I had already begun to build a name for myself as a copywriter and landed well over 10 clients in various industries, including coaching, health and wellness, and fashion. But now, I had a degree and prior experience in a new field of study that I enjoyed – accounting and finance.

So, I did it. I jumped after walking across that stage and receiving my Bachelor’s degree into building my copywriting business, but this time, specifically working with accounting and finance businesses. Today, I love serving individuals and professionals within this industry trying to implement more storytelling copywriting tactics into their businesses to grow online and build deeper personal connections with their audiences.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Dericka Miller is an accounting and finance copywriter who serves businesses and brands through her company, Dericka Writes. Her strong suit in mixing creative storytelling with marketing tactics and strategies has positioned her to help over 15 industries, brands, and non-profits over three years establish a unique online presence while growing awareness of their missions, visions, and causes.

Dericka has always had a passion for writing that stemmed from her 7th-grade English class. After expanding her knowledge in the creative writing space throughout her school years, which prompted her to win first place in her first writing competition, she began to see the true power that words possess when incorporating storytelling into your operations.

It wasn’t until she went to college to learn about the fundamentals of business and finance that she made another mind-boggling realization. She noted how utilizing the same creative tactics in storytelling could help accounting and finance firms improve their communication efforts among their clients and employees.

Now, Dericka aims to help those in the business and finance industries improve their operations, grow their online presence, and navigate the current shift in the accounting and finance spaces using copywriting and storytelling strategies combined.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

There’s one main goal that drives me to wake up every day to work as hard as I do: to change the way accounting and finance firms view copywriting for their businesses. While working at internships during college and building my education during my courses, I witnessed firsthand how outdated and mundane much of the copy is for these companies. Sure, it can work for some audience types they may serve, but for others, not so much.

My mission is to show these companies in the accounting and financial spaces how getting more creative with their copywriting efforts can change the trajectory of their business as a whole. Not only will they begin to see more conversions and actions being taken among their audiences, but they’ll also build a deeper connection with their audience, clients, and employees that acts as an unbreakable bond and creates loyal clientele.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I wasn’t unfamiliar with social media when I started my business as a college student. Before then, I had been on social media since middle school. The only obstacle this time was I couldn’t just consume the content I was following; I had to create it too.

When I started building my business socials, especially Instagram, my goal was to create one new post daily and utilize growth strategies to help me see growth (at the time in 2019, that was hashtags). Within a year of using this strategy, I went from no followers to over 500 followers and had new clients crawling into my inbox consistently every month.

On top of that, in my content, I always was being myself. I was never afraid to take my audience into my world or share my story with them. This made me look more authentic in their eyes and gave me a sense of personality that no one else could copy. So, I always stand by people bringing their personalities onto their platforms instead of embodying the essence of another person, business, or brand.

I also offer this advice to anyone trying to grow on social media: follow the growth trends and post consistently. Trends change as time progresses, so if you want to see growth continuously, you must adapt to those trends and how people react to content today. Also, identifying your definition of consistent will take you far as you grow. You don’t have to post every day as I did, but you do need to have a consistent posting schedule and stick to it no matter what.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://derickawrites.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/derickawrites/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dmillerwrites
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/derickamiller
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dmillerwrites
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcQBQ4Vg6Q3HzdpTbwdfXMw

Image Credits
Photos: @picsbyke (Instagram)