I had an interesting conversation yesterday with Dave Allen of North in Portland, an agency that specializes in brand engagement across the spectrum of traditional and digital media.
One of the highlights of the conversation was a discussion of companies who come looking for help with their image campaigns. “What’s your website about?” these hopefuls are asked. “Well, we’re like BIG ESTABLISHED SERVICE NAME”.
So what are you offering that Big Established Service is getting wrong? “Um, well, nothing. We’re just like Big Established Service Name. Except it’s US.”
By now you’re getting the picture. Why reinvent the wheel? It’s one thing to offer a different-tasting cheeseburger. It’s another to offer the same widget with only a different picture where the logo goes. Continue reading Jumping On The Mobile Bandwagon?→
I’ve done a lot of travel writing in one form or another–from half-hour long television scripts for the Korea Destinations series aired by the American Forces Network to quick little blog posts about road tripping across the USA, I’ve taken every kind of transportation imaginable.
Part of the trick to being a successful traveler, never mind being a good travel writer, is to take full advantage of every discount and price cut you can. You learn to pounce on frequent flyer miles, AAA, any and everything you can find.
But the times are definitely changing. Just ask the author of this ABC News post about fuel surcharges for supposedly free air travel purchased with frequent flyer miles. British Airways apparently tacked on a whopping $500 surcharge to an otherwise “free” flight.
It’s bad enough that flyers must pay to check baggage, eat overpriced food, and endure intrusive security pat-downs. Now this? In America it’s more isolated according to the ABC story, but it’s definitely an industry trend worth keeping an eye on.
The purpose of this post isn’t to rant about how unfair that particular surcharge is. Instead, I’d like to draw attention to the nickel-and-dime practices as a whole to raise some awareness about how much it’s costing you to do things directly related to the freelance life.
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:
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.
After reading the headline here, you may be wondering what on earth I’m talking about. It may sound crazy, but it’s true–freelancing and pool have a lot in common.
At least if you are doing things right.
I put myself through college working at a billiard hall (Bet you didn’t know that about me!), so I know a thing or two about pool. In order to get better, you have to think ahead to your next shot. Simply making a ball won’t do–you have to have a strategy–much like chess–to win. As you pocket one ball, you have to think about “getting shape” (lining up) on your next ball, and it helps to be able to see how to “run out” (make all the balls until you win) rather than thinking about one shot, then the next.
Freelancing is the exact same thing. If you are just concentrating on the task before you and not thinking about your next step(s), it will take you forever to build a career in this field–if you do it at all. You need to be able to multi-task, doing marketing, sending out multiple queries, writing, filing, billing and more, all with a plan in mind. In pool the goal is typically to clear the table. In your freelancing career, the goal is whatever you set–but you have to set one (or more) in order to develop a plan for your life in this business.
So with the end of the year approaching, I would like to encourage every freelancer out there to set a few overarching goals. Once you do, they will help guide your strategy, and thus, your career.
Can knowing your "type" help freelancers gain and retain more clients?
By Jake Poinier
If you’ve spent any time in the corporate world, you’ve probably taken DiSC or Myers-Briggs Type Indicatorpersonality tests. Ironically enough, taking a Myers-Briggs at my last corporate job hastened my departure: In an “aha” moment, I realized that my type, ENTP (click the link for details on what makes me tick), was diametrically opposed to my boss’s type. I’d been plotting my escape for nearly a year, but the test confirmed what I suspected in my head about how we saw the world so differently. It also indicated that my personality would be good for entrepreneurship and therefore freelancing. I left about a month later.
Personality tests are not a crystal ball by any means, but they can help you understand a bit more about your strengths and weaknesses, and how you react under stress. For a freelancer, that can make them a powerful tool.
More important, if you do a little bit of research on the other types, you can start identifying what types your prospective freelance clients and current clients are. That, of course, enables you to modify how you treat those clients as individuals.
One of the things I learned during my two-year stint as a sales manager for a custom-magazine publishing company was how different each of the clients were that came from the different salespeople:
Tim’s were hard-driving, number-crunching folks who wouldn’t believe anything unless they saw it in a spreadsheet. (Conversely, if you were good at spreadsheets, you could make them believe almost anything.) You had to get right to the point, or they’d cut you off. It took a lot to win them over, but were very loyal once you did.
Frank’s sales were usually very personable and easygoing. They were the most pleasant to work with, but also had trouble with deadlines and weren’t very detail oriented. You had to shmooze them into compliance.
Bill’s sales were best described as aloof. They weren’t as driven as Tim’s, nor as friendly as Frank’s. They were not terribly loyal, because they were never very dedicated in the first place. Anytime Bill made a sale, I knew they weren’t in for the long haul.
The personality tests probably won’t tell you anything that you don’t know (or at least suspected) about yourself. But having an understanding of what motivates or irritates a client is essential to creating a lasting bond.
Have you taken one of these personality tests or something else? Do you use personality-oriented techniques in the sales process? Share your thoughts in the comments!
by Joe Wallace
