Freelancers: You're Not Invincible

As a freelancer, it's easy to think that you can do anything. This is especially true when you've never failed on a project, have met all of your deadlines, and have been blessed with great clients.

Up until yesterday, I was pretty confident that if it had to do with writing, or social media, I was on it. I've done alright on oDesk and have taken on some big contracts for companies all over the country. But I had a contract practically handed to me in a Skype interview, and it just didn't feel right to accept it.

When you get an assignment for something that you aren't exactly qualified for, you have two choices. One, you can take it on and research like a crazy person to prepare for it. Or two, you can admit that you can't do it and move on.

I was so confident that I could take this contract as a Research Analyst that I pitched the guy everything I had. I matched the description perfectly, and I made a stellar impression. Then he explained the job, and the scope of it... just astounded me. I've done social media work before, managed entire accounts on my own, but I specialize in content and communities. So when he asked for projection plans and budgets, I was quick to point out that I'd not had the opportunity to control that side of an account before. He was so confident that I could make it happen that he said not to over-think it, and to get him a plan by the next day. I would be writing all the posts for the blog and social media, as well as managing the advertising and publicizing of the product. I'd track everything, propose costs and execute... Everything.

Now, I know people who do this kind of thing on a regular basis. One of my previous employers (Blue Volcano Media) can take an account already knowing the time frames and costs to get X amount of followers by X date. It's not rocket science once you've done it a few times, but I haven't! I've worked for a company like this where the goal of the account is to get followers and make sales, not to increase engagement and interaction with the brand. I wrote it about it in my blog post Social Media Marketing as a Science. Sadly, my part in that company was as a Community Manager, not as a strategist or scientist.

I signed out of the interview with the potential employer raving about my talents, and how much he trusted that I could get this done. It was fee-based, or fixed-priced, though, so I had to come up with how much to charge. I actually don't have the slightest idea of what to charge most of the time, so I asked for a ballpark price from a friend. That's when it really sunk in: I can't do it.

I'm not afraid of failure and I'm not afraid of turning down an account, but it was so hard letting this guy down. He was excited, but I had to tell him that I didn't have the experience needed for his project and would have to withdraw my application. He then switched tactics, asking for me to only do the research and writing aspect of it. Once I get the courage to turn something down, I'm pretty blocked off from it, so I had to do it again and explain that research and writing is so tied to the marketing side of things that it'd be best to hire someone who can do it all, or be prepared to have a team on it.

Not only was it best for me to turn this job down, even being as jobless as I am, it was better for the employer and his vision.

Hootsuite Analytics Tutorial

One of my first tasks as a Social Media Specialist was to create a tutorial for Hootsuite Analytics. I'd only just started using HootSuite for monitoring social media, let alone for tracking statistics, so who was I to create a presentation to be shown to clients?

I love Prezi. I can do anything on Prezi. I can create a presentation and think through the process with Prezi. When I'm given a task to make a PowerPoint, I run to Prezi to conceptualize it, plan it out, and get everything I want into it. There is nothing like being free of slides and just spreading out in an online space.

So I came up with this tutorial. Looking through it now, it's very simplified and dated, and almost comes off as a Social Media for Dummies lesson plan. It's very step by step and perfect for a business owner just venturing into Insights and scheduling tools like HootSuite, RavenTools, and Time.ly.

Layers By Scentsy

Layers By Scentsy[/caption]

Ever have someone walk past you who smelled so good that it seemed to emanate from their pores? Clothes, hair, car... Just a breath of fresh air from all angles. I've actually trailed people before, just trying to place their cologne or perfume to find at a Macy's.

In the past, every time that I'd come across one of these heavily fragrant people I'd light a bunch of candles and spritz body spray and soak in body wash. I'm a scent person, I can trace any scent, can remember things by smell from before I was in kindergarten. But I could never quite get that amazing, head-turning fragrance.

Layers by Scentsy answers that call with scent solutions to compliment your home Scensy system. Take a bath with bath tablets, moisturize with Shower Cream and Body Lotion, grace your pulse points with Solid Perfume, scent your clothes with Washer Whiffs... If you want to smell deliciously good everywhere you go, Scentsy Layers has you covered!

What Kind of Writer Am I?

When you go to school for Engineering, you come out an Engineer. If you follow a track to become a Medical Transcriptionist, you pick up a job as one. With a Nursing certification, you're automatically a nurse.

But when you have a degree in Communications, Writing, or English, there's a good chance that even your professors don't know what you'll be doing post-grad. Where you take your education is purely up to you... Which can be incredibly liberating, or beyond annoying.

I went through university angry at myself for going into Technical Communication. No one could answer the simple question, "What job am I trying to get?" with a simple answer. It was always, "You can be anything you want!" I learned how to take the initiative with my schedule and take the classes that interested me, that I could communicate and justify to others, and would get me to analyze content in a critical way. Discussion, preparation, evaluation, and presentation.

There was no hand to hold, no support system of advisors and coaches to get me through my classes, but the expectance of resourcefulness to handle my assignments. Technical report writing, usability writing, web design... Our entire major was holed up in the computer lab past midnight, nearly every night, researching and learning. We were creative in how we finished our work, relating each project to our own lives in some way. I've taken this creativity into my job search.

As a Technical Writer, my resume could be filled with clips in documentation, instruction writing, and manual writing. Instead, I've found myself accepting positions in multimedia. My first contract position was doing research and writing web copy for a software company, my second was researching and editing for Travelocity, and my third was writing 30+ page profiles of clients for Reputation.com. I could go down the list, but it's all the same: writing, just not strictly technical writing.

I'm pretty great with social media, do excellent work, and absorb myself in growing communities. But I want to be great with manual writing, documentation, etc. I've shaped myself into a creative writer, but it's time again for scientific writing.

How Pinterest Can Help Your Job Search

Get a job with Pinterest boards

Since the hype has died down and the exclusivity has passed, how are people using Pinterest? It's not all about crafts, home design, and fun dinner ideas!

I recently came across an article from Mashable, 5 Ways to Use Pinterest for Your Job Search, full of tips on how you can turn your resume into a set of boards. Did you know that there are thousands of print resumes just sitting on Pinterest? It sounds easy to just pin an image to your boards, tag it #design #resume, and hope for the best. But let's stop thinking so linearly, and put our Pinterest caps on!

Getting your resume out there is the first step, but the purpose of Pinterest is to share your ideas, your life, your experiences. Is a personal resume worth sharing? Not really, but pics from that internship at Intel are, or your trip to Mexico after graduation, or your first real job. Are you a graphic designer? Then your work should be in pinned, tagged, and linked back to your resume and related pinboard.

Stay active by following career-related boards, liking and re-pinning work similar to yours, and sharing pins by other job seekers. But, as with any platform, any movement at all (even just setting up your own boards) should get you enough visibility to gain a few followers of your own right off.

What have you been doing with your resume? Linking it on to your Twitter, LinkedIn, job applications and other profiles, right? Well, do the same thing with your "Resume" Pinboard!

What's different about a resume on Pinterest is that it's alive, active, broken up into shareable content. It's no longer a static document, but an ongoing trail of experiences and growths.

Social Media Marketing as a Science

Social Media Science

Recently, I did some work with the social media experts in downtown Portland, Bonfire Social Media (or, Bonfire Marketing). I didn't know it at the time, but Bonfire has a bit of a name here in the PDX. It's BIG, according to one of my graphic designer friends.

As with any agency, mentioning their clients is a big no-no, so for this I'll just refer you to their site to find the types accounts they work with. But I can say, that I'd never worked on accounts of this size (and influence) before--a popular brand with high visibility, a television network, and a large community of fans faithful to a childhood show. During my short time with the agency, I got to experience a different side of SMM, community management, and even fandom.

As an avid absorber of current, highly-publicized things, I know what it's like to be a superfan. Boy bands, movies, books, reality television shows... If it's being blasted across all channels, chances are that I'm into it. So when I visit popular Facebook pages as one of a million "likes," I'm happy to go with the flow of whatever they say. A new episode of True Blood is coming out? I'm in the flurry of fans debating what's going to happen, looking for spoilers, and sharing content on my blogs.

With Bonfire, I got the chance to be the moderator on 3 pages like this. I managed the files, the stats, the responses, and was aware of what the followers were talking about. They got a branded sweatshirt off Etsy? The actors are using profanity and posting inappropriate pics? It was my job to find these things, alert the primary, and document it in Basecamp. I also know how difficult it is to wait for the next chapter of a story, or a follow-up album,  so it was a bit strange to be on the other end keeping fans excited about the new season, while not actually telling them anything new and deleting spoilers.

Another thing that was exciting (and darn scary) was posting on an account with a ton of fans just waiting for a new post. What if it wasn't proofed correctly? What if the text skews while submitting? What if I post the wrong image? Thankfully none of these things happened! With pages this popular, over 1000 people see the post before it even loads on your screen. Spam is already all over the new post, as well as answers, comments, and fan praise.

What I learned in my previous position as a Community Specialist with Blue Volcano Media, is that nothing is more important than relating to your audience, focusing on your followers, and interacting as often as possible. Thanking each individual follower, directing them to your website, or a blog post they might find interesting, or commenting one of their own posts. I grew an account from 191 followers to 1200 in just a few months by doing this--and paying attention to them. What was the goal? Interacting, sharing, conversing. This was the way to grow the community into loyal customers!

It was a different ball game with Bonfire because of the size of the accounts. So much time was spent monitoring, brainstorming, and tracking metrics, that interaction was limited. And with the influence of the accounts, there were only a few approved answers to use for replies, and every post was meticulously done. But what was really the kicker, was the stats.

They are experts, specialists, and while creativity and "fun" are emphasized, it really only comes down to one thing: numbers. Every week, every day, clicks, likes, money on ads spent, cost per fan, people talking about this, are noted in a spreadsheet somewhere to be used in the client updates. Charts and graphs, analyses and summaries, all updated constantly. Instead of focusing on getting new fans (those are inevitable), they are going for having a specific number of fans by X date. Instead of telling the client that they will manage and grow their customers through Facebook, they are out to achieve goals and prove their influence on the business.

For this kind of company, social media is a science (not an art), and it's worth it. One thing I took away from my time there was the passion that the boss had for proof in numbers. He is out to show every client that these techniques, these advertisements, and our social media efforts got them those sales, that influence, and that success. Every new development on Tech Crunch was so exciting because it was another way to promote social media and how it can make or break a company, or a marketing campaign. Also, I've never seen someone so pumped about Facebook ad re-targeting.

Every Social Media Manager should intern at an agency like this, just to see how it looks from the other side, where you aren't focused on raising awareness and growing communities, but on learning how strategy plays a part in statistics. In these types of companies, the audience is the client.

A little resume tip...

Focusing Your Social Media Content

It's easy to approach your Facebook and Twitter pages with the sole purpose of promoting your brand, products, and services. Why wouldn't you want to optimize your content with industry-specific posts? Because it isn't about you and your business, it's about your customers and their community as a whole!

One of my former accounts, a well-known virtual call center, gave me a very limited range of topics to promote on their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus pages. As a new Social Media Specialist, I had no problem with going with the flow and sticking to the requested keywords: the cloud, home-based call centers, and customer service. For Twitter, my audience was business executives, clients, and popular industry leaders like Flavio Martins (The Managr), Peter Cashmore (Mashable), and Inc. For Facebook, my audience was the group of extremely loyal customer service agents employed by the company.

Twitter, G+, and LinkedIn couldn't be changed at all, so #custserv, #cloud, and #callcenter were all used frequently. I found the right content, the right people to follow, and RTed the most popular articles as soon as they showed up in my feed. Nothing spectacular clicks-wise, but regular interaction wasn't surprising. I shared our own blog posts, job listings, and pages as well.

But for Facebook, this same tactic got little results. For a page with a lot of traffic, and a lot of "likes" on every post, it was strange to see that there was so little interaction. I had seen a few quotes posted in the past, about success and management, but only with a handful of likes. I experimented with posting times, but nothing stood out there either.

Who are customer service agents anyway? Who are these people? What are they interested in, and what are they sharing?

These agents were mostly women, stay at home moms with families. Most of them probably don't check Facebook for customer service tips, quotes, and news about the cloud! So I started approaching my posts differently. This was during the Pinterest craze, full of work at home moms and crafty ladies. I mixed my customer service posts up by switching those about cloud, with big, eye-catching photos. Interactive posts like, "Show us your workspace!" with a pic of a really chic home office, or "It's the last day of summer! In 5 words, tell us what you'll miss the most" with a bright image of a cherry popsicle and our own caption.

Both were VERY well received, with more likes, shares, and comments than ever before. But the real topper was the pin above, paired with a simple "You are the best agents in the business. Thank you for all that you do!" Comments flooded in, with praise for the company, expressions of gratitude, and job inquiries.

Through the rest of my contract, and with my other accounts, I took the initiative to focus on relatable content that would be enjoyed, and not just optimized industry news and topics.

Scentsy - Bring Back My Bar

Scentsy Bring Back My Bar

It's that time again! Scentsy's Bring Back My Bar is back with "The Sweet Scent of Democracy."

In case you don't know what Bring Back My Bar (BBMB) is, imagine that perfect, long-time favorite scent from years ago returned. Or, in the last catalog, you completely missed out on a fragrance and it was discontinued before you placed that final order. BBMB is when some of those favorites are voted back into production for one month only.

People are passionate about the BBMB, some buying 10s of a bar to stock up--it may never come back again!

Who can vote, and how? Anyone can vote on their favorite scents, all the way back to 2005, here. What am I voting on? Here's my list:

Orange Chiffon Cake, Pumpkin Pie, Oatmeal Pie, and COMFORT AND JOY!!!!!!!!

Check out the list and tell me your faves!

Visioning Exercise (first draft)

Today, I met with a long-time online friend for the first time. I didn't know that she was so closeby, and with my current job search, getting the chance to talk to her was amazing.

I didn't know that she was a graphic designer either, with the hookup here in Portland... She gave me a lot of tips, leads, and AMAZING advice. Something that resonated: Excellence isn't Perfection.

Another thing she asked me to do was a visioning exercise, to pinpoint what it is that I want (and not just a job). What is my ideal workday? Give specifics, like when I want to wake up and what kind of environment I'd like to work in.

One year from now, I'd like to be making $25/hr. I'd like to work close to home in the Hillsboro area in a large company. I want health insurance, vision and dental. I want company benefits, coworkers, teammates... I want to make enough to drive a Prius, eat out, and travel home for the holidays.

Thinking of my dream workday is difficult for me. At this point, I can't see past the work I've done and what I've enjoyed and disliked the most. Which of my talents do I want to grow on in a company? I've spent so long as a freelancer, taking any contract offered and building my skill set. Now's the time to buckle down and focus!