A new year and new professional challenges.
For the next four weeks I will do exactly what I fully enjoy - was it ever something different? Anyway, this time I am the full master of the show and I am more than happy to learn every day some new tricks and tips.
Even though I am not a human resources coach - and will never be in the next 100 years, probably - I dare to give one simple advice: if you really need to expand your professional horizons, try at least once the year to do for a little while something completely out of the previous professional menu. Do a short internship in a new domain, if you hate doing administrative work - as I fully do - try to do it for one week for being able to better understand the secrets of a well organized office etc.
In my case, I decided to play the role of the marketing assistant. My main tasks are to find a number of bloggers interested in presenting a product. Most part of my work consist in doing web research for identifying the target group of my client. It is not well paid and it is mostly a maintenance work, as I am practically sending daily around 16-17 standard mails.
I don't know how the previous assistants did this job, but I am more than happy with the feedback received in the last three weeks: nice and interesting bloggers, various interests and serious writers. I discovered a fascinating world of young women writing and sharing their ideas.
Out of my cold and serious world, I am learning new things every day about how to improve your writing and pitch of subjects daily and about introducing better visuals on your blogs. As a photographer myself - I introduced this professional activity on my CV last year, when the process of professional redefinition was started - I am amazed to find every time new inspiration.
As for the lessons learned, there are a couple of insights I would like to share right now:
- Are you looking for targets: find the dedicated national and international networks. For fashion, for example, there are predominant blogging communities gathering interesting individuals writing about fashion.
- Explore the blogrolls: you will easier find people sharing the same style and preoccupations.
- Be as friendly as possible: Try to introduce a personal note in your pre-written, cold e-mails. For example, if you send the mail before the holiday season, be so kind and introduce some special wishes - better a neutral one, as "happy holiday season" as long as you don't know the religious affiliation of the person you are writing to.
- If you have a blog, do at least twice the year an overall checking of your blogroll as it is annoying to keep an updated list of people who didn't write for years.
- Also, unless you don't want to be a super secret person, introduce a address of contact for your avid readers that would like to talk to you. Honestly, I don't think that it is such a big danger as long as you keep it as neutral as possible - for example, an address of your blog, without a direct mention of your name or address or any other very personal details.
- Be very careful with what you write. Check once more before pushing the 'send' button.
- At the beginning, it may be annoying to keep the track of your payments and of your hours and to report every week your evaluation, mostly if you are used with somebody else's doing it for you. But, you know what, being fully independent is a blessing and you need to know all the small details of a work in order to understand the energy and value of any minute.
There are also other lessons, but for the moment I keep learning hard.
