My Top Five Freelance Resources

by Joe Wallace

In my daily freelance work, I write on a variety of topics–everything from finance to music. To get all this done, I need a range of information, images, and research material, and I thought I’d share my top five resources here.

It’s not that I think these specific resources will help all freelancers, far from it, but I am hoping the sheer diversity of them will inspire other to share their own resources and consider looking in places they had not thought of using in their daily work before. I’ve learned that the most unlikely sources can often be of great value.

That’s why Portland, Oregon PR agency North is in my top five list. The insights about digital culture are thought-provoking and inform my work in social media for my clients. I don’t get a ton of writing ideas from reading this site, but it does inform how I market those ideas.

For royalty-free digital images, I’m a huge fan of Stock Xchng, which is where the image you see in my post today comes from. I use them every day.

HootSuite is a major time-saver for me. I run social media accounts for six different websites, plus posts on my personal accounts about my auctions on eBay and my Etsy store, so Hootsuite is a real lifesaver for me. I manage all my social media via HootSuite, and it sure beats running back and forth between accounts, with one big exception;

I am a huge fan of Facebook for a few not-so-obvious reasons. For a start, I use it for my clients, so I’m involved there whether I personally enjoy it or not. But the thing I love about it is being able to watch how OTHER people use FB and learn how I can use those habits to make my clients happier. It’s easy to reverse engineer behavior patterns on FB when you know what to look for, and I’ve been pleased with the lessons in what I call digital human nature on this site–much easier to spot and understand than on Twitter…

And resource number five? I use Google Analytics to examine trends on Freelance-Zone.com and my other blogs, but I find that using it in concert with Sitemeter gives me a much better picture of what’s going on with my blogs and how. The two together are a much better tool for me.

And there you have it. What are YOUR favorite freelance resources and why?