Heard at meetups

After 3-minute presentation of an application that also includes some dating options, the presenter was asked the following innocent question: 'Are you single?'

Start-up culture in the bike parking space of TU

Apps and IT news from Berlin

The active social life of startups and entrepreneurs in Berlin brings me very often in contact with creative smart people sharing their ideas and e-innovations. Following, there are the latest discoveries of the last 5 days.

1. Tame will help anyone interested to do specialized social media research. It helps you to organize your Twitter account up to the latest news and top Tweets on specific topics. You don't need to do your own regular search every hour, but you have all the results in one single search. The results will be organized up to the hashtag, in a way similar to Storify, without the creative part. 

2. Eyequest is a relatively new app, downloadable for free and available - by now - only in German. Do you want to know what is going on in your favorite bar or if it is worth to go late in the night to a party? Check the app and you have access to the latest social updates about it. The power of the masses is on your side and will help you to enjoy life at its fullest. There are many developments to be added, but this will be equally a great tool for companies keen to advertise with them.

3. Myracloud is the product that any private person or corporate will like to use it for increasing the DDoS protection. It improves the level of protection of your computer and helps you to optimize the content. It fights efficiently the attacks without operating any changes to your website. The category of prices are personalized. 

The Startup-nation

Food for thought when it comes to real start-ups!

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/israel-a-tech-hub-for-startups-CaQo3lwGQfua0XjNK8r53Q.html

Startup mindset

A couple of days ago, I was asked at a gathering of startups for how long I do work for my current company. I said that for around two months, I heard the following observation: 'Quite a lot of time for the startup style'. 

On a sidenote: I am living in Berlin, Germany, a country where you need a lot of effort and inner strength if you want to achieve professional success. In the last three years, I've heard a lot of stories from people that arrived in Germany (capitalist version) in their late 30s and it took them around 30 years to be considered: fluent German speakers, mature enough and relevant enough for being a successful story. Most of them did not change their job in the last two decades, as the stability of the workplace is part of the profile of a stable career.

However, it seems that the startups - not all of them created by German entrepreneurs - are here to claim a different narrative. It is not the time spent at the same desk that matters, but your achievements, and if you are smart enough to get the best professional and financial exposure in your late 20s, you can retire honorably and tour the world in your early 40s. A job interview do not start with an investigation about what your aims for the next 5 years are, but rather with a question about where do you see yourself in the next 30 days.

I am not one of those highly enthusted persons that will pledge the cause of the startups and I am decent enough to consider the financial risks of changing the job every 3 months. But, on the other hand, I felt very often that it is a big distance between the corporate mentalities here and the reality and such disparities will discourage innovation and creativity and on the medium and long term will endanger development. The startup booms could be understood somehow as the solution that the young generation of entrepreneurs living in Germany found for catching up with the latest trends in technology and creative thinking while enjoying the stability of the German economy. 

On the long term, I am optimistic and wish I am one of those startup minds too. 

Basic networking rules

As I was very busy lately doing a lot of research and networking, I tried to sum up with a couple of basic rules that one may follow for reaching high efficiency in terms of expanding the number of business contacts and opportunities of further branding. 

There are a couple of my personal insights:

- Do not forget to have enough business cards in your wallet. If the list of participants is open, try to have at least enough cards for each member of the audience. In general, you should have an average of around 20 business cards. If you are out of it, send your details to those that gave their business cards.

- Food and drinks are always part of the networking events, but be sure that you are not too hungry for spending all your time running from a plate to another. It is not extremely polite to talk business with your mouth full. And anyway, try to keep yourself as sober as possible.

- Be fast! Do not spend a lot of time with the same person. Remember that you are there to network and thus, try to get as many contacts as possible. Try to plan beforehand what are your objectives and what do you intend to achieve - how many contacts, what people may be of interest for a next meeting etc. 

- Be short but efficient. If you are not a good speaker, do a short rehearsal before the event. You should not lecture, but to have enough humour for introducing your company and services. Try to find point of connection with the other members and to make the conversation pleasant yet useful. 

- Continue with the networking. Get the advantage of the first impression - the sooner the better - and get the connection at a next level: find your contacts on Xing or LinkedIn or Twitter. Establish as soon as possible a next meeting in order to discuss in detail about your plans. 

What is your recipe of successful networking? Feel free to share your experiences!

Using algorithms for public relations

Anyone with a basic training in the domain of PR knows that the possibilities to predict a big crisis are limited and thus, investing in prevention is the best solution. However, in an era when hundreds of apps are created daily, there should be a cure for unexpected crisis. A startup from Singapore found the solution and here we are: the PR crisis - or honestly speaking, most of them - could be prevented. 

Sounds terribly optimistic, isn't it? Like engineering almost.

The wonders of the Dropbox

If you are a big company working with many freelancers, many of them located very far away, it is normal to try finding a way to quantify the amount of work spent for you. The culture of work is challenged dramatically by the latest work trends but, as usual, the mind patterns did not change over night. 

As I am working as a freelancer for over five years, I was faced more than once with the suspicions of my otherwise nice bosses regarding the way in which I do spent my time. Especially in the case of people not familiar with what exactly does it mean to be a freelancer and somehow envious of your freedom of spending an impressive amount of time home zapping websites and drinking your coffee all day long and having free hot homemade lunch. What for a freelancer this is the golden mine of freedom: the possibility of organizing your time up to your needs, without spending hours commuting and killing time in the company of nice or not so nice colleagues.

Anyway, regardless of how much you will write and say about how wonderful is to be a freelancer, you will always be the target of various suspicions. But in the world of 2.0., there are a lot of tools that will help your reluctant employer to quantify your work. 

Take, for instance, the Dropbox. It is a system that allows employers to share docs, organize and edit information. Either you are in Sydney or Buenos Aires, you will add there your work objectives, your plans and even your financial documents. There are versions available for phone and if you can install it in a matter of minutes on your desktop.

There are three available variants: Free - you can use 2GB, Pro - $9.99/month and a capacity that goes till 500 GB and Business - highly recommended for teams, with a lot of safety features, permanent phone support and unlimited deletion recovery. 

If you want to find out more about it and to get updated with news, you must follow their blog, updated regularly.

Now, your virtual boss will be more happy and you can impress him/her with your speed and the amount of reports produced daily. (Each document uploaded has a date and the mention of the last update).

Good luck Dropboxing!

Tell your Time: How to Manage Your Schedule So You Can Live Free

I am a passionate reader of books about time management, but even more passionate to practice various recipes - personal or borrowed - of how to efficiently use my time. In the middle of writing a new book - about communications and customers service a project I have in mind for at least 5 months, but wasn't a pro manager of my writing time - I decided to have a look in my Kindle for useful resources.

Amy Lynn Andrews' book: Tell your Time: How to Manage Your Schedule So You Can Live Free helped me to better organize the coming weeks of writing when I need to juggle with the housework obligations, a very challenging new job where I need to be very active and an impressive amount of social obligations. Add to this some other equally important spiritual requirements and you have an impressive mosaique of a hectic life. 

My lessons learned from the book:

- planning, planning and planning

- The confirmation of my old feeling I live with since early childhood: 'Any significant change in our lives will require patience and sacrifice'.

- When you have your priorities set, you can enjoy the freedom of organizing the daily and weekly blocks of time in a flexible way. For instance, if today the domestic chores can be finished in 10 minutes, you dedicate the rest of the time assigned for such activities for writing or volunteering. 

- We are always in control of our own time, and we should make the right choices for a balanced time schedule. But in order to achieve this, we should establish what our roles are - wife, mother, businesswoman, consultant, teacher, writer etc. - what are our main objectives in each case and what are our daily tasks. 

- Write down your objectives and set up the Excel/Google doc with your set-up activities: both the negotiable and non-negotiable ones. 

The conclusion: you have a dream? Work for it punctiliously, hard, with a bit of sacrifice but at the end of your journey, most likely it will turn into reality. 

The latest trends in communications

Anyone interested in the latest trends in terms of mobile and social media communications would have been happy to join the sophisticated audience from the BITKOM Congress, organized between 26 and 27 November in Berlin, on Karl-Marx Allee. 

Big billboards on Karl-Marx-Allee

Even though Germany faces a lot of problems with accepting the new technologies - for instance, the e-wallets are not openly accepted - the engine of the European economy cannot stay behind and thus, little by little, with the help of a smart and well organized lobby, the change of mentality is on the way. The main advantage of not being the first to follow the trends could be that one may still have the last word in improving the previous techniques and strategies that were followed almost blindly at the beginning. 

For the moment, Germany is trying to develop the research tools for constant social innovation. There are a lot of changes ahead and it will be not easy to endeavor what the final results will look like. The speed of the transmission of information equals the speed of light a scenario that makes almost impossible the categorization of the data. 

The press conference

One of the most used word I've heard during my hours spent at the BITKOM Congress was: sharing (not necessarily only on Facebook). Sharing while taking care of the privacy considerations; sharing if you want to grow both as an individual and as company (JP Rangaswami); sharing because you do not have any other choice; sharing in a smart way, by using the social media tools and the mobile technologies in order to reach your potential and current audience and customers. Even though not all companies and sectors do need an impressive amount of data (banking, financial and the government sectors are the most exposed to it) almost all domains of activity will need to change at a certain extent their information culture. New skills are needed at all levels of decision. 

As Germany is the country of Siemens and other forefront companies in the world of technology and communications, the references to mobile communication was often used as the best tool to address the overall reservations for an open data policy. The challenges and opportunities for innovation are impressive and we are just at the beginning of the journey (Annette Zimmermann, from Gartner Research). 

When you are in Berlin, do what Berliners do and from the agenda couldn't miss a presentation about the 'legendary' local start-up culture (Joel Kaczmarek, from Gruenderszene), with a funny introduction in the daily life of a startuper. I hope that many of the serious, black-suited participants realized that irony should be included as a main quality of a startuper in Berlin and therefore, they will be kind and nice with anyone asking them their generous financial support. 

The Congress was located at the legendary Kosmos, the DDR's once best kino

Overall, the Trend Kongress offered a good picture of the state-of-arts of the German communications.  A lot of meticulous work ahead till the next Congress.

Online PR for German companies

Good news for you, online media addicts. The next months will mean more work but with many spectacular results for your clients - and your bank account!

Very often, I expressed my unhappiness with the low outreach of German companies via online media tools. The situation is not one of the best in Europe, but it seems that it will not stay for too long. According to an interesting study Zukunft der Unternehmenskommunikation in the coming months we may assist to a lot of interesting changes.

For instance, according to the study, social media communication will increase its presence into the branding and communication strategies of German companies with over 82%. Nowadays, the average use is of 48% of the daily PR activities. Content marketing is also expecting to increase with around 75%. Currently, the media and the public are influenced mostly by e-mail newsletters and the information distributed via press portals. Regarding this latest tool, I must recognized that I was not too keen to use it and preferred instead to communicate directly with the media. However, each time I used one of those free or charge press portals, I got unexpected results. Probably, a matter of checking the identity and the prestige of the company sending the media, as the membership to a press portal supposes the confirmation of some identity details of the sender. 

The research published by PR Gateway mentions that the social media tools - together with media monitoring services and online press release services - contribute to the increase of efficiency of the PR work, with a minimal investment of time. I could not agree less. 

The study is based on a researched made during August and September 2012, among 313 German companies covering domains such as IT, consulting and pharma industry. 

With such good news for the next 12 months, I can't wait to check permanently how I will help my German and non-German customers to increase their presence in the online realm. 

Using LinkedIn endorsements

For a couple of minutes the last week, I've played with the new LinkedIn feature: the endorsements. Using them outlines the importance of including in your network especially people about whom you know something, or preferably you met in the real life. 

You have the possibility to confirm certain qualities listen as skills on the LinkedIn profile. Those endorsing you certify that you are genuine and what you say is exactly what you are. Thus, it is very important that you have in your network business partners, collaborators or former and current employers. Plus, many of those you endorse will be keen to do the same with you and thus, each member of LinkedIn confirms your professional qualities. The next time a head hunter will be interested in recruiting, checking the credentials will be very helpful to have a cleared profile of a potential candidate. 

If more features will be introduced, the possibilities of fake profiles will be strictly limited. And last but not least, you have the chance to increase the relations with the people from your network, but also to check their activity. Some may be inactive for months or even years and thus, you better eliminate them and add people that may add content to your network. The result of my 30 minutes of working hard to endorse people from my network was that for the next seven days I received a lot of endorsements and got in touch with some interesting people from my list of contacts.

Happy endorsing!

What's in a picture

Once again, I want to focus on the importance of having a picture for your profile, this time for your presence on the professional social networking sites. 

As I needed to work intensively for expanding my network lately, I spent a lot of time on Xing - Germany's favorite network - and LinkedIn. I neglected a lot those two professional places so I wanted to get in touch with some of the members of my networks, events and potential new clients. One of my main problem was to recognize some of the people of my networks that did not have any picture.

Even though when you are looking to hire or network, you are interested in the level of professional achievement and the immediate experience, but you may also need to have an eye contact. Not necessarily a bad looking person has less chances to get a new job or a new project, but it is equally important to know how the person looks like as a proof of her/his authenticity. I need to know which is the person with such and such experience as maybe I can meet him/her on one of the conferences we are supposed to participate together. 

Thus, you have a picture, you have credibility and wish my contacts without picture read this post and will help me to network better with them. 

Weekend reading: Hubspot on Written Guide Styles

An interesting lecture for all those interested in writing, from Hubspot. And how can you dare to do not be interested in writing when the written word is what can make the big difference for your brand, business project and any other business related project?

How to organize your blogging life

Let's think about the following nightmare scenario:

Happy mother, with a high academic profile, with a busy happy family life, and a lot of social networking, and a lot of passion for writing, reading - as many domains as possible, and many blogs to manage on a daily basis. Please add to the list a new job and some extra business projects I need to continue at least for a couple of months. I also love to cook and to blog about my recipes. I need to attend conferences, improve two foreign languages and other 'must to' at least twice the day.

Sounds crazy, I know, but I use to sleep maximum 5 hours the day and I am perfectly healthy. However, when it comes to my small blogging empire, I suffer a lot for neglecting the regular contributions. As one day - and many years later -  I hope I will be professional enough to focus exclusively on managing my blogging portfolio, I need to prepare the official launch of my free life. But how?

The easiest way to plan is to dedicate at least one hour the day updating two of the blogs and another 30 minutes later the day to keep the track of the social media from the domains close to those blogs. It is important that I create thus a certain regularity of the posts, instead of the current pace when I use to dedicate a couple of days in a row to updating one or two of the blogs and not returning for the next 2 weeks. On the other hand, as blogging is the only activity without deadlines, it was healthier for a while to refrain from being too intensive, as I need to draw the separation line between 'freedom' and 'financial slavery'.

I will try to keep this program at least for two weeks from now and evaluate if it is feasible or not. I decided - 100% randomly - to dedicate the Mondays and Tuesdays to this blog, so hope to be back then!

Lessons of writing

I am more and more convinced that without a good writing you cannot survive on the freelance writing market. As a non-English speaker, I continue my personal struggle with unhappy editors and unexpectedly glowing reviews from very happy customers. 

This article made me laugh at a certain extent, because it reminded me of my daily struggle to get a lot of work and get paid while I am still trying to improve my English at a native level. When you do not have any choice but to use your brain for getting money, you automatically throw yourself into a sea of desperation and waves of hope. On the other hand, I feel strong enough to hope that maybe within 12 months time I will be also able to write at a coherent level in another two languages - German being one of them - that will allow me to increase my chances of profit and the hopes to settle down financially. 

I wish myself a lot of good grammarly correct luck!

What your picture says about you

If you are an intensive user of the freelance networks - as I am - you will easily notice a lot of choices regarding the profile pictures. Some will prefer to hide their identity and post a picture with an avatar, somehow related to their work recommendations. The most used are a computer for the IT specialists and a pen for a freelance writer. 

There are also some that did not make a difference between their hobbies and their tailored profiles and thus they selected as professional recommendations images with favorite pets and various spots visited during their vacations. If the last choice could be a decent option after all, in the case of the pets pictures, I will think more than twice before hiring someone that considered that his representative picture should be a cat or a monkey. 

Last but not least, some decided to upload pictures with their children - could impress the audience when you realize that you will help the person to feed his/her family, but probably it doesn't work for all - or with their lovely spouses. Not few of them are fake and use other people's pictures randomly stolen from the social media networks or from Google. 

What I honestly prefer is a decent picture, when you can say something about yourself, with a professional look that will inspire the potential employer to work with you and not with anyone else. 

Less spam on Freelancer

After quite a long time when at least once the month I was somehow affected by a spam employer on Freelancer.com, I was more than happy to notice the introduction of a new option: the 'verified account'. Thus, before you bid to a project, you will be able to check the accountability of the company or person that you are supposed to work with. 

The checking involves the financial situation, as well as the identity of the employer. Another interesting feature that helps the bidders and employers is the option of checking the dashboards for evaluations, new messages for projects you applied as well as other details of your submissions. 

Good news for me and for other current users of Freelancer.com. 

The main competitor to Pinterest

is called LoveIt. After reading the article, I realized for the first time that this time I will not hurry up to open an account. Simply because I realized that the high frequency of apps and networks is appalling enough for competing seriously with my time.

Thus, the next time when I find out the news about a network, will try to focus from the business point of view and  thus the next account will be open only when no other solution to survive socially.

Is freedom the future of social media?

Wordpress and pictures

I am not such a big fan of Wordpress, but I take any opportunity to learn something new about it. My big problem is that sometimes it might take a lot of time to upload your post, because you need to consider various technicalities that blogspot, for instance, does not have. Very often, due to my hectic work, I need a simple application allowing me to write my posts wherever I am and eventually attach some pics.

While editing some blog posts in Wordpress, I needed to ad some pictures too and I was impressed by the options. First, the picture can be inserted in a very elegant way, with a nice format and a quality space dedicated to the caption. Another great possibility is the creation of galleries of photos. Especially for blogs dedicated to travel, this is a great option. You can follow the slides of pictures at a very good quality. You can insert the picture relatively easily, with many options of the location and the dimensions. The result, is impressive and if not too lazy and with a lot of work to do, I wish I have more than one blog on Wordpress.

Adventure in the freelance world: oDesk

Very often, I complained about the problems that a poor freelancer like me should face regularly when it comes to finding reliable work and most importantly, reliable employers paying their duties in time. 

Till now, I used Freelancer.com - with regularly jobs and a couple of unpleasant financial surprises - and elance - without being selected after more than 4 months. But as I want to improve my porfolio, experience and, not less importantly, my financial situation, I considered too the option of trying out other resources of jobs for freelancers. 

The newest on my list is odesk.com, where I opened an account a couple of months ago, but did not went further. Today, I had the pleasant surprise that, besides updating the usual details and porfolio, I was requested to confirm my ID. It means that the chances of working and not being paid are very slim. I need to wait for around 7 days until the identity is confirmed - the PayPal and Moneybooker type of checking - and only after that I can start browsing the offer. I am curious what the situation is out there and waiting impatiently for the latest news from odesk's team.

Geek recommendations of the week

This week was a very busy week for me, with a lot of work and interesting projects and I hope to continue in this rhythm for the rest of the month. However, I also used my time in a very good way, thanks to Rescue Time application and thus, I limited my social media presence to the basic communication. 

Out of my geek's pocket, a couple of recommendations for the week:

As a dedicated Twitter user, I will start by recommending Tweetcast that I often noticed recommended  by many people interested in mobile Twitter applications. It offers not only multi-account support, but also a good management of the profiles of interesting users from your followers lists, and of the topics of interest. 

If you are a well organized person and you want to have a good control over your time, you should immediately start using - for free - Evernote. It can be accessed from every device and it helps you to save ideas and information in order to be used later on. 

If you are better with the voice notes and you are using an Android, then you should try for less than $2 Dictadroid. All your voice recordings - including music, could be shared automatically via e-mail. Now, your secretary will not have any reason to complain that she did not hear you when you asked her to do something as soon as possible. 

A couple of yours ago, when I left a job for another, an important part of my box was represented by the business cards. Many of them did not know that I have and most part of them were lost anyway since then. Nowadays, you can carry your office with you from a job to another and thanks to ABBYY Business Card Reader all the information on your business cards is digitized and collected by your contact manager. You will automatically have when you need all the phone numbers and e-mails and any other contact information on your business card.

Book review: How to produce successful advertising

Anyone with an interest in the domain of advertising and communication at the beginning of their career should carefully read this book about How to produce successful advertising. It was updated permanently and this third edition includes a lot of references of the domain of online communication.

The main advantages: there is a lot of information, organized in a very practical way. You can find almost everything you need and want to know about advertising, from the basic definitions, to the planning and media buying details. Most information are about 'how to' and thus, if you have some small questions about the actions and type of approach of various domains, you need to read this book. Also, if you are a student taking a class in advertising, this book will bring you all the volume of information that will help you to have a better perspective on this domain. 

The main disadvantage: someone with a basic knowledge of the domain and a minimal experience in this domain will expect more analysis of specific cases. There were included a couple of examples but not enough to help the practitioner to behave in various situations.

Anyway, if you are looking for something useful to read over the week-end, you can give a try to this book. 

Understanding social interaction

"(...)  individuals who cannot comprehend other people's influence and methods in social encounters, and understand how their own responses will serve mutual goals and influence other people's feelings for them, do not maintain important relationships".

Everyday Persuasion Knowledge, Psychology and Marketing, vol. 16(2), 1999, p. 187

Bad ads make business going worse

As I am preparing a short writing job assignment in advertising, I was trying to improve a bit my knowledge of various ads and tips for ads analysis. And I stumbled upon this short analysis of a couple of ads that went very very bad. 

What I am always interested in when it comes to advertising, is to look at global campaigns and all the elements of the communication. A simple ad on a wall is nothing if not other tools and instruments are used. In addition, the reputation of the company as such and the way in which is able to handle various crisis is another element that will make a campaign successful. On the other hand, the volatile online environment, with its threats and opportunities, makes the management of a brand more complicated that it used to be only a couple of years ago. 

My current assignment helped me to evaluate my knowledge in the domain and to think more about how I can use it for more dedicated campaigns and online tips.

Why I like being a blogger?

The only job that I always wanted to have was of a journalist. I not even wanted to be a writer, even though I always have been into books and literature. I was keen to be close to the reality and put it into my words and explain it to as many people as possible.

Luckily enough and with a lot of work, I was able to work as a journalist for almost 10 years. It was hardly a domain that I did not covered during those years, and although as a woman the life in the media is hard and supposes many personal sacrifices, I succeeded to improve my knowledge about world while meeting interesting people, travelling a lot and writing even more.

The only part that I did not like about media was the presence of too many people that were not driven by the passion for reality and words, but by the need to get rich and influencial and to listen to various orders. I left without regrets and I continued my career in PR and communications, writing books and academic articles. 

Passionate about everything new and fresh in terms of communications, I was more than happy to be one of the first using social media tools and various 2.0 instruments. Blogging was naturally among the first new passions that I regularly followed for many years already. In the last 7 years I closed few and opened even more blogs sharing my passions and the eagerness to share to the world my ideas and love for books and wonderful things. Even though I do not have too much time for such non-profit activities - especially when I need to make a living somehow - I try to contribute regularly to all my online media business. 

I hope that one day each blog will work as a source of profit, and small steps were made for reaching possible sponsors and signing various sponsorships. However, I prefer to stay late in the night looking for subjects to blog than to miss the chance of following my passions. Blogging gave my the chance to write what I want and consider important to write, without the need to request permission and explain my choice and my stance. 

I belive in the power of blogging as much as I believe that we can change the world also with the force of the words. For this, and for many other small wonders of my online world, I am once again thankful for living in the 21st century.

Challenges of a sleepless Freelancer

There are many advantages and disadvantages of the freelance work, but the good side of the story is that the more you are into this domain, the more you would like to learn and improve your portfolio of skills.

And I explain the above optimistic statement with the help of a couple of personal examples.

The decision of becoming a freelancer was the result of relatively simple and classical reasons: the need to spend more time doing what I want to do, in the middle of the family and with a flexible program. In addition, I am the kind of person that desperately wants to do something new every single day and thus, being a freelancer was an opportunity for more daily challenges. Last but not least, my passion for writing and nothing else than writing pushed me forward to projects that will help me to improve my writing skills (in English).

I started my real-life experience in this domain the last December and till now, it was - and most likely it will continue to be - a very interesting experience, with many downs and suprising ups. I experienced people that simply disappeared without paying or did not agree to pay any single cent for a hard writing and editing job. I learned how to recognize the fakes on Freelancer.com and how to better use my marketing skills for improving my credentials and online image. 

The conclusion is banal: being a freelancer is not easy and, in comparison with someone that is employed regularly, no one is paying for my rights of going on vacation. If I do not work one day, I risk to lose around $50 the day and as I consume what I produce, any delay will affect seriously my problematic budget. 

The only possibility to completely start your work as a fresh new freelancer and not starve is to have some savings. Otherwise, you should be aware that until you will have a stable porfolio of customers you will need for around 6 months or even more, depending of your speciality. As a writer and translator in at least 3 languages, I am still not too close from this objective. 

While working, you should consider as well expanding your skills. For instance, I am trying to improve as much as possible the reading and writing skills in another 2 languages and expanding as far as possible my computer skills. Building websites and learning how to use various editing systems - I will write soon in another post about my latest discoveries - are also on my priority lists. Very often, a good attitude - and again, your savings - could save you from the black days when you realize that you worked for two weeks and the employers forgot to make your bank account happy. From time to time, you might expect some 'thank you' notes, but you better get ready for the new assignment and hunt permanently the market for new good accounts and projects.

Despite all the disagreements and problems I encountered in the last months, I still believe in my shinning freelancer star!

Find the right blog

Are you working for a company interested to collaborate with various categories of bloggers? Do you have problems in finding out which blogs are the best to promote your products? Here are a couple of advices about how to make the right choices:

1. Most probably, the products that you are ready to distribute for free are limited and thus, you should be very careful with the category of blogs offered for distribution. The first step is to make a short and long list of networks where you will be interested to see your products presented as well as to define your target group.

2. You should always look for active bloggers - meaning with at least 1-2 posts the week. 

3. Be careful with the new blogs: some people would be happy to use your products for free and for this, they will set up a blog especially for this. Take your time and watch what is going on with the blog in the next weeks and months and start the collaboration only if you are sure that you deal with a committed blogger.

4. The volume of comments is also very important: the best case scenarios are the blogs with more than 5-6 comments for each posts.

5. Other big numbers in social media networks are important: the 'likes' of the Facebook pages, the 'followers' on Twitter or the 'daily ratio' of the readership will automatically pledge the cause of a medium or long term collaboration with a blogger.

6. Beyond those statistical aspects, you should take care of the language and the general design of the blog. Not anyone will be happy to associate his or her products with bloggers assuming vulgarity  or rasist messages whatever the impressive readership, isn't it?

7. Your geographical area of interest is also important. If you want to increase your customers from Asia, you should focus especially on the (big) blogs from this area.

Geek recommendations of the week

Ready to improve your knowledege and tools about web design and Internet. Here are my recommendations of the week:

For simple and efficient JavaScript applications, you should choose qooxdoo.

If you are looking for a webhosting solution, you can give a chance to 1und1.de. If you are not in Germany, you shouldn't have regrets, as the service is also available in: Canada, USA, Poland, Austria, France, UK, Italy, Spain and Romania.   

Looking for a reliable, free and downloadable web analytics software: give a chance to Piwik, available in more than 40 languages.

Worried that you spend too much time on your computer? If you want the analytics, you should try to figure out professionally about the time, by using an efficient time management tool: Rescuetime. For both individuals and businesses it is considered highly accurate. Here you have an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of this system, compared with another similar tool, Time Doctor, mostly recommended for big companies.

Always in a hurry and you do not have time to watch some interesting videos? Save them for later on, with the help of the Watchlater application.

Coordinating a project is not easy, but with the help of Trello, you can significantly improve your record. 

Love the summer vacation but you would be interested to get some more money from your online activity. Try Shareifyoulike, a free platform that pays you for sharing content. 

Worried about the fate of your website? With Backupify.com, you are care free as you can backup all the information you worked to have online for such a long time.

If you are a graphic artist and creative professional, you are keen to share online your experience and eventually to expand your porfolio of customers. With carbonmade.com, you can do it in a professional way, but setting up and sharing your porftolio online. 

Writing challenges, from print to online

Are you a dedicated print journalist and you realized that you cannot continue without a consistent online presence?

Here are some useful tips about what you can do do enhance your performances and avoid the usual mistake made by those who did not realized clearly the differences between the two. 

If you wondered, it is not difficult and if you have the gift and passion of the writer, you will succeed. 

How to keep in touch with your audience

As an intensive blogger and avid reader of various media and books on different subjects, I know that sometimes it is hardly impossible to keep in touch with all my interests simply by the gentle search. It would mean to spend almost 3-4 hours the day or even more only by searching on the Internet after news. An impossible mission, as long as till now, I passionately blog for free and thus, I need to keep myself busy with jobs, family and other obligations in between.

Thus, how to continue writing while still on the run with other topics?

As in many other situations, you should know what your interests are and what your audience expects from you. Thereafter, you need to set up a list of keywords and set up as your Google search tools.

In addition, you need to find out newspapers, organizations and institutions that sent regularly updates with their news. Once something new appears, you will have it right in your inbox. It will help you to better manage your writing time and increase your efficiency. You can count on the spectacular searches and findings, but you need to increase audience, maybe some profits as well and be professional in a world of professionals. And if you want to play good, use the best resources for the best results. Most likely, you have more opportunities to communicate from time to time with those who are sending the updates and to establish better professional connections.

Of course, you should not forget to read your e-mail regularly and check up what is new in your professional inbox. If you have a blog, you should associate it with an e-mail address dedicated exclusively to the communication dedicated to this blogging activity. It is important that you check it at least twice the week - on Mondays and on Thursdays and try to plan your blogging activities up to this information. In this way, you will be able to navigate easier through the sea of news and try to be one of the first to inform your readers with the best quality of news.

What the Olympics mean for Twitter

The Social Olympics And The Twitter Games [INFOGRAPHIC] - AllTwitter

Twitter and LinkedIn, the end of the affair

The End Of Tweets On LinkedIn Is Not The Apocalypse! - and I completely agree with that!

Tips for finding sponsors?

Do you have a blog that is open to various collaborations - for instance, book and product reviews, travel packages, photography, Internet and hi-tech products - and you do not know how to find out more companies keen to help you find new and exciting projects?

Honestly, because I have a background in journalism, I avoided to find out more about this type of activity because I considered - and still think it is - not necessarily an informative approach dedicated to share something with your readers. In the majority of cases, people are happy to wear and use different products without any financial effort.

However, it is very important that before you address a certain company, you check carefully the conditions of partnerships. Many of them are honest in expressing their desire to do not interfere with the blogger's impression and thus, you will be free of any obligation to write something nice about something that it is nothing like that. 

My main interest is in books and till now, I had the chance of good collaborations, and most probably I will be tempted to expand a bit my porfolio of services. I like to write, to share to my readers the latest news and thus, I am open to collaborations and new experiences.

There are, in my opinion, a couple of conditions and steps that you should accomplish for successful collaborations:

1. Your blog should be updated regularly - at least once the week.

2. Having additional exposure - on Instagram, Facebook, Google+ - will help you to qualify for the attention of the potential sponsors. Also, do not forget to mention on your blog the e-mail address where you can be found for eventual collaborations.

3. Previous collaborations with other companies will send a message about your credibility.

4. Contact companies and businesses that are included in your editorial interests. For instance, if you have a blog about books and you contact a company for coffee machines, it is clear that you are interested in getting something for free without too much interest for the company as such.

5. On the other hand, it is important the quality of your writing. Add pictures, YouTube tutorials and correctly written posts. In the previous case, you can write a story about how your coffee maker contributed to the overwhelming success of your new book!

6. A bilingual version of the site - especially if you are not writing in English - is a guarantee that you can reach an extended audience.

7. When you address the potential sponsors, be succint but careful to explain in detail why the company should collaborate with you. Try to adequate your message to the possible target group of the company. Explain in a few words how do you see your future collaboration. Mention your social media coverage and any statistics about your audience as well as information about the profile of your readers. Do not try to cheat because nowadays you can easily find out how famous and 

8. Keep in touch with the representatives of the company: write them when you received their products, let them know when you are supposed to post your review. Do not let them write you back to ask you two months after the first contact what happened to their products. Most probably, they will not be interested to work with you in the future. After your review is live, let them know and send a short 'thank you' message. It will not take more than 10 minutes, anyway. 

9. Be honest in your review and mention that you received the products for a free review. However, for the sake of your credibility, try to avoid big and enthusiastic words that do not send any information about the products. Be simple and present as neutral as possible what are the products about and how they could serve the needs of the customers. If there are shortages in terms of qualities, do not hesitate to write about them because the truth should follow your writing activities, although you are not a journalist.

Geek recommendations

I tried lately to read more about interesting tools that could help you have a happy professional online life.

Here are a couple of news I am glad to share with my readers:

Socialfixer.com is a tool that will help you manage your Facebook activity. It is a free browser extension that will help you improve the visibility of the feeds. 


PagePress App is about Facebook too: if you have a Wordpress blog, it helps you to automatically update your content on your Facebook Fan Page. 


Are you worried that your team is not working too hard for finishing the project in time? Maybe you are right, maybe not. If you want to have the real picture of the situation, you should use the advantages offered by your virtual project manager - Happytodos. You can not only prioritize your tasks but also see who is working on what.  


Good luck!

The best of Asian start-ups

Asian countries are well recognized for the bubbling start-up mode.
Tech in Asia identified 13 tech startups that are considered valuable on this always updated market. You will find some interesting ideas in the field of tourism and travel, religious practices, dating and other practicalities. I am sure it is a very short list of what you can usually find in this part of the world.

YouTube or not

I dare confess that even though I am listening or watching regularly various YouTube videos, I am not very much familiar with this topic. I tried only once to record something as part of the marketing support for some dear friends, but I ended up by doing a completely different kind of job.

Or, I wasn't until a couple of weeks ago when as part of my customer service I have entered in touch with a lot of YouTube owners.

The subject of my documentation was related to various reviews of products and marketing suggestions.

 I have found a lot of interesting YouTube Channels with young and enthusiastic authors and a lot of audience. And as I want to learn from any of my experiences, here are my lessons learned from my YouTube experience:

--        If you want to reach a large audience, you should try to post the reviews in the language of the products in this language. In most cases, English is the best tool that will help you to find more and more people ready to use your expertise

-        - As in the case of blogging, you should post as many YouTube videos as possible

-        - Engaging with the audience and reading and answering carefully their feed-back it is also very important for promoting and developing your brand

-         - Many people who do not post too many videos on their YouTube channel explain the long time needed in order to edit and produce their own videos. However, as long as you are natural and have some basic knowledge about what and how to do it, you better post your video now that wait a month or two until you will be really happy with the results. If you have something interesting to say, sooner or later some nice production  company will find you and even offer a good price for a high-end job they are ready to do for you.

-      -  It is very important that your video is maximum 10 minutes. You think it is not enough? Think about the daily TV news: you should find the right words and images that will help you send the message fast. Eventually, prepare your discourse in advance and avoid at any price to talk in a YouTube video as you do one afternoon when gossiping with a friend. Try to watch for a couple of weeks what other people do and mainly, how do they do it. Learning in process... 

-

Finding the right key words

As I am trying to get the best from my professional experiences, I've learned a lot lately from my SEO-related work and regardless of where my professional path will lead me to, it will help me to better sell my 'products'.

First, I knew that there are many tools that could use you to evaluate the density of required keywords on your website. This might work very well when it comes to the websites of the companies, but it applied as well to the blogs as you can easily outline your profile for your requested niche. 

Second lesson, but by far the most important relates to the keywords that you associate with your posts - the 'labels', for the users of Blogger. At the beginning of my blogging activity, I wanted to add the keywords that define my field of writing, but in a very general way - as, for instance, writing, blogging, marketing advertising etc. However, the key to increase the readership is to use very specific words that define exactly what you are writing about. People will not have time to read thousand of Google search results after typing a very general term: they need to be around very specific topics and thus, the more specific you are the better for being found exactly by people that are supposed to be interested in your work. It means as well that you should be very good and offer a good return to your first time visitors in order to encourage them to return on your page.

When you need a YouTube channel?

As one of  my daily tasks is to manage the customer relations of a company in the field of fashion and I work with a lot of fashion bloggers, I discover every day a lot of well done YouTube videos and interesting channels providing a lot of useful yet attractive information.

Thus, I was seriously thinking today about what kind of projects and business can better use the YouTube than other social media channels.

The advantage of the YouTube is that you can present a lot of useful information in only a couple of minutes, in a very straightforward way. It is easy and if you use a simple language, eventually a musical background and various demonstrations you can win a lot of sympathy.

Thus, I was thinking about the following activities/projects that work very well with YouTube:

-        Music businesses

-        Movie making/Video production companies

-        Tourism and country branding in general

-        Visual arts projects

-        Fashion industry/Cosmetics

-        Do-it-yourself solutions

-        Cooking

The immediate advantage: people can see immediately what do you offer and judge by themselves. Also, in the last two cases, you can help them to succeed in their projects.

Moreover, I saw recently a lot of book promotions made in a very appealing way, but you will need probably a basic investment in editing.

Book review: The Essential Step-by-step Guide to Internet Marketing

The more I am reading various online free marketing resources the more I appreciate the wonderful times we are living when you can have access to so many useful resources that could help you change dramatically your business perspectives and, consequently, your financial status.

This booklet is first of a long series of Hubspot resources that I will review in the next posts. In less than one hour I got a lot of information and tips that otherwise you pay a lot to have access to. As a curious and passionate reader I downloaded them all and I am ready to spend long and fruitful hours reading and blogging about them.

The main aim of this ebook is to provide a simple guidance through the marketing strategy: 'from establishing your initial keyword strategy and leveraging social media to promote content online'.

The main steps are:

- Create a keyword strategy for your business - This section urged me to start redefining completely the media strategy of my modest blogging empire, but this plan will be the subject of further blog posts.

Thus: you should find a list of 3-5 keywords relevant to your business, very well defined that you should mention permanently in your posts, the title of the page, the metadescription and various labels associated to your blog. On the other hand, you should avoid the keyword stuffing.

- Increase your chances to be found by: on-page SEO - which counts for 25% of your overall search engine ranking, respectively off-page SEO - meaning what other websites and blogs say about you. The latter aspect is very important for businesses. 

- Create a blog and provide quality writing. Organize your posts and update the content regularly. It is recommended to include various downloadable books, learning materials, free consultation and webinars. 

- Promote your content through social media. Also, create various Google Alerts for your area of interest that will allow you to be updated permanently. If you are a business, you should use the tools dedicated to Premium customers, as for instance Twitter for business. 

- Try to convert your website traffic into profit. In addition to the media content you need to offer to the visitors to your site other resources. Evaluate permanently the metrics and try to adapt your content and strategy to what your customers/visitors/readers are looking for. Find the right solutions to engage them, including by setting up a permanently updated e-mail list and sending regular newsletters.

- Adapt your website to the challenges of social media, for example, by creating dedicated versions of your blog for mobile viewing.

- Permanently analyze and refine the marketing strategies by:

1. identification of new opportunities

2. correction of eventual mistakes and inadequate perspectives

A lot of work to do, but before that, many other Hubspot books waiting to be read! Will be blog back very soon!

Book review: Facebook Marketing for Small Businesses

Hopefully, the end of the month is the right time for the freelancer to read and discover new valuable resources for improving his or her work. Yesterday evening I discovered that I have on my Kindle a book about Facebook Marketing for Small Businesses and decided that it is the right time for a useful lecture. 

The book belongs to the category of what I call 'anchor books': in the search for new customers, you need to offer as many credentials as possible and thus, a book or more plus an updated website will help you to improve your pitch. Nothing despicable in this case and the advantages of many books and articles from this category are that free of charge or in exchange for a very low price you can read a lot of insightful ideas about a variety of domains.

The book was published at the end of December 2011 and most probably there are many things that Facebook changed since then and in less than one year the book will need an improvement. However, if you are looking for a fast lecture - of around 30 pages - and useful ideas, you should take a break for an hour and read it.

What are my lessons learned?

As for the moment I am not too much involved in social media projects, I got almost all the technical information I was looking for about Facebook Fan Pages and the advantages of using Facebook advertising for businesses.

Randomly, some of the best advices at the end of the lecture:

- The Fan Pages should contain only professional/business related information. The post should be regular - but not as frequent as in the case of Twitter, for instance -, entertaining and addressed to the current and prospective community. You need to set up a plan of posts for at least one month in advance, outlining various aspects of your business. A 'like' is not enough, you should be ready to start and be a part of a conversation.

- Regardless of your object of activity, you should always connect with your community. Thus, before you start writing, you should know what is the profile of your target, to establish the demographics and the main interests.

- If you want to expand your community, the Facebook fan page should be used as a reference to your website and, in general, as part of your general business communication.

There are many ideas that I will explore further soon and thanks to this book I am able to continue the journey through the social media jungle. 

Pros and cons of freelance writing

Freelance writing is what I always wanted to do. As a non-English speaker I fought hard to find my way in the world of writing. The beginning was ridiculous from the financial point of view, with 500-word articles paid for $1 and a first 'salary' of $20 and other potential frustrations for someone used with high financial revenues. Add to this the long nights spent searching for new opportunities, struggling to balance the time dedicated to learning and reading with the enormous amount of time required for writing and editing my texts. The last months were for me an amazing journey in humility. 

Freelance writing is not a job when you should expect a decent salary within months. You should be ready to wait 4-5 months until you will have a decent income for covering your basic needs and even more until you will enjoy convenient life standards. Most probably, this situation is available for experienced writers as well, as the competition is very tight. For each ad on Elance addressing English language editors more than 6 offers are submitted instantly by people with apparently high credentials.

Thus, I completely agree with the earlier advices from experienced freelancers that were warned that unless you have some savings for at least one year, you better try to keep your old job while freelancing. 

On the other hand, I am sure that my life as a freelancer will be much easier if most people I am working with would have a minimal responsibility and business ethics. Apparently, I am not in the right freelancing place, as most people I am dealing with prefer to pay weeks after their very high emergency job was delivered flawlessly in due time and for more than a convenient price. Add to this the high chances that, if you are taking freelancing jobs through various networks, you will for sure stumble upon some very kind persons that after 1-2 weeks will disappear without paying. It happened at least once the month in the last five months of freelancing and besides the feeling of deep frustration it prevents me at a great extent to take new work unless I am not sure that the employer is 100% verified. 

However, I will continue freelancing and I am more than delighted to observe my improvements and the new opportunities that I can't wait to cope with. I don't want to be outrageously rich, but only to enjoy my life as a writer, meaning to have enough money for me and my family, my trips and, of course, the healthy provisions of books for my Kindle.

Writing happiness

As a professional writer in the process, I enjoy every piece of advice about how to improve my writing, either it is about simple blogging or sophisticated literary writing. 

Thus, I enjoyed a pleasant lecture of the eBook by Marya Jan - Writing Happiness, How to write blog content that works. You can read this booklet very fast, for free, and if you are looking for some inspiration in-between posts or when you feel that the writers' block is around, it is the right lecture to lift you up.

In the words of the author, it is a "non-grammar focus guide for writers and non-writers who are in the business of generating content". This is the reason why, for instance, you are not scholarly advices that first and forehand your posts should be grammatically correct in order to achieve success. In a way it is obvious, in a world of words facing a very serious confrontation. 

The book includes a couple of very useful advices, more or less evident even for experienced writers. It includes a couple of insightful quotes, mostly from Stephen King's On Writing, a book which I highly appreciate. Regardless of your domain of writing activity, you will find for sure 2-3 tips.

Shortly, here are my lessons learned from the lecture of the Marya Jan's book:

- If you are a writer it does not mean that you should stop reading. You should be in touch permanently with what people from your domain are writing, but also for improving your style and looking for new sources of inspiration. My experience is, when I find something interesting, I prefer to blog about it as well and, eventually, share my impression with my audience.

- You need to find a reason to write. In other words, to find a clear reason to put your words in order. The reader needs to discover something new, and thus clarity is key. The organization of your blog post matter as well: the headline and the first paragraph are very important for a successful reading. The end matters as well as an incentive to encourage the reader to return or to go further to explore other writings published on your blog. 

- Related to the previous aspect, you should find your voice in writing. This is the reason why very often I preferred to put my intensive blogging on hold for a couple of weeks or even months, as I was looking to accommodate different voices and writing personalities.

- Add to the ingredients of a successful writing the proper connection with the reader. Do you know who are your readers, what are their tastes and interests? In many cases, your domain of activity is limiting your domain of activity and thus, creates the possibility for the development of your niche. For instance, if you are a fashion blogger, you will be interested in covering all issues dealing with fashion, but if you are into do-it-yourself fashion it will be even better for reaching a certain audience.

- As you are writing for a blog, you should take into consideration the limited attention and time of your usual writer. If you are interested in complicated writing, you should avoid blogging. However, there are many examples of successful bloggers addressing highly complicated issues with the help of clear expressions and short sentences. The book does not address the issue of multimedia support - podcast, video, 
pictures, but very often the visual aspects can add more readership.

The conclusion: a simple and useful writing for any kind of writers facing with the challenges of the 2.0 world.

Freelancer vs. Elance

Another stage in my free wild freelancer life: how you can find decent, reliable and constant sources of work? As a beginner freelancer writer, at the very beginning, every single writing challenge is a good test. And, if you are paid - modestly, at least for the moment - you can enjoy the pleasure of learning and being paid. An option which is more than tempting. This was the positive paragraph sending good waves and encouraging other writers-in-the process to leave their boring non/anti-writing jobs and to start their new life.

But the life of a freelancer is not a carefree experience on a work in the pinky cloudy office. Or, in the beginning, it is not at all. One of my most difficult experiences lately is financial planning.  Please don't blame me for being so messy with my budget. Honestly speaking, since I have started my full freelancing experience a couple of months ago, my monthly revenues can hardly be considered enough for a modest survival. Long life to the careful saving! 

In the beginning of my full-time freelancing life, last December, I started by using Freelancer.com: a lot of offers, but the prices are ridiculous sometimes - I was offered $0.40 for 500 words, an opportunity that I did not consider honouring at all. After a couple of months of intense presence, and 1 person per month that did not pay - a student, a scam another scam - Freelancer.com continue to be my main source of medium and long-term profits: through them I started to work in the domain of customer support - the subject of my next help-book, I learned a lot about SEO, Wordpress and online marketing and even tried the taste of some modest translations. The main problems are:

- the low prices - for instance, I saw people offering for an academic editing and even substantial rewrite around $70.

- the high risk of scams - be sure that you communicate exclusively via the website because in case that you do not receive the money the perpetrator could be blocked; when you accept. However, I saw a couple of days ago that they intend to remove many doubtful profiles.

Curious to test new opportunities and to find long term working opportunities, I tried Elance.com. An elegant design, incredibly interesting opportunities, but if you are not a native English speaker, no chances to be accepted. Elance displays a high concentration of professionals in English writing, with competitive credentials. I hope that one day someone will accept by bid. As in the case of Freelancer.com, you need time and energy to build your credibility and for that, you need to be offered the opportunity to do so. 

Another opportunity for freelancing is oDesk where I made an account a couple of days ago, but did not have the time yet to create my profile and explore the market. Being a freelancer is not easy, but every time I am about to finish a new project, I am happy to discover my new skills and the improvement of my writing style.

The freelancing experience goes on and I'm getting ready for new opportunities.