Personal branding, whether you like the term or not, is something every web worker should consider. Don’t look at it as marketing or packaging yourself, but more as being true to yourself. Micheal Port’s book, “Book Yourself Solid” makes that distinction very well, while the Food Network demonstrates exactly how to make it work for you and your business.
Michael Port’s concept of personal branding starts with his belief that, “When you work with clients you love, you’ll truly enjoy the work you’re doing; you’ll love every minute of it. And when you love every minute of the work you do, you’ll do your best work, which is essential to [booking] yourself solid. Second, because you are your clients; they are an expression and an extension of you.”
The cornerstone of his philosophy is that “the greatest strategy for personal and business development on the planet is bold self-expression,” and many successful personal brands have used this very strategy to rise to the top. Read the rest of this entry »
If you want to keep up with a specific brand, for whatever reason (they’re a competitor in your space, your job is related to their activity, or you just really like what that company’s doing), to date there’s been no easy way to keep track of all of the sources that might mention it online. Even services like Alltop, which helps to monitor sites for particular topics and pare down the background noise to a dull roar, leave a lot to be desired.
BzzScapes is a new venture from marketing company BzzAgent that groups user-submitted content according to brand, so that you can stay up to date on the company or product of your choice via a variety of different types of web sites and media, with each brand having its own BzzScape. Compared to Alltop, there are two main differences. First, anyone can add any content they want (which means it may or may not actually relate to the brand in question), and second, anyone can vote and comment on things added, which should, in theory, mean that the best sources rise to the top organically. Read the rest of this entry »
Though I couldn’t attend OMMA Social San Francisco (I’m so far away, and my travel budget is currently non-existent), I did enjoy this article from MediaPost summarizing five key takeaways from the social media conference. The article’s author, Catherine P. Taylor, makes a number of good points, but what interests me most is the impression she got that social media, while still white hot with professionals working in the space, has yet to catch fire with clients.
The problem is a familiar one. Those of us who champion the use of social media tend to be fairly zealous about its use, but trying to transmit that passion to others, especially to key decision makers, can be a trying affair. For instance, I’ve had recent experience with a Managing Director who actually didn’t use a computer, so you can just imagine how easy it was to convince him of the value of having a corporate Twitter account.
Of course, it’s to be expected that senior executives exhibit a degree of technological inertia. Luckily, they all still speak the same basic languages: Return on Investment (ROI), Brand Recognition and Corporate Image. Even if they don’t speak all three (take a small consulting firm, for example, which depends on word of mouth rather than aggressive branding), they will understand one of the above: ROI, which is what I’ll be covering in this post. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
