Tag Archives: freelance jobs

social networking

LinkedIn – On Notice

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Amanda Smyth Connor1343803_rusty_chain_2

I’ll admit it. I don’t really “get” LinkedIn.

I’ve worked in social media  for about six years. During that time, I have grown to love and understand the intricacies of Facebook and Twitter. But when it comes to LinkedIn, we just never formed a connection. Our synergies never synergized.  We just didn’t click.

Dear LinkedIn. It’s not you…it’s me. Well, maybe it’s you.

Don’t get me wrong. I check LinkedIn frequently. I keep my profile up-to-date and active. I respond to requests for recommendations and connections very quickly. I have my Twitter feed hooked up and running and I obviously use LinkedIn to track what colleagues and clients are up to professionally. However, it feels like so many people are using LinkedIn for the wrong reasons.

I get spammy messages from people looking to rent out office space. I get jerky self-promotional mass emails from connections looking for new projects, and worst of all, I get requests for recommendations from people I have never worked with or have not worked with directly, which just feels really slimy. “Please recommend me even though you have no frame of reference for my work and have no idea what my work ethic is really like.”

So the question remains – is LinkedIn really just a glorified resume platform that occasionally yields a job connection, or is it a highly valuable professional social media tool that I have unfortunately not experienced in the best capacity? From a social media and professional standpoint, I just don’t understand how best to use LinkedIn – which begs the question – how user friendly is LinkedIn if someone like me is asking this question?

Until someone explains how LinkedIn should best be utilized beyond what I’ve stated above, as Colbert says: “LinkedIn – you’re on notice!”

Amanda Smyth Connor is a community manager for a major publishing company, owns her own wedding planning business, and has managed online communities and content development for many start-up and Fortune 500 companies.  She has been a professional editor for more years than she can remember.

advice

Playing the Waiting Game

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By Amanda Smyth Connor1300798_time_distortion

My husband and I are both waiting to hear back about new projects. We’ve been waiting for quite awhile. I’ve been waiting for about three weeks and my husband has been waiting for two and a half months! We have resigned ourselves to not talking about it, because frankly, we are driving each other crazy.

“Did you hear back today?”

“No. When I hear back you’ll be the first to know. Until then, let’s not speak of it. You’ll jinx it.”

And so on and so forth we go, playing the dreaded Waiting Game. We’ve also taken to not telling friends/family about it so that we don’t have to put up with the constant need for well-meaning updates.

We’ve all dealt with this situation – whether it had to do with waiting for a project to start, waiting to hear if you were chosen for the project or new job, or whether you weren’t – and the whole process can be slow and infuriating.  You’ve worked hard! You’ve done your best “tap dancing monkey” routine and you’ve brought out the big guns to impress the hiring party. You’ve done all you can, and now……………………………………………………………………….you wait.

What NOT to do:

1. Draft an email to your client/editor demanding answers that reads:

“Dear Sir/Madam, YOU ARE MAKING MY LIFE A LIVING HELL! When are you going to let me know about the new project? Are we starting this thing or not??! Tinkle or get off the pot! Love, Mandy.”

2. Compose a steady stream of hourly correspondence to your client/editor in a pathetic attempt to get the ball rolling/wear them into submission so that they hire you.

What TO do:

1. Distract yourself. Think happy thoughts and put it out of your head. There’s nothing more you can do. You’ve done your best.

2. Find yourself a Delorean and make like Back To The Future II to speed things up.

3. Refer back to #1.

Stay strong, fellow writers.

Amanda Smyth Connor has managed online communities and nationwide marketing campaigns for several start-up and  Fortune 500 companies, and has been an editor for more years than she can remember.

editorial, lifestyle, resources

Advanced Tips For Freelancers

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The latest in our ongoing series of freelance tips and advice, video style. In today’s short clip, we feed a little hint about how freelancers can think outside the box when it comes to marketing their expertise to potential new clients. It seems so obvious once you think about it, but the freelance game is all about little tricks and techniques like these:


advice, editorial, resources

Freelance-Zone Goes Video

Freelance Advice videos
Freelance-Zone.com has gone video. This week we quietly rolled out some freelance advice videos on our new YouTube channel and we’re pleased to say the cameras have been rolling for several weeks now as we create new types of content on freelance jobs, career advice, tips for new freelancers and advanced tips for those who have already taken the plunge.

Here’s a small sample of what we’re doing, presented below. There are also some clips where you see actual people talking about freelancing, you can view the first of many more at the Freelance-Zone YouTube site. We’ll be posting many more clips here as we finish editing them…for now, check out the first our series of freelance advice shorts:



freelance jobs

Hot Jobs: Community Manager

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By Amanda Smyth Connorherding-cats

One of the hot new jobs popping up for 2011 is the position of community manager. Online community managers carry four main responsibilities:

1. They serve as the online brand ambassador  and work to establish and cultivate communities of users and members. They often serve as the voice of the community, as well as the liaison between the community and the corporation.

2. They track analytics and report back on what marketing and social media strategies are working and what’s not working.

3. They develop communications plans based on customer feedback to better serve the community, while educating other departments, like PR, marketing and social media, on how better to reach said community.

4. They develop content for specific sites to engage the community and keep them coming back for more.

Why should you befriend your local online community manager? #4 on the list above is “develop content.” That’s where freelancers become invaluable to a good community manager. One CM may be responsible for several sites and audiences. It’s rare that one CM would be solely responsible for all of the content creation, thus, it falls on their shoulders to hire the best freelancers and bloggers to assist in creating articles, site copy, blog posts, etc. And if you have some knowledge of SEO practices, you become even MORE invaluable to a CM.

So put out your networking feelers and see who in your mental rolodex might provide an “in” to a CM in need of great writers, like yourselves.

Amanda Smyth Connor has managed online communities and nationwide marketing campaigns for several start-up and  Fortune 500 companies, and has been an editor for more years than she can remember.

advice, editorial, lifestyle, resources

Catching Up to the Digital Freelancing Age

One Year to a Writing Life Susan Tiberghienby Joe Wallace

Take a look at the book shelves at any Borders or Barnes & Noble and you’ll find a great many titles by the usual suspects who write about freelancing, the craft of writing and other relevant topics. Take a look in Amazon’s Kindle Store for freelancing titles and you’ll find electronic books like One Year to a Writing Life by Susan M. Tiberghien, plus a few of the other usual suspects you find on the bookshelves…but not all. Not nearly.

But that’s changing, surely as Kindle, Nook, iPad and other digital platforms are slowly becoming a more standard part of consumer culture. You’ll start finding many more of the usual suspects available digitally.

What does this mean for freelancers in general? More than a few freelancer sites in the writing and editing disciplines are woefully behind the times when it comes to design, presentation and functionality. In the design, photography, and video editing worlds this isn’t as prevalent, but one thing is for sure–those who ARE behind the times have some serious catching up to do.

But that’s not as daunting as it might seem. Sometimes it just takes the right kind of tutorial or learning experience to open the doors of understanding. The most important thing any freelancer can do–especially those trying to catch up to the latest trends in digital freelancing, publishing, etc–is to find a savvy friend to get some pointers from. Barring that, a simple no-BS tutorial is a very good thing indeed. A very good place to start is at WordPress.org, which features some great introductory material on blogging in general, using WordPress and much more.

Another good resource is Problogger.net, which is required reading for anyone who wants to make money as a blogger. And yes, these resources may seem to be blog-centric, but when you read these you’ll be absorbing much more than just what it takes to set up a blog and start writing one…you’re also absorbing the mindset of a whole different subset of potential readers, audience members, and customers. You definitely want to understand this mindset going forward, as it fairly rules the digital realm for freelancers across many disciplines.