Category Archives: social networking

advice, social networking

Keep your friends close and your editors closer

1 Comment

By Amanda Smyth Connor1285834_four_hands

Steady employment for those in the writing/editing industry appears to be going the way of the Dodo in the midst of today’s economic crisis. You may find that one day you are happily emailing your favorite editor and the next day, they’re gone and you’re suddenly working with a new editor – or worse, you can’t figure out who to contact at all.

Crap. Now you have to start the relationship from ground zero and work your way back up with a new editor.

The good news is that, as an editor, every time I have left a job, I have taken all of my favorite writer’s contact info with me. The first thing I do upon taking a new job is to begin reaching out to my existing arsenal of writers. It looks good for me, professionally speaking, to bring these existing relationships with me and it works out well for my writers when I am once again in a position to begin hiring them for new projects.

Editors and writers have a delightfully symbiotic relationship. They need you as much as you need them, so don’t ever believe for one second that you are entirely at their mercy. And because of this shared need to maintain relationships despite unsteady employment, I make it a point to update my LinkedIn as often as possible and to keep my writers up to date on any career changes I undergo, whether it is taking on a new position with my existing company or whether I move to an entirely different company.

Employment opportunities are, as they say, not about what you know as much as who you know, and you never know when you will be in a position to help a friend secure a new position. My advice to you is to keep networking, maintain your relationships and keep that contact list up to date.

advice, Business, client relationships, social networking

Worst Clients and the Pay-to-Hassle Ratio

7 Comments

By Jake Poinier

I was on a Twitter chat this morning with the Editorial Freelancers Association, and the topic came up of “what if you have tons of work, but aren’t making much money: what to do if you’re charging too little for your time?”

Perhaps a bit flippantly, someone answered “Charge more!”, which I rejoined with “STAT!”

But upon further reflection, as much as a fast-moving Twitter chat allows, I added, “dump your worst client on an annual basis.” To which the moderator responded, “how do you choose your worst client?”

Ah, now we’re on to something. How do you identify your worst client? My gut reaction was that it’s your lowest paying one, but that’s not true. Your worst client is…drum roll please…the one with the least favorable pay-to-hassle ratio.

For example, your lowest paying client might offer interesting projects or pieces that look great in your portfolio, or they might offer a wellspring of referrals that make it a more lucrative relationship than shows up in Quickbooks. So, my equation includes the following factors:

  • Pay: Do they pay well? Do they pay promptly, or are you always chasing them?
  • Project quality: Is it work you enjoy? Is it stuff you’re proud to have in your portfolio to attract new clients?
  • Maintenance level: Is the client pleasant to work with or do they require lots of handholding/revisions/weekends?
  • Ancillary benefits: Do you get referrals from them? Discounts on their company’s products and services?

No two clients are the same, and some of the items may be more important to you than others. (Personally, pay rate weighs pretty heavily!) And while you may not necessarily want to dump your worst client, it’s worth having perspective in order to take corrective action.

Freelancers, what would you add to the equation? Which factors are most important to you?

Jake Poinier blogs regularly at DoctorFreelance.com. His most recent post was “3 ideas beyond the freelance echo chamber.” And he’s happy to swap Twitter follows at @drfreelance.

advice, Marketing yourself, social networking

How to Get 5,000 (or even 50,000) Followers on Twitter

by Mike O’Mary

logo_twitter_withbird_1000_allblue copyOver the last few months, FZ has featured some very helpful and insightful posts about social media in general and about Twitter in particular. If you missed them the first time around, be sure to check them out now:

Today, I’d like to add to the conversation, not by sharing my own (very limited) knowledge, but by introducing you to Lynn Serafinn, a real expert when it comes to Twitter, social media and online marketing.

iStock_000005894033XSmallWith Lynn’s help, I went from no Twitter account nine months ago to 5,600 followers for @TheNoteProject on Twitter today. Lynn herself has 50,000 followers across four Twitter accounts.

What good is 5,600 followers on Twitter? It’s been very important to me. My goal was to spread the word about the Note Project, a campaign to inspire people to write more notes of appreciation. My contacts on Twitter led to media interviews, posts and guest posts on various blogs and websites, and free gifts to Note Project participants by people and organizations that support the Note Project. In fact, more than half of the Note Project’s 50 sponsors came via contacts on Twitter.

What is the secret to Lynn’s success? It’s not as difficult as you think – and fortunately for us, Lynn recently shared all of her secrets in a three-part series on her Spirit Authors website. Click below to read all three segments – and start building up your community on Twitter today.

“10 Tips to Get Followers on Twitter and Why You Should” by Lynn Serafinn

Mike O’Mary is founder of the Note Project, a campaign to make the world a million times better by inspiring 1 million people to write notes of appreciation, and of Dream of Things, a book publisher and online book store.

social networking

How Are You Using Twitter?

By Amanda Smyth ConnorTweeter

Twitter, in my humble opinion, is one of the greatest inventions to come about in the last century. I believe it falls right after “Facebook” and right before “platform heels” in terms of the greatest influences in my day-to-day life. Not only have I focused on using Twitter to info-share, but I use Twitter as the world’s greatest free marketing tool.

How are you using Twitter? Are you interacting or are you just “selling yourself?”

If you are simply posting links to your blog posts, you’re missing out on all of the great opportunities to get new followers by interacting with great Twitter posts. You SHOULD be retweeting great tweets, Tweeting @ people and letting them know what you thought of their posts and interacting with Twitter-ers on a deeper and more meaningful level. Twitter superficiality won’t get you any more recognition or followers.

Yes, you should be posting links to all of your blog posts and articles, but make sure your Tweets are engaging and interesting. Do not Tweet “New blog post! Please read it! [link to blog post.]” That’s the surefire way to lose followers.

HINT: Pay attention to some of the fun hashtags that pop up. #FF = Follow Friday. This is a day when people recap and give a shoutout to their new followers for that week which, in turn, encourages others to follow you. In order to participate, just end your shoutout tweet with #FF. Fun times with socialization.

Amanda Smyth Connor is a social media 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, social networking

Social Media vs. Community Management

By Amanda Smyth Connor1258179_hands_above_4

They’re the same thing, right? They both involve engaging your audience, creating brand awareness and sharing great content that will drive people to a product, site or information. Right? Right??

WRONG!

These two positions are often confused and are, more often, used interchangeably. While there is a great deal of overlap, these positions require very different skill sets. If you are a freelance writer looking to get into social media management or community management, you need to know the difference before you get yourself in over your head.

Community Managers are a liaison between the audience and the proper internal stakeholders. Community managers use proactive and reactive communication strategies to engage the audience and to gather feedback. They analyze the information that comes in (which is invaluable feedback!) and make recommendations that are passed along to IT, marketing, PR, customer service and sales departments. It is also the CM’s job to monitor the brand/product online across all channels (internet-wide). The internet is a big place. Without a CM, how will any buisness know what is being said about their product or site without someone to watch, interact, analyze and report back?

Social Media specialists strive to create strategies for bigger community engagement. From Facebook strategies to Twitter to [insert social media channel here], the social media specialist is the bigger picture person when it comes to the “how” of reaching and engaging customers. SMers can come from a variety of backgrounds but most often have a deep interest in marketing and brand management. If the community manager is the “voice” of the brand, the SM is the “head.”

And while these two positions are different and should not be confused, they must work closely together to create and execute a great social media strategy. You can’t just hire one, you really need both, and they need to work in tandem to be effective. What is a head without a voice, and vice versa?

Are you looking to get into the social media side of freelance writing? There’s a huge need for fantastic writers who can create really engaging content. Just make sure you are very aware of the requirements of the job you are applying for. Because these positions are so new, more often than not job descriptions for these positions are inaccurate and many companies don’t fully understand their own social media needs nor how to identify the right candidate for the position. Do your homework and understand EXACTLY what you can offer before applying for any positions.

Amanda Smyth Connor is a social media 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, editorial, social networking

Social Media For Freelancers

1 Comment

book and script editor for hire Joe Wallaceby Joe Wallace

While browsing Freelance Switch I ran across this post discussing five ways NOT to use social media in your freelance work.

Melanie Brooks writes, “Facebook and Twitter are different beasts. For marketing purposes, your Facebook status update should be updated a few times a day, max. Tweets should be used more frequently. If you tie them together you run the risk of annoying your Facebook followers with too much information; you don’t want to alienate your followers…”

To which I would like to add that I tried an experiment on Facebook and came up with quantifiable (to me) results that bear this out.

I decided to see what the tolerance is for daily posts on Facebook on a page which requires “likes”. Since liking a FB page is totally voluntary, and the users can opt out at any time, I figured paying attention to how many people liked a page versus how many dropped it based on the frequency of posts would be something valuable to know.

The page I was using had an average of a new “like” every two or three days.

I had been posting four or five times per day, and I noticed that for every two or three followers, I would lose one or two in a few days or a week. I decided to dial it down to three to four times a day, and noticed that the numbers leveling out a bit. The light had come on–there was still a two steps forward, one step back element going on.

Next, I played with posting three times a day but posting within the typical eight hour work day. No real change here. I didn’t start seeing a steady increase in numbers until I spaced three posts a day out to about six or seven hours between each post. I post around 5:30 AM, again at around 1 or 2PM, and once more at 9Pm.

THAT schedule has earned steady upward numbers with few, if any, ditching the page once it’s been liked. Is it a magic formula? No, you still have to have relevant, engaging content, but it is a system that certainly has worked for me–and one I now use as a default with new clients when appropriate. Naturally, you have to watch your audience on each individual account and pay attention to the nuances.

But if you’re looking for a posting schedule that seems to work, you could do a lot worse than starting off with that.

Joe Wallace is a freelance editor, writer, and social media manager for companies including Bank Administration Institute, VALoans.com and MilitaryHub.com. He is currently editing a book on voice acting and recently finished editing a video game script for military accuracy, jargon and American idiom usage. Contact him: jwallace (at) freelance-zone (dotcom).