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!

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. 

The modest lessons of a marketing assistant

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.

Submit your url.

And make yourself known. This is the tip of the day.

Playing for learning

Single or multi-player games designed to serve pedagogic purposes. Let's play!

Meditations on Scrum and Agile

Image via Wikipedia

I am not an expert on SCRUM and I assume that I will never be, but I am extremely interested in this new way of managing projects as a part of a revolutionary mindset that I associate with our hi-tech-world. I had the occasion to work in various environments covering various domains, exclusively in the area of PR and communications. But this Department is not an isolated domain and most part of the time you are more exposed than the others to the advantages and disadvantages of the organizational culture and working style of your company. The opportunities opened by SCRUM are, in my opinion, the increase of the level of efficiency, a better time management, a better evaluation of your aims and tools to reach your targets, as an increased efficiency of human resources management. Both the classical and the new way of project and knowledge management are producing results. What the new way of thinking and putting things in perspective is extremely important in delivering fast and within the best organizational matrix. I will have always keep my ears and eyes and mind open to new paradigms and ideas, be case I am convinced on the need to improve my skills and knowledge and, by than, be able to produce and induce change in the world.

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