I may be a horrible design snob, but I won’t even consider purchasing a product or service unless its design is appealing. This might mean the packaging, marketing materials, the product itself, or, that traveling salesman of design elements, the logo. Now, if you’re a freelancer working on your own, you may not have enough money to pay for a professional logo design.
You don’t have to spend a lot to get something that looks like it was professionally designed. Even if your company name is just your own name, which is the case for a lot of freelancers, you should take the time to make sure it can become a recognizable brand.
A lot of people are daunted when faced with even basic design work, but, even without advanced tools, you can produce something impressive enough to work as a website header or make an otherwise blasé business card design pop. First, let’s assume your only tools are a basic office suite, and you have absolutely no drawing skill.
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When I started freelancing, I worked with every potential client who contacted me. This is normal for someone who is starting out. After all, you want to get all the experience you can get your hands on. But after a while, you’ll realize, like I did, that your clientele should be more targeted than just “whatever comes along”. You need to qualify your potential clients.
One important benefit of qualifying your clients is that you don’t waste your time. You get the clients that you want to work with, you’re paid the rate you want, and both parties have realistic expectations. You don’t spend hours working on a proposal that your client eventually rejects because they realize that you weren’t on the same page after all. If that scenario sounds familiar, then it’s time to start qualifying.
What criteria can you use to qualify clients?
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There’s no need to rehearse the latest round of bleak economic news once again. Now that it’s widely agreed that large parts of the world are in a recession, it’s time to focus our efforts on our core constituency: the web workers. Economic contraction is a mixed blessing for us. On the one hand, experience in working in an agile fashion, with the ability to draw on the worldwide internet for your clientele, is a big plus. But on the other, with traditional jobs vanishing for some people, there’s likely to be an influx of new web workers - leading to the potentially difficult scenario of too many web workers chasing too little work.
As a web worker who cares about your career, it’s just plain good sense to do what you can to make sure that your income survives increased competition. Fortunately, WWD has offered plenty of advice on that score over the years. Here are an even dozen of our best articles and tips for supercharging your career.
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We’ve written before about the importance of personal branding to freelance web workers. In these times of economic uncertainty, though, it’s a subject that’s worth revisiting. We’d all like to think that the jobs go to us because we’re the best in our fields - but sometimes, the work goes to the noisiest rather than the best.
If you’re a freelancer who isn’t completely buried in work, this is a good time to think about spreading your own personal brand (or marketing message, if you’d prefer to think of it in those terms) more widely. An investment in marketing today can pay off in more work next month - and it’s an investment that’s best made before you run out of work. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to make yourself more visible online. Here are five suggestions.
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We’ve written before about the importance of building a personal brand for independent web workers, and others have pronounced it a “prerequisite for career success.” If you’re a believer in this idea, and you have a Twitter account, there’s an easy way to help define and promote your own brand: use your Twitter page background.
I picked up on this idea from @Pistachio, though it’s been going around. The screenshot is from my own Twitter page - which now, thanks to the ability to upload a custom background, promotes my field, shows my availability, and tells people how to get hold of me. If you’ve got a modicum of talent with any graphics program and a few minutes to spare, you can do the same. The only drawback: no clickable links. But it’s way better than letting Twitter provide the default background, or posting pictures of your cats.
Monitoring the Internet for people discussing your product or brand can be invaluable to help understand how the public views you. Tools like Google Alerts or Filtrbox can handle news, blogs and web pages while Summize keeps tabs on Twitter. For forums and message boards there is Twing.
The last time we looked at Twing, Mike found the forum friendly search engine to be a useful tool in the search arsenal, particularly for finding help from others who may be experiencing similar issues. A recent Twing update now adds functionality to make this process even easier for those looking to monitor forum discussions for their brands or products.
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