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.