Marketing Yourself

Create a publishing empire from your home

Emma Jones | Managing business

 

Do you have content you would like to share with an interested audience of existing and potential customers? It’s never been so easy to package your content in a stylish way, and distribute it in a cost-effective way.

Enter the age of home publishing with Emma Jones.

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Getting Started: How do I make my website happen?

Alex Blyth | Guides, Starting Out, Technology

 

If you want a website for your small business or to show off your freelancing work AND know what you want then you are almost ready to contact the designers but thinking clearly, focusing on objectives and writing a good, clear brief can make a world of different when it comes to getting a quote.

You’ll not only save yourself time and money but you’ll also make developers and designers like Alick Mighall really happy.

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Customer Conversations: Two free online tools for creating a community

Emma Jones | Managing business

 

Whether you’re selling beaded jewelery or your time as an expert in finance, it’s good for business to develop a community around you. Bonding customers to each other, will bond them ever closer to you.

In this feature, reviews two free community building tools.

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Freelance Training: Three questions for helping you build your Personal Brand

Daryl Close | Training

 

Daryl Close, a business performance coach, discusses why freelancing success is not directly related to your specific freelancing talent. Whilst personal branding is not a new term, it is a term that has come back to the forefront of success as a professional freelancer. He explains that your actual talent is only a small part of the overall personal branding concept and freelancers need to refine and develop their professional brands in order to thrive in an ever increasingly competitive world.

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Freelance Training: One thing you must do in 2010

John Williams | Training

 

It’s the start of a new year and a new decade and like many self-employed people you’ve probably been thinking about how to have a good year despite the sluggish economy.

Read on for the one thing you must do this year for your work to take off

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Three conversation tips for getting what you want

Dianne Bown-Wilson | Training

 

Courageous conversations: How to say what you mean and get what you want. As a freelancer without a secretary the buck stops (and starts) with you. If you are a designer, developer or a gentle creative type you may not have the hard-nosed confidence and business clout you need to succeed.

Freelance advisor Dianne Bown-Wilson gives some simple confidence boosting tips.

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Top 10 tips for building trust as a freelancer

Michael Rose | Managing business

 

Steven Hearsum, change consultant and chairman for our National Freelancers Day event has written a blogpost about one of the key issues that arose during the debate: ‘How to Build Trust as a Freelancer’.

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Four tips for building confidence and marketing yourself

Dianne Bown-Wilson | Managing business

 

Isolation and winning new clients are two of the biggest problems for freelancers. Marketing consultant and freelance advisor Dianne Bown-Wilson offers some simple tips for what to do when you – and your business – need to get out more.

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Freelance Advisor Event: “Be Your Own Boss”

Michael Rose | Events

 

Enterprise Thursdays are back this week with the diverse Freelancers Panel chaired by Darren Fell founder of Pure, Crunch and Freelance Adviser.

The panel includes Paul Bunkham an Internet Application Specialist, Leon Trigg a Documentary and Filmmaker, Jo Moore and Artist and Illustrator, Paul Silver a Web Development and SEO Specialist and Ellen De Vries a Writer and Creative Copywriter.

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Using Google AdWords to find new clients and customers – part 3

Rob Watson | Guides, Technology

 

Part three of our guide to Google AdWords for beginners:

Yesterday Rob explained how to set up your first Google AdWords campaign. Today he looks at some of the best practices you should follow.

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Using Google AdWords to find new clients and customers – part 2

Rob Watson | Guides, Technology

 

Part two of our guide to Google AdWords for beginners:

Yesterday Rob explained the basics of GoogleAdwords. Today he looks at setting up your first AdWords campaign and some of the most common mistakes in setting up.

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Use Google AdWords to find new clients and customers

Rob Watson | Guides, Technology

 

Whatever it is that you (or your clients) do, you can always find new customers over the internet – even if you’re a niche business or you only work in a specific area or region. In this 3-part guide to AdWords Marketing Manager Rob Watson tells us how to increase our clicks

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Is Your CV Fit for Purpose?

Malvolio | Starting Out

 

Marketing yourself with an excellent CV or resume is not easy. Malvolio has found that there are not only technical issues to deal with but often several layers of audience from recruitment agencies, to human resources, departmental heads and senior management.

Can you help Malvolio unpick this particular puzzle?

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Freelance Filmmakers: How to be an Appealing Media Freelancer

Tom Hickmore | Starting Out

 

How to get ahead in film-making. Brighton-based film-maker Tom Hickmore from Nice Media gives his top tips for getting noticed and getting a job in the film and media industries.

Find out what you need to do to impress, from CVs and portfolios to selling yourself and outright flattery!

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Freelance Training: How to improve your Sales hit rate

Hannah Keep | Training

 

It is competitive out there, the freelancing market is growing every day and now more than ever it is important that we make the most out of every opportunity. So how can we improve the quality of our client interaction?

Let’s look at a simple sales formula for calls/meetings to get us started…

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Podcast #17: Fight Back! How to bounce back after rejection or failure

Andy White | Podcast

 

Andy talks to Hannah Keep, author of Fight Back!

Topics include

* Fighting Back; Building your bounce-back-ability.
* Generating and maintaining a Positive Mental Attitude
* The exploding freelance market
 
icon for podpress  #17: Fight Back! How to bounce back after rejection or failure [16:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
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Freelancing Fail: Do you make these 4 freelance mistakes?

Leif Kendall | Starting Out

 

When you’re a freelancer, stupidity can be expensive. It’s better to learn from the mistakes of others in order to avoid common pitfalls. Leif shares a few of the stupid things he’s done (or seen others do) so that you might avoid the same fate.

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Better Business Cards

Michael Rose | Resources

 

Build Better Business Cards, with 25% off from Moo.com.

Starting today we’re looking for the most impressive, creative or cunning uses for business cards.

Got a great idea, or a card you’re already particularly proud of? Show us what you’ve got and the best will win a complete set of cards.

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Freelance Event: Design Portfolio Clinic

Michael Rose | Events

 

How do you present your work? What do agencies look for in a portfolio? Wouldn’t it be great if you could sit with a few digital media agencies and ask them what they thought of your work and what you could do to improve?

What you need is the i-design 09 Portfolio Clinic!

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Freelance Poll: Do you use ‘I’ or ‘We’ when talking about your one-person business?

Michael Rose | Lifestyle & Time out

 

Web freelancer and email marketing consultant Jon Aizlewood has posed an interesting question and twitter-poll today.

Click below to add to the poll and twitter a reply if you’d like to explain your reasons.

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Freelance Training: How to deal with the ups & downs.. Fight Back!

Hannah Keep | Training

 

Hannah Keep, Freelance Advisor Training director, shows us how to build upon our natural resilience to overcome our daily obstacles.

Her new book explains how to deal with the blocks and make the most out of the good times and the practical, gentle advice is an invaluable tool for anyone wishing to push themselves and their business to new highs. Here Hannah gives us a great overview of everything you can do to make the most out your life and work.

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Small Business: Five steps to making a sale

Emma Jones | Managing business, Training

 

Without a sale we’re not in business and ongoing sales will spur the business to grow.

Emma Jones offers five steps on how to make a sale and keep the cash flowing.

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Freelance Training: Do you need an Interview MOT?

Hannah Keep | Events, Starting Out, Training

 

It’s a tough climate out there. If you are looking for a permanent job then you are up against lots of candidates who are all fighting for the same job. If you are freelance/contract then you have to ensure your skills are leading edge, have the confidence to hit the ground running as well as [...]

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Freelance Training: Time to sell yourself, easy right?

Hannah Keep | Training

 

Whether you are looking for your first freelance job or have been in the market a while you will know how important it is to be able to promote your services to ensure you aren’t out of work for long.

Whether you have sales experience or not, things are different now. Why? Because you are the product. You are selling YOU. Easy right? Think again, even the most experienced sales person who can sell snow to the Eskimos finds selling themselves a challenge and sometimes even embarrassing.

Freelance Coach and Trainer Hannah Keep show us how promoting yourself needn’t be painful and how building your confidence is key.

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Working with clients: understanding briefs

Leif Kendall | Managing business

 

Are You Giving Your Clients Squid Eyes? (The Second Secret of an Awesomitised Freelance Life)

Bad-ass kung-fu copywriter Leif Kendall continues to reveal the secrets of an awesomitised freelance career.. Awesomitisation Part 2 explores the importance of understanding clients’ briefs.

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Freelance Training: Making a good impression

Hannah Keep | Training

 

How did you decide what to wear today? Did you base your decision on what was clean, comfortable or whether you were seeing a client? If you were seeing a client did you tailor your appearance to their industry or just put on your lucky ‘selling suit’?

Freelance Training director Hannah Keep explains why your clothes are more important than your PowerPoint slides!

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Freelance Training

Hannah Keep | Training

 

As freelancers we know you have absolute passion and pride in your skill set. We know it takes a lot of confidence to break out on your own. We also know that it takes more than just talent to succeed in this tough and competitive economic climate.

How well you sell, market and manage your product, product YOU, is critical. If the thought of cold calling brings you out in a cold sweat or the thought of creating a business strategy gives you a headache then we’re here to help with soft skills and freelancer focused training and coaching.

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Awesomitise: Discover the Radical Alternative to Searching for Clients

Leif Kendall | Starting Out

 

Finding freelance work and getting more clients is vital for your success as a freelancer. Killer copywriter Leif Kendall outlines his bold new marketing method.

Join the revolution!

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Freelance Business: 3 ways to source new work

Emma Jones | Managing business

 

Freelance Advisor and Home Business diva Emma Jones explains why now is a perfect time to spruce up your business development and pursue opportunities that will mean new work from existing customers and new work from new customers.

Here’s three things you can do to keep the contracts coming in…

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Podcast #15: The Hallmarks of a Good Freelancer

Andy White | Podcast

 

Andy White talks to freelance Art Director and Conceptual Designer, and winner of The Xchange Team Freelancer of the Year award, Anna Cowie. In this interview, Annie gives us some tips and reveals her modus operandi.

 
icon for podpress  Podcast #15: The Hallmarks of a Good Freelancer [19:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
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Marketing yourself: 7 steps to creating the right impression

Emma Jones | Managing business

 

Whether it is networking, meetings, clients or conferences, marketing yourself is an essential skill for any freelancer or contractor. Freelance Advisor and author Emma Jones offers seven quick tips to help you shine Starting on the right foot: 7 steps to creating the right impression You only get one chance to create a first impression. To make [...]

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Freelancer News: Social media for small-businesses

Kasey Brunt | Managing business

 

Freelancers benefit from online social networking MORE and more freelancers are using social networking sites to promote their services, a survey has found. The BT Tradespace survey found 15 per cent of small businesses promote themselves on sites such as Facebook, compared to just seven per cent this time last year. But the survey also found [...]

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Freelance Advice: Marketing yourself for free

Darren Fell | Managing business

 

Freelance Advisor founder Darren Fell is a successful entrepreneur and all over the first page of results when you Google his name. We asked him to share the secrets of his success and he responded with this guide to marketing yourself. Marketing yourself for free, a guide. The big question running through everybody’s mind when they jump [...]

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Five sites for monitoring your brand online

Rosie Sherry | Managing business

 

Look who’s talking: Monitoring buzz on the web As a freelance community builder and co-director of TheWerks web-socialite Rosie Sherry offers advice on monitoring your brand and filtering out the noise. Five sites for monitoring your brand online There’s no denying that the web holds huge amount of information. Most of it irrelevant to you or I, however [...]

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Marketing yourself as a freelance designer: Six simple tips for your CV and portfolio

Michael Rose | Managing business

 

The death of the CV? Are curriculum vitae a thing of the past? Guest blogger Greg Coley, Creative Director of the integrated agency VGroup, gives an insider’s view on what freelance designers can do to get noticed. Marketing yourself as a freelance designer So you’re a budding young designer straight out of university, a middleweight, an established creative [...]

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Write web copy your customers will love reading

Kath Burke | Managing business

 

Create compelling content your clients will crave In this 2-part series freelance copywriter and content consultant Kath Burke says the secret of writing great web marketing copy is in the preparation. Before you put pen to paper, you need to explore your clients’ deeper concerns and needs. Ah. If only you could magic up the perfect web [...]

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Find us on Facebook – for freelance advice and networking

Michael Rose | Managing business

 

Find freelancing advice and support by joining our community of freelancers and contractors on Facebook. By becoming a fan of Freelance Advisor you’ll get all the latest articles and advice, alerts when new content is added to the site, and you can help build the community by connecting with other freelancers and contractors in your area.

Help [...]

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Freelance Advisor Recommends: i-design 08 Portfolio Clinic

Michael Rose | Managing business

 

If you’re a freelance designer or programmer then attending the i-design 08 Portfolio Clinic Wednesday 17 September in London is a no brainer.

First it’s FREE and secondly if you’re currently looking for work or to expand your future client base then you’ll be able to meet 15 of the capital’s most respected and successful interactive [...]

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Speak easy – improve your public speaking skills

Michael Rose | Managing business

 

Talking Shop – overcoming the fear of public speaking A new event aims to give confidence, talking techniques and a chance to practise communication skills for freelancers who need to get up and talk in front of an audience. Freelancers and contractors can live rather solitary lives, working from home or, head-down, coding away until the [...]

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Pitch Yourself into the Freelance Market – Part 2

Bill Faust | Resources

 

In Part One of this series, Bill Faust talks about how important it is to understand basic marketing principles in learning how to Pitch Yourself. The question he asks now is do we know why we are employed? Deciphering the needs of the buyer Most of us think it is because of our experience, this is partly [...]

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Marketing yourself as a freelancer or contractor

Leif Kendall | Managing business

 

Become CEO of YouCorp One of the joys of freelancing is that you get to do everything. But this omnipotence means you can’t hate the sales team for not bringing in new clients, because you are the sales team.

You can’t have a spat with Maureen in accounts because she hasn’t sorted your expenses, because you [...]

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Personal Branding for freelancers

Andy White | Managing business

 

What’s personal branding all about? Is it important? What does it mean? Where do I start? Do I really need a strong identity or even a logo for my freelancing business? Is it really necessary to make ME stand out from the competition?

Expert, Al Welsh, has had years of experience within some of London’s top [...]

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How to build a credible website

Kath Burke | Starting Out

 

You can think of your website as the modern-day equivalent of the Victorian calling card. Before your prospective client decides whether you’re worth talking to, they’ll have a good nose around your site.

And they might be asking themselves:

How professional is this organisation?

Do they have the products [...]

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Get yourself useful business cards

Paul Silver | Managing business

 

If you’re going to be networking to drum up business, or just meet people who might want to use your services (that is, potentially everyone you meet) you should get some business cards so they have an easy reminder of who you are and what you do.

On your card you should have:

[...]

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The fastest website in the west!

Darren Fell | Managing business

 

In the age we live in having a website as a business is critical. I’m not sure about you but it’s literally the first thing I do when I want to vet a supplier out and in my old days at Pure360.com I’d even do that for customers.

No site and to be honest I [...]

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