Ali BULUT

In my search for effective marketing strategies for freelancers, I keep running into this idea. Get prospects on the phone for a free consultation with you.

You may have seen it yourself on some freelancers’ websites: an offer of a free 20- or 30-minute consultation to anybody who is interested in hiring them.

Should every freelancer offer free consultation to get more clients? The answer isn’t simple, and there is no one right answer for everyone. To see what the answer is for you, let’s go over the pros and cons of providing free consultation to prospects.

Pros

Some experts claim that getting a prospect on the phone before submitting a proposal doubles your chances of landing the project.

This makes sense. The free consult gives your prospect a sample of your expertise. It makes them feel better about entrusting their needs to you.

We all know that sampling is a highly effective marketing strategy in the retail world. It’s difficult to get people to buy something they haven’t tried before. However, if you give them the chance to try it out (and assuming you have a top-notch product), then your target market is more likely to buy it. Observe your own behavior when you’re in Costco. How often do you end up buying something after getting a free taste?

Getting on the phone with a prospect is also a faster way of addressing his questions and objections than through back-and-forth emails. The communication is also more likely to be effective. You and your prospect have the added input of your voice inflections — something absent in emails — so you should be able to understand each other better.

Another advantage of offering free consultations is that, even if the prospect doesn’t hire you, you’ll learn a lot about them. After talking to a number of prospects, you’ll have a much clearer idea of their problems and questions. This knowledge will help you improve your services and even develop products for your prospects (more on that later).

Cons

On the other hand, free consultations can be a real drag. When you offer them prominently on your site, you attract  freebie seekers — you know, people who want your expertise, but have no intentions of hiring you whatsoever.

The biggest disadvantage of offering free consultations is that they take up your precious time and energy. Twenty minutes here and there sure can add up, taking you away from other marketing activities, paid client work, family and personal growth.

So, You Want to Give Free Consultations…

At this point, you may be thinking that you’d like the advantages of giving free consultations, but without any of the disadvantages. Is there a way for you to enjoy the pros while minimizing the cons?

I think so. Consider these suggestions:

• Be selective. Instead of offering a free consultation call to everybody who lands on your site, make it available only to those who contact you with projects you’re interested in. Let’s say somebody emails you requesting a quotation and gives a few details about their project. Check out their website and look at their profiles in Twitter and Facebook. If the project interests you, and the prospects look like someone you may like to work with and who can afford you, then you can reply with an offer to discuss their requirements over the phone.
• Limit the time to a maximum of 20 minutes. Let the prospect know that the call will only be for 20 minutes. Of course, if the conversation is going extremely well and you think talking longer will improve your chances of landing the project, then you have the flexibility to extend the call. Do ask beforehand if your prospect can stay longer on the call. She’s busy, too.
• Make it easy for you. Create a set of guide questions, an outline or checklist of things to go over with your prospect. You can also prepare a corresponding set of recommendations for each issue that might come up. This helps you cover plenty of ground in a short amount of time.
• Stay in control of the call. Let’s face it, some people enjoy talking and your 20-minute call can easily stretch to one hour. The checklist or guide you prepared will help you keep on-topic. Do give your prospect about five minutes towards the end of the call to ask questions, and use the last two minutes of the call to summarize the action-points you’ve covered.
• Leverage the call. As I mentioned above, you can benefit from each consultation call, even if the prospect doesn’t end up hiring you. One way to do this is by using the consultation calls as the basis for creating a paid infoproduct. Record each call (let your prospect know this beforehand, but reassure him that it’s for your personal use only). Make a list of frequently asked questions or issues that keep coming up with your prospects. And then, create an infoproduct (or several) around these issues. Your infoproduct could be a workbook, a set of video tutorials, special reports or even full-blown eBooks. This infoproduct will let you help prospects who can’t afford you, and can become a nice side income for you.

So am I going to be offering free phone consultations now? To tell the truth, I’m still undecided. I may do it when a really attractive prospect shows interest in working with me. I will certainly oblige when somebody who fits the profile of my Ideal Client requests a phone call.

As long as my youngest child isn’t in school yet, it’s a major production for me to arrange for distraction-free phone calls. So, until then, my phone call policy isn’t going to change.

How About You?

Does the idea of giving prospects a taste of your expertise excite you? Have you already been offering free consultation to prospects?

Do let us know your thoughts below.

Sooner or later most freelancers will have the pleasure of working with a client who seems to have forgotten why they hired you in the first place. This client may ignore or overrule all of your recommendations and even dictate decisions on the project that you, as the experienced professional, are certain will be detrimental to its overall success. Despite your objections, explanations and warnings, the client steamrolls the project toward something less than what your normal standards would require, all the while assuring you that they have a better idea and understanding of what their project needs than you do.

How should you handle this situation? Do you refuse to bend and lose or “fire” the client, refunding any payments? Or, do you submit to their demands and hope for the best?

The Client Is Wrong, Now What?

Maybe you’ve experienced this before, or maybe your time is yet to come, but most freelancers eventually have a story similar to the one described in the opening paragraph. I have participated in quite a few discussions with other freelancers about this and have had my own experiences. Ultimately, I believe every freelancer will have their own unique way of dealing with it when their time comes, but I have come up with a formula that incorporates some of the primary elements that contribute to determining what to do.

As I see it, the key elements to deciding your course of action are:

1. Your own standards of professional excellence
2. How badly you need the income generated from the project
3. Your personal patience level and tolerance for the lack of respect for your professional input

Thus, the formula for proceeding would be: Action (a) = Standards of professional excellence (s) divided by your Financial necessity (f) multiplied by your personal Patience level (p), or a = s/f X p.

How Important Are Your Standards of Excellence?

This is probably the first question you should ask yourself. Depending on the project and its visibility, your professional reputation may be at stake.

For instance, I have designed websites that I would not personally consider my best work because the client wanted certain elements included that I advised against. In my opinion, the finished product suffered from their decisions. I had to decide if I would include the work in my own portfolio, as well as weigh the amount of traffic the site could receive. In the end, I simply delivered the project as required by the client, but removed any obvious association with myself so as not to tarnish my professional reputation.

Is that acceptable for you? For my purposes, it has worked fine and, although I may have been disappointed due to the amount of time and effort spent, the client was satisfied. You have to decide for yourself how important your own standards of excellence are to you in every project you undertake.

How Badly Do You Need the Income?

This is always a critical question in determining how flexible you are willing to be. On one hand, no one wants to be thought of as someone who is willing to do any type of work for a quick buck regardless of the quality, working conditions or type of project. On the other hand, we all have financial responsibilities that must be taken care of, and, for many freelancers, turning down a project can be devastating when dealing with the pattern of feast or famine we often endure.

So what are you willing to do or not do in the quest for income? This is a very serious consideration for any business, and one you should definitely ask and answer regularly, as your experiences and methods grow and change. I would suggest even creating a written list of your “open-handed” and “closed-fisted” values. In one column, the things you don’t mind wavering on that you hold more loosely in your open hand. In the other, those things you are absolutely certain you will or will not do that you will fight battles for, holding them firmly and tightly in the death grip of your closed fist. Revisit and update this list often, especially after a particularly trying project.

Next time you are faced with a situation where you need to decide whether you should start or continue a project due to the potentially destructive micro-managing of the client, you can use your list to remind yourself where you stand. I would recommend looking at every project individually, rather than approaching each one with a blanket ruling. Equipped with your predetermined values, weigh each situation on a case-by-case basis and make a well-informed, unemotional decision. Each project is unique, so I encourage you to keep an open mind and make wise decisions toward the best choice for each one.

How Patient Are You? (Be Honest)

This final factor may be the most difficult one to measure, yet it is critical to the formula for figuring out how much micro-managing you can withstand.

Are you short-tempered? Easily frustrated? Or, do you have a higher tolerance than most for criticism and can handle it with ease and grace?

While I am not a fan of being criticized, I am an extremely patient person. For me, this means I may be able to handle a client belittling my knowledge or experience with more poise than someone else. It may mean that I will have more tolerance for my suggestions being argued against and for greater lengths of time before finally calling a project to a halt. I know this about myself and can factor it into the formula to weigh my options when in a situation that merits its consideration.

Evaluate your own patience level, and then use it to create your personal formula to determine your course of action when difficult decisions are dictated by your client.

Apply the Formula

Now let’s take the three elements I’ve described and apply them to our formula. I will use myself as an example.

While my standards of excellence are high, the real question is how important are they to me when considering a job. I believe they are extremely important, but there are very few jobs I would refuse simply because the requirements appeared to be below my standards. Of course, I would weigh the project and its potential for impact on my professional reputation, but ultimately I would probably say that on a scale of 1-100 this element would rate a 65.

When it comes to financial needs, my top consideration is providing for my family. This one is easy for me. Money is not the driving force behind my desire to be a freelance designer, but within the context of the formula I would rate it a 90, leaving room for the few projects that I simply would not do no matter what the price.

As I stated earlier, my patience level is pretty high. I have come to realize that it takes a lot for me to lose my temper, and even on the occasion when I actually do blow my top I tend to remain relatively calm. I believe my patience level would be a 90.

Inserting these numbers into the formula, it would read 65/90 x 90 = ?

A quick calculation brings the number to 65. What does this mean? Actually, it doesn’t really mean anything at all. There is no magic formula. I just made it up. As far as I know, all of these elements cannot be broken down into some mathematical method for a freelancer to determine which projects they should take or which clients they should or should not work with. Yet the fact is that the three elements I’ve listed are essential to important self-evaluation and will equip a freelancer with a solid understanding of their value system and its relevance when faced with a client who demands bad decisions.

Maybe you can come up with a way to make the formula actually work. Whether you can or not, the truth behind it still stands. Take some time to evaluate yourself in these three areas and you will face difficult client situations with more professionalism, more finesse and more productive results.

What Do You Do When a Client Is Wrong?

Do you have some past or present experiences where a client has demanded you produce a project in ways that are against your recommendations? How have you handled it? Be sure to share your experiences (without sharing your client’s specific information) and tips in the comments below so we all can learn and grow in how we handle these types of situations.

About the author: Brian is a freelance web & graphic designer with over 14 years' experience. His business bkmacdaddy designs specializes in completely custom WordPress, Joomla, Magento & CSS/XHTML websites as well as logo design, brand identity, social media management and more. Brian is a father of 3 and madly in love with his wife of many years.

via freelancefolder.com

It’s always good to be able to articulate design choices to your clients; why you put something where, why you chose the color scheme you did, etc. This knowledge is one of the biggest differences between a designer and a non-designer. But there is a lot to remember when it comes to the realm of graphic design – so much so that it’s pretty much impossible to remember everything from all the theories of graphic design, to web design best practices to Photoshop keyboard shortcuts.

With that in mind, I decided it would be useful for me to have all of the basics of color theory contained in one place – specifically, a cool infographic-esque poster. This way, I can quickly reference things that may have slipped to the back of my mind since design school. The end result is this: The Color Theory Quick Reference Poster for Designers.

The idea is that this graphic can be either printed out or used as a desktop wallpaper. During meetings, phone calls, or any other sort of client interaction, you can reference this poster if you need to – either for your own benefit, or to point something out to your client.

The graphic contains info on:

• the basic color wheel
• passive vs. active colors
• cool vs. warm colors
• subtractive vs. additive color
• color types
• color relationships
• meanings attached to colors
• basic terms pertaining to color

Hopefully this will be as useful to you as I’m hoping it will be to me. Here are the various files for download – please share, but don’t pass off as your own!

• Print-ready, PDF (11″ by 17″, 300DPI)
• Print-ready, white background, PDF (11″ by 17″, 300DPI – click to view)
• 1920X1200 Wallpaper
• 1680X1050 Wallpaper
• 1440X900 Wallpaper
• 1280X800 Wallpaper
• EPS file (if you want to make your own changes)

Enjoy!

Over the holidays, we reviewed all of the smart new business ideas we covered in 2009, and selected 10 that we believe will provide entrepreneurs with plenty of opportunities in 2010. Needless to say, it was a huge challenge to pick just 10 from such a wide range of innovative concepts. We hope you'll find our selection as inspiring as we did!

1. Small-scale food production using membership models

The past year or two saw a huge increase in innovative, upscale mobile food purveyors working from trucks and selling everything from premium ice-cream to Korean BBQ tacos. Requiring an even lower investment, the next wave could be small-scale culinary subscription services, which allow fledgling entrepreneurs to get a foothold in the food business, and create a steady income and a loyal client base for future business activities.
Milk Made » — Dulcinea »

2. Low impact advertising

Realising that green concerns are here to stay, British media agency Curb offers nothing but low-impact advertising. Its first service used rainwater to clean logos into grubby pavements, and was quickly followed by other techniques that use sand, sea water, grass, glow-in-the-dark funghi and more to broadcast their clients' messages in an earth-friendly manner.
Curb »

3. Health tracking devices

From wireless headbands that track sleep patterns to wearable gadgets that track every move, an increasing number of options is available for people who want to track their own health-related behaviour. Recording and relaying detailed information that was previously only available through medical monitoring, most of these devices aren't yet available worldwide, which creates a host of opportunities for distributors and localized versions.
Zeo » — Fitbit » — DirectLife » — TheCarrot.com » — Bedpost »

4. Sample stores, cafes & vending machines

Sophisticated sampling—dubbed tryvertising by trendwatching.com—isn't new. On the rise, however, are dedicated spaces that facilitate sampling by a variety of brands, attracting consumers through the irresistible offer of free goods. Following sampling stores in Spain, sampling cafes in Tokyo and sample vending machines in Belgium, we suspect this concept will spread even further in 2010.
Esloúltimo » — L CAFE » — Boobox »

5. Discreet rooftop solar panels and wind turbines

While most homeowners would in theory like to generate their own wind or solar power, many are put off not just by cost, but by the aesthetic impact of wind turbines and solar panels. Aiming to resolve that problem are smart engineers who are creating new options that blend in with their environment. Two promising examples: rooftop wind turbines that almost disappear along the apex of a sloping roof, and solar panels shaped like traditional clay roof tiles. Plenty of opportunities here over the next decade, both in distribution and in the development of similar products.
Solé Power Tile » — Ridgeblade »

6. Rotating retail at airports and in malls

Pop-up, temporary retail is still going strong, but a new alternative has entered the game: rotating retail. Two spottings: opening soon in Glasgow Airport is Planeshop, a permanent store that brands will take over for a limited time, including changing the shop's exterior graphics to match their identity. And in the Netherlands, BrandNew Stores aims to turn those fleeting pop-up shops into a chain concept, creating fixed spaces where brands can temporarily present themselves in a regular retail environment.
Planeshop » — BrandNew Stores »

7. Remote farming for consumers

According to Wikipedia, farm simulation game FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook with 73.8 million active users in January 2010. Offering consumers a way to remotely control a patch of land that will actually provide them with an edible harvest is a new Italian start-up: Le Verdure Del Mio Orto, which lets anyone build an organic garden right from their web browser. As the produce grows, it's picked and delivered to the customer's door within 24 hours. Weekly deliveries are part of the package.
Le Verdure Del Mio Orto »

8. Connecting creative consumers with local fabricators

A partnership between New Zealand-based Ponoko and North Carolina-based ShopBot Tools, 100kGarages is a community of workshops distributed around the world that are equipped with the digital fabrication tools needed to precisely cut, machine, drill or sculpt the components of virtually any creative project. The network allows designers or consumers turn their ideas into physical products, and creates new business for small workshops.
100kGarages »

9. Paying consumers to promote products they use and love

As our sister-site trendwatching.com pointed out in its sellsumers briefing, selling is the new saving: a recession-induced need for cash plus an ever-growing infrastructure are fueling concepts that help ordinary consumers make money instead of spending it. One of the easiest ways to do so is by taking on the role of marketeer for products they already use and love: from promoting concerts by their favourite bands, to helping small companies launch new products.
Hollrr » — People's Music Store » — Posse » — Looklet »

10. Single-use toilet bag turns human waste into fertilizer

While this is a numbered list, we love all of these ideas equally. So, last but not least, a potential solution to a problem that 2.6 billion people have to deal with: no access to a toilet. Designed for use sitting, squatting or standing, the single-use, biodegradable plastic Peepoo bag is lined with a urea-coated gauze layer that disinfects all waste. Used bags are odour-free for at least 24 hours and are safe for burial underground. Within two to four weeks after use, their contents are converted to high-quality fertiliser—something that's also rare in many areas and could become a source of income and further enrichment for individuals or villages.
Peepoo bag »

There is much talk these days about tablets and ereaders. Not only do we have the constant rumor that Apple is making one, but it seems like every newspaper on the planet see them as the "prophet" that will save them from their doom.

Lately, a very impressive tablet reader was showcased to the world - the Time Inc. tablet, featuring how "Sports Illustrated" would work.

It certainly looks impressive. I will even go as far as to call it stunning. No wonder why people call it the future of news... except it isn't. Far from it.

This isn't the future of news. This will not save the newspapers. It will only prolong their demise. This will help the newspaper fight change, to stifle peoples desires, and ultimately make them even more irrelevant.

Is it a horse or a car?

A long time ago, when the world was changing how we moved around, Henry Ford said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

He knew that the answer to a faster horse was to build a car. It was to change how we do things. It was to solve the real problem. It was not to use all the new technology to make faster horses.

The tablet of "Sports Illustrated" isn't a car. It is merely a faster horse. Sure it is faster and better than the printed newspaper, but they are not solving the real problem. They are stuck in a world of "how it used to be," and are simply adding technology to it.

There is no change here, there is no real innovation. It's a newspaper on a tablet, and that's not what we want.

What we really want

Let's face it, the newspaper industry is dying because they are no longer needed. They are the middleman between us and the news itself. What we really want is "news," not "newspapers".

The newspapers were created to solve "how to bring news from around the world to you." And in the past there was really no practical way to do that. The old newspaper model, as illustrated below, is to send a reporter out to find news. This is then handed over to the newspaper editors who turn it into a newspaper and deliver it to you.

Another very big part of the newspaper industry is to sell their news to other newspapers. Again, because distance was a problem, and every newspaper had to create a complete package.

This reporting model is highly visible when you go to Google News, where you can see how many newspapers that reported the same story.

We don't really need 4,497 nearly identical articles (actually most of them are 100% the same, because they are reprinted articles from Reuters or AP). This is the result of an old model where redistribution are the only way to reach your readers.

As Google news clearly illustrates, we no longer have that problem. Today all the newspapers are simply creating noise and clutter. Mass quantities of duplicated content that are hideously expensive to make.

The internet is much simpler. It is simply connecting the people who produce news, with the people who want news.

And, this has a dramatic effect on the newspaper business models.

The three models that no longer work are:

1. Reporting, where reporters are telling you about what other people/companies have done. I don't need to have a person telling me that "Google wrote on its blog that...."

2. Selling news to other news outlets. Why would we read a copy, when we can just as easily read the original? And more to the point, why would we pay for the production of a copy, when we can simply pay for the original (which in many cases are free).

   Why would I buy a newspaper that is filled with copies articles, when I can read the original just as easially?

3. Everything in a closed package - a destination. The model of creating a thing, a newspaper, has an adverse effect in the online world. In the past every family would subscribe to about three different news sources. A broad morning paper, a local daily paper, and evening news on TV.

   Today we subscribe to several hundred channels, everything from general news, articles from interesting people, articles from your sisters blog, pictures on Flickr, friends favorite music on Last.fm, and many other sources.

   It is simply impossible for a newspaper to cover that, and any package they make will be vastly incomplete.

   The newspaper model doesn't work in a world of infinite channels and sources of interest.

The three new models that do work:

The business models of the past are replace by three other models that are centered around connecting news with people. These are:

1. Be the creator and connector of news. The new media landscape is a fantastic opportunity for every journalist in the world. Instead of simply reporting what Google wrote on its blog, you bring something new to the world. You give people a story that goes beyond what Google wrote. You provide analysis. You provide comparisons. You do more than just reporting. Every story is unique, every story is new, and every story is original.

   Many newspapers already do this to some extend, but the quality of this work is drowned out by the noise of the senseless reporting, and news redistribution.

   But, it isn't enough to simply create news; you also have to move it out into the world. The old model of limiting news to a specific platform, via a specific application, in a specific format, is replaced by "original news" on every platform, in any format, in any application.

   Hint: How many big newspapers do you know who provides an RSS feed with the full text of the articles? They all demanding that you go to them to read their content.

2. Create a personal news aggregator. The problem with having an infinite amount of sources is that it is overwhelming. There is a huge market for intelligent solutions to create personal newspapers, each of them tailored directly to each individual, each rating the articles based on your preferences, and each including just the news sources that are relevant to you.

   This market is already booming, but we have still only seen 1% of its full potential.

   The personal news aggregator is the newspaper of the future. Every single newspaper in the world should be pursuing this market as if their life depended on it (which it does).

   But, it is an entirely different beast. The newspapers don't get to decide what to include. They do not own the news. They do not own the experience.. It's is a tool, not a "production".

   Feedly is a good example of this. It is a personal news aggregator that present your personal news sources, combines that with other sources and topics that would go well with it. All controlled by you, and extended by the crowd.

3. Create a value filter. Another big market is for companies and people to create "value filters," that finds the best and most valuable content within specific topics. With an infinite amount of news, we need people who can do the footwork, because it is impractical for us to do so ourselves.

   It's like having your own personal assistant, filtering out all the junk.

   Many companies are already venturing into this field, like SmartBrief who brings you a daily newsletter with just the best topics in different industries. Another one is Guy Kawasaki's Alltop that does the same, although in a much better way. Not only does Alltop find the good stuff, they also allow further filtering by giving you a personal Alltop channel. And you can then mix the filtered content with whatever personal news aggregator you happen to be using.

   BTW: Here is my personal Alltop channel.

You can either focus on each market in itself, or be really remarkable by mixing and combining them into a grander experience.

This is the future of news.

Back to the Tablet

Where does all this leave the tablet computer? Well, for one thing it won't save the old newspaper models.

We don't want to start a separate application to read the news from each specific news source. Despite, how fancy they make the application.

Tablet applications, like the one from Sports Illustrated, might delay the change for a short while, simply because they are distracting us with a shiny package. But it's a losing battle.

What we do want is a tablet with a personal news aggregator. An app that can elevate news from multiple sources. Something that gives you a more personal, in depth, and meaningful experience.

Think the "Sports Illustrated" app that isn't limited to "Sports illustrated." One that is tailored to each individual. One that combines news from all kinds of sources - including tweets from the players with commentators from "experts". One that gives you the pictures of the field, pictures taken by the fans, and pictures from the players "backstage". One that uses the power of the crowd, and the sharing of the crowd, to prioritize the content.

More important, one that doesn't result in a destination, but is merely a tool that you can tab into either directly or via other services.

BTW: This was what I tried to do with the 2009 Le Mans Tracker.

This is the future of newspapers on the tablet.

The buzz around social media return of investment (ROI) is just staggering. It is a good sign that this social media thing is moving away from being an experiment, to actually be part of a business strategy. And every business strategy and business plan must be focused around making money.

Before we start talking about social media ROI (in articles to come), we first need to debunk some of the many myths and misconceptions that are floating around.

Myth #1
- You can measure social media ROI by looking at volume of fans, level of engagement, downloads, number of links etc.

Wrong! None of these things provide you with insights about any meaningful return to what you have invested. Getting 1,000 more fans doesn't mean you will sell 1,000 more products. Just because people link to your viral video, doesn't mean that people come flocking to your store.

In the article "100 Ways To Measure Social Media," you can find many very useful tips on what you can measure, but it doesn't tell you how those translate into Return of Investment.

Return of investment is about making money. To measure that, you first need to find out what your product is.

• If you are selling cars, then your "return" is to sell more cars.
• If you make blenders, then your "return" is to sell more blenders.

But, not everything is about selling goods. Take newspapers or professional bloggers. What do they sell? Articles? No, those they give away for free (unless you are really old and called Rupert Murdoch). You make money selling ad impressions. Which means that blogs sell "quantity of ad impressions," or "conversions of product affiliations" (meaning how many people you can persuade to buy the product you are advertising for another company).

You simply cannot ask "how many fans do you need to sell more products, or more ad impressions on your blog?" That just doesn't make any sense. You still need to persuade your fans to actually buy the product. Your return is when your product is delivered to the person buying it.

You need much more than just fans. Getting more fans are a just step towards getting a return, it is not a return in itself.

Myth #2
- We need to get as many people to visit our website

Wrong! You need to sell your product to as many people as possible. You should only bring people to your website if it helps to get them to buy more products.

Consider this. Many companies merely use their social profiles as "link profiles," linking to their website. This is the old way of doing things. It is like a poster that encourages you to go somewhere, where you then decide buy the products.

You end up with Twitter feeds, linking to your websites, linking to your online shop, linking to the checkout process. And that is just too many steps.

At every single step, you will lose customers. By the time they finally click the buy button, you have only a fraction of the energy and volume you started with.

Sell your products as close to where people are. If you give people advice, and are using Twitter, then change the format so that it fits 120 characters (then you can always expand it with more in depth articles, on your website).

You need to make Twitter and Facebook a primary channel, just like your website is a another primary channel. Move your checkout process directly to Facebook (like Resource Interactive is doing with "off the wall.")

Myth #3
- Marketing works

It doesn't, at least not the way you think it does. There is a really strange thing about marketing, and its ROI, that most marketers know instinctively but have a hard time explaining.

Marketing doesn't pay. No matter what you do. A poster, a tweet, an article on a website, a TV ad during Superbowl or anything else. None of these things produce enough return of investment to cover the cost of doing it.

You don't buy the new Ford Fiesta just because Ford posted a tweet about it. You don't buy the new Nook (ereader) from Barnes&Nobles, just because there was an ad for it in a magazine.

Every single thing you do is, in itself, not worth the effort. It doesn't provide enough return of investment.

However, we also know that if you don't market you products you go out of business. Communicating your products to the world are essential to your success. The old saying "build it and they will come" is perhaps the biggest myths of all.

So, what is really going on here? If every single ting you do is a waste of money, and that not doing anything is even worse? How does marketing work?

The answer is that marketing works because the sum of its part is much greater than the whole. Nobody buys a new book just because you see a tweet about it. But, if you already read some of the author's previous books, if a friend has recommended it to you, if you see other people discussing it, and if the description and reviews on Amazon are interesting - then you buy the book.

Marketing works when you influence people via many different channels and many different methods.

This is even statistically proven. EngagementDB found that there is a direct link between how many channels you are on, and the level of engagement you get in return. And Microsoft Advertising Institute found that banner ads have no effect if people just see them once. It is only when they see them more than once, in different settings, that people react to them.

This is the most important thing to remember when measuring Social Media ROI. If you measure each individual thing you do, you will end up with a loss. But, when you measure all your communication as a whole, then it suddenly makes sense, and you start to see a positive result.

Twitter alone is not worth the money or time you put into it. It is only when you combine Twitter with other channels that it starts to make sense.

Myth #4
- It is just about marketing

No! The real power of social media is its ability to communicate more effectively across every department, to cut cost, and to make customer support more personal and effective.

Social media is actually not very good at attracting new customers, instead it strength lies in the way it motivates existing customers to spread the word.

This also means that most normal marketing "techniques" doesn't work in the social world, because you need fans to get more fans. And you focus your energy on your existing fans.

You do not measure the effect directly (which tends to be very low), but instead what the indirect effect is. It's not about how effective you are in relation to your fans, but how effective are your fans in relation to the people they know.

Myth #5
- Return of Investment is all about the Return

It's not. You also need to look at how you are investing your money. It easily cost $100,000 to put an ad on TV, but using Twitter or Facebook is practically free + spending about 15 minutes per day tweeting and replying (which is about $4,000/salary).

Which one is the better investment a TV ad for $100,000, or engaging your customers in a long term relationship for $4,000? (BTW: that is probably one of the easiest questions to answer.)

This is also why so many companies are still focusing most of their time on traditional marketing. They are trying to optimize their return (by making flashier print ads), but are failing to look at new investment opportunities (social channels).

Or they focus on getting more return for their department (marketing), and fail to see that Twitter is about much more than that (sales, customer support, contact with individuals - e.g. the people who actually design the products)

Getting the right return is as much about investing in the right things, with the right people. And that is the real trick to Social Media ROI.

Myth #6
- We need to measure Social Media ROI

Wrong. You need to measure Customer Communication ROI; it is not really just about social media. You need to measure it across all your channels (myth #1 & #3).

Myth #7
- It's all about money

Well, it is. But, the best way to get money is not to focus on earning more money. Instead, you need to focus on creating remarkable products, having meaningful and relevant interactions, and really engage with people around you.

Apple is a textbook example of this. When they fired Steve Jobs, and instead focused on "making money," they completely lost track of why they made computers, and as a result, their products became mediocre, and they nearly went out of business.

Then Steve came back, and the first thing he did was to refocus the company around making remarkable products. Since then Apple have soared in profitability.

It is the same with Social Media. When you focus on "selling products," then you end up sounding like a used-car salesman that nobody wants to follow. It is only when you focus on being remarkable, that people will notice. Only then will you get a "return of investment" ...only then will you make money.

Do you outsource?

Outsourcing is a business strategy that has been drummed into my brain by my mompreneur mastermind group, freelancing books like The Unlimited Freelancer, and various other posts on FreelanceFolder (such as this one). “You need to outsource if you want to become more profitable,” everybody says.

After months of hearing this — and after a catastrophic episode that involved accidentally making a blog explode into virtual smithereens — I finally decided to grow my team.

In this post, we’ll examine outsourcing. We’ll discuss what I’ve tried and we’ll look at seven critical questions that you should ask before you outsource.

What I’ve Tried

I’ve tried it several ways. I’ve hired virtual assistants to do administrative tasks, such as submitting press releases online and updating my Wordpress blogs. I’ve also cross-sourced by getting a copywriting intern and even an occasional assistant writer.

I’ve been working with my expanded team for nearly a year now, and I’ve learned that outsourcing isn’t always good, nor easy. It’s definitely not for every freelancer. It’s no magic pill and unless you know what you’re doing, you won’t reap the benefits.

If you’ve been thinking about outsourcing, here are seven questions you should ask yourself before diving in.

1. Can I Afford It?

If you’re just starting out and you have more time than money to spare, then you probably can’t afford to outsource. You could look for cheap service providers, but keep in mind; you often get what you pay for.

However, sometimes you can’t afford NOT to outsource. For example, if you’re into freelancing for the long haul and are willing to invest in it, then you probably should outsource. You should definitely hire somebody to design your professional website if you really suck at it. Barter for services, if you have to.

Otherwise, you’ll do a shameful job and end up turning off prospective clients instead of enticing them to hire you. Definitely find, steal, or borrow a service provider if you’re like me and are capable of accidentally making a page-one-Google-ranking blog disappear…

2. Do I Know What I Should Outsource?

In general, you’ll want to begin by outsourcing tasks you’re not good at, as well as tasks you absolutely hate doing. Ask yourself, “What can somebody else do in my business that they can do better, faster and for less money?”

Let’s say you charge clients $50 per hour of your time, then you’re better off paying a virtual assistant $20 per hour to update your client database than to do it yourself. The VA can probably do it much faster than you too.

3. Am I Willing to Manage Another Person?

When you outsource, you may no longer be doing the task yourself, but you’re still responsible for getting it done and at the quality level you desire. This means you can’t leave the service provider completely alone to complete the task.

Here’s what working with a service provider involves:

• Select the right person for the job
• Train the person as needed
• Choose and schedule the service provider’s assignments
• Monitor the person’s work
• Evaluate the quality of the service provider’s performance

It can be hard work, and it will take time. It’s up to you to determine if it’s all worthwhile.

4. Do I Know How to Hire the Right People?

Successful outsourcing depends on hiring the right person. Do you have experience interviewing job candidates? Do you know what to look for when you read a resume? How about checking references — have you done that before? Or, do you plan to send out a tweet and hire the first interesting person who DMs you?

Outsourcing can be a waste of time and money if you end up with the wrong service provider, so equip yourself with the skills needed to find the right one. Referrals certainly come in handy, but they can sometimes be disastrous too.

Ask your more experienced friends, borrow a book from the library or read related websites to get some tips on writing up job descriptions, reviewing resumes, conducting interviews and managing people.

5. Do I Know How to Delegate?

There are two worst ways of delegating: giving the other person free reign, or micro-managing the other person’s every move.

Strive for a balance. When you hire a service provider, realize that you’re still ultimately responsible.

On the other hand, don’t be a control freak who thinks nobody else can do a task better than you do, or unless you’re breathing down a person’s neck. You’ll never find a provider who’ll work with you happily that way.

Before you outsource, be willing to manage, but also to give enough distance and autonomy to let another expert do what he or she does best.

6. Do I Have a Back-up Plan?

As soon as you bring other people into your business, you’re exposing yourself to some risk. What if the service provider isn’t as good as you expected and turns in shoddy work? What if he has a sudden family emergency and can’t meet the deadline? What if a hurricane strikes her city and she can’t be reached — by phone, email or Twitter?

You should have a back-up plan to have somebody else do the work at a moment’s notice, or to do it yourself. This is particularly important if you delegate tasks that are part of your client work.

7. Do I Have Something Better to Do?

Sure, we outsource to free up our time and energy, but what are you freeing up your time and energy for? If instead of doing administrative tasks you’re finding more clients, working on an infoproduct to sell, or spending time with your family or even getting more personal time, then that service provider’s fee is money well spent. But, if you’ll just be vegging in front of the TV, drowning yourself in beer, then maybe you should just do the job yourself.

Outsourcing is Not Simple

Hopefully, these questions have helped you realize that outsourcing is not simple. Take note of which questions you answered “no” or “maybe” or even “I don’t know” to. Those are areas you need to pay attention to, in order to make outsourcing work for you.

Outsourcing is not an instant solution. It’s not magic beans. It takes preparation, a lot of thought, organization and management skills to make outsourcing beneficial for your freelancing business. You’re not off the hook. And no matter how many service providers you hire, you’re still ultimately responsible for your business.

As long as you outsource with open eyes, then you’ll probably do well. For additional tips, reread Section 3 of The Unlimited Freelancer. (You do have a copy, don’t you? If not, what is wrong with you?)

What Else Would You Like to know?

Is there anything else you’d like to know about outsourcing? Post your questions in the comments below. Or, if you’d like to add your own outsourcing tips, do share them below as well.

Image by lavarue

Have you seen the headlines about the sales results from Black Friday? And Cyber Monday?

Although the numbers conflict based on which stores the analysts were counting, each of these reports all show Online ecommerce sales increases year over year surpassing Instore by quite a bit on Black Friday:

• Black Friday store spending edges up; online soars  Online retail sales for Black Friday were up 35%; compared to only 3% at store level.
• November, Black Friday, Cyber Monday Same Store Sales Black Friday Same Store Sales (2009 to 2008) ChannelAdvisor over-all (3000 online ecommerce stores) – 18%  Stand outs: Amazon – 73% eBay – -8%
• Black Friday E-Commerce Sales Jump 11%  “Black Friday, better known as a shopping bonanza in brick-and-mortar retail stores, is increasingly becoming one of the landmark days in the online holiday shopping world,” comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement.

Cyber Monday:
Similarly, Cyber Monday 2009 was up over Cyber Monday 2008.

Coremetrics BenchmarkTM Cyber Monday Report 2009 “Cyber Monday continued the momentum set by Black Friday. Sales were up 24.1 percent compared to Black Friday 2009.  Sales were up 13.7 percent compared to Cyber Monday 2008.”

November, Black Friday, Cyber Monday Same Store Sales Cyber Monday Same Store Sales (SSS 2009 to 2008): ChannelAdvisor over-all – 13%
Amazon – 70% and eBay – -7%

So where should you invest your marketing dollars?  Fix your website. Even if you’re not selling at retail to consumers, but your company is b-b selling to other companies, online sales are here to stay.  No one is looking in the big green Thomas Registry books anymore to find a supplier.  No one is going to the Yellow Pages telephone directories anymore to find their vendors.  And thank goodness.  Their fees were pretty steep!

People go to Google or Bing or Yahoo.  And they typically click on the results from the first page.  Companies who are looking for goods and services are made up of people as well. 

Now, they may ask their friends, right?  But instead of picking up the phone or asking over coffee/beer at a trade association, they’ll send a direct tweet to a few select, trusted friends.  “Who do you use?” 

Or they will maybe shoot an email to their business friend.  But you better believe, the answer coming back will have a www.???.com in it.

So, now is the time to fix your website. Update your SEO. Refresh your contact page. Spruce up your Twitter page (Google indexes it!)

Do you use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or some other form of social media? Do you use it a little too much?

There’s no question that social media is an important part of today’s Internet environment. If you freelance (or are thinking about freelancing), chances are that you’re already involved in social media somehow.

But social media has a dark side too — it’s very easy to spend too much time twitter, write too many comments on Facebook, or overuse social media in some other way. In this post, we’re going to help you decide if you’re using social media too much.

Here are 20 ways to tell if you are addicted to social media:

20 Ways to Tell If You Use Social Media Too Much

Here are a few funny ways to tell whether you might be addicted to social media. You may be addicted to social media if:

1. You are going to spend the Christmas holiday with @grandma and @grandpa.
2. You log in to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (or another form of social media) before you eat breakfast or get dressed each morning.
3. When a friend says something clever, you respond by saying “I’ll retweet that.”
4. You plan your activities according to how tweetable they are.
5. No Internet connection is a serious problem since you might miss someone’s status update.
6. Whenever you finish watching a good movie or television show you feel the urge to give it a thumbs up (just like you would on StumbleUpon or Digg).
7. You speak in bursts of 140 characters, or less.
8. Instead of actually laughing when your friend says something funny, you say “ROFL.”
9. You refer to door-to-door sales people as “spammers.”
10. When you meet someone new who is interesting, you ask if you can “connect to their network.”
11. You put your Ninja name (from Facebook quizzes) on your business card instead of your actual name.
12. You have been wondering how you can “block” some of life’s everyday problems like heavy traffic, high prices, and yard work.
13. When you have a problem, the first people you turn to for advice are the ones on Facebook or Twitter.
14. You ask the pizza delivery person if they will deliver directly to your computer desk.
15. You’re not getting enough sleep, but it’s not because you’re working too hard. It’s because you’re staying up late to keep your status up to date and to download pictures.
16. You don’t take a vacation because you don’t want to miss a tweet.
17. You trust the advice of your followers more than you trust the advice of your spouse or partner.
18. You become anxious if someone you know refuses to friend you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter.
19. You can’t remember the last time you spent an entire day without social media.
20. You dream about social media comments and posts at night.

Your Turn to Share

We’ve shared some funny signs that you might be close to social media addiction, now it is your turn. Can you think of any funny indicators that might mean that you are using social media too much?

Also, if you’ve found that you really do have a problem managing social media, how have you dealt with it? Did you need to find outside help? What recommendations do you have for other social-media addicts?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

top icons by webtreats

In my last post “Ninety Red Bull Events | Part 1: The List” I catalogued ninety individual Red Bull brand-owned events, attempting to use the list to demonstrate a few points about the scale, longevity, and depth that Red Bull’s strategy and success in integrating into youth and action sports culture is based around.

In this post I’m going to distill some of the lessons from diving deeper into that list, with the aim of provides something of a case study in how to build a dominant youth brand based on an authentic influencer strategy, focusing on investing in value creation over the long-term and earning media from that investment.

Creating vs sponsoring

After sponsoring a handful of existing events early in the brand’s history, Red Bull made a strategic decision to create their own events and have followed this direction consistently ever since.

This is a hugely important differentiator for them, and sets them a league apart from sponsor brands
:

1. Early investment becomes equity
   As a sponsor brand, the more important and popular the event becomes, the more it costs. However Red Bull’s initial investment in creating the event quickly starts paying compound interest, and as the event grows in stature they reap all of the rewards while costing them only the maintenance of re-running the event.

2. Sole-branding
   Most big events have their platinum, gold and silver sponsors. How much are brands really getting out of these sponsorships? And if you want to distinguish your brand by putting your name on the event, be prepared to shell out mega bucks. Red Bull on the other hand is the title sponsor for every one of these ninety events, and their branding is ubiquitous and seamlessly integrated into the event rather than tacked on and diluted amongst a hundred other sponsors. There is no question who is putting on the event and responsible for bringing it to everyone and making it happen.

3. Authenticity and credibility
   For me there is a big difference with a brand simply paying to have their logo attached to something, and with a brand who puts their energy, resources, and creativity to work in bringing something to life themselves, even if it is of course delivered behind the scenes by a host of event and activation agencies. There’s a different level of commitment involved, and a different type of authenticity and credibility is conferred to the brand as a result. Successful creation signals commitment to and deep understanding of the space, whereas anyone can pay to logo-ize something. I’m not saying sponsorship is always a bad thing by any stretch, but I’d argue it definitely lacks the same resonance with the audience.

4. Underground up
   There is something powerful about how so many of these Red Bull events started out small and local, and have grown to be big and hugely important and influential amongst the athletes and their fans. Athletes themselves say voluntarily that many of these events are as important or second only to the X-Games in stature and importance to their career. This is huge for authenticity with their target. Red Bull has grown up with it’s audience, and them with it.

5. Control
   Last point on creation vs sponsorship is about control. Namely, when you own the event, you do what you want with it. You control the promotion, the PR, the messaging, the branding, when it happens, where it happens, who’s involved. Everything. Even as a long-term sponsor of an event, you are ultimately at the mercy of the event’s owners and along for the ride.

Longevity

Many brands flit from campaign to campaign, with their event activation a tacked on component that is rarely addressed consistently. Getting commitment to ongoing events from a brand can be near impossible.

Red Bull is fundamentally different in this regard. They create experiences that generate value for the brand and then they build equity in them consistently over time, just as most brands would do with important product innovations and sub-brands.

This is hugely cost effective compared to reinventing the wheel every year, and it ensures the brand becomes fundamentally woven into the lives of the athletes and influential consumers they wish to reach, as Red Bull is guaranteed to be part of their year, every year. Plus the audience often scales in size annually. Flugtag and Red Bull Soap Box race are now yearly highlights for many consumers, reaching in-person audiences of hundreds of thousand of people in many cities. In Brazil over one million people turned up for the Red Bull Air Race.

From the list below you can see sponsorship of some events such as Flugtag reaching back all the way to 1991, but the vast majority of the events they’ve created over the years are still ongoing, year after year.

Depth and breadth

Another key differentiator with Red Bull is the incredible effort they have gone to in order to “own” action sports and become embedded in youth culture across the board. They have quite literally gone after every action sport you can think of, and in a number of cases essentially created their own sports. They’ve since started attacking music and art with the same vigour.

Where most brands are happy to tack on their logo to a handful of events in a year and call it a sponsorship strategy, Red Bull is literally ubiquitous. In many cases they are absolutely essential to the vitality of the sports they sponsor.

Use creativity to reinforce the brand and create cut-through

Looking down the list, another thing becomes immediately clear — all of the events sound awesome.

“Last Man Standing”. “Down and Dirty”. “Exodus”. “Chopper Assault”. “City Rage”. “Heavy Metal”.

Red Bull have used crazy sounding and subversive names to build excitement around events before you’ve even heard of them to and to indelibly stamp them as “Red Bull”.

Additionally, Red Bull seek out and create a sense of drama and the spectacular with each event to rival anything Evel Knieval could’ve ever imagined.

Downhill bike racing through Rio’s most notorious barrios? Wakeboarding in the dark in a flooded mine? Motocross duelling in bullrings? Roller derby on ice skates? Red Bull has made it their mission to bring barely imaginable experiences into existence, and give them all the spectacle and pomp of a “real” sport. And then to do it again, year after year.

Create shareable content and earn your media

How can Red Bull possibly afford all this? Well, they do the opposite thing most brands do. Most brands spend a tiny bit on content, and then 10x as much on media to try and spread that content as far as possible, because people aren’t really that interested in what they are saying so they have to get it in front of eyeballs by force. Which of course then diminishes the value of reaching those people, given they would rather you weren’t.

Red Bull was doing earned media before it was a buzzword. They invest in unique, compelling experiences, and in the creation of content from those experiences. They get a significant amount of very deep and powerful brand interaction at the actual experiences themselves, both from participants and spectators. And then through a combination of PR, word of mouth, and pull media channels they get an absolute ton of exposure of their content. And through platforms like their popular Facebook page, content-rich website, Red Bulletin, and a legion of popular microsites and brand communities like FMXWorld, Red Bull can legitimately claim to be a media brand in its own right at a time when most brands are still talking about the idea.

The reason Red Bull is so exciting as a brand and a case study to so many is they’ve flipped the traditional advertising model on it’s head. They invest most of their budget in experiences, content and media assets, and allocate comparably little to actual media itself. They trust if they build cool things, people will seek it out and talk about it, and they are right.

From a Brandweek article from 2001:

In the antithesis of any major’s marketing plan, Red Bull buys traditional advertising last. Only when a market is deemed mature does the company begin a media push. The idea is to reinforce, not introduce, the brand. “Media is not a tool that we use to establish the market,” said vp-marketing David Rohdy. “It is a critical part. It’s just later in the development.”

The brand spent $100 million in the U.S. last year, according to the company Measured media spending was only $18.9 million last year, up from $9 million in 1999, per Competitive Media Reporting.

In a way their model is to first build targeted, ubiquitous relevance rather than broad mass awareness. They don’t blast out, they focus deep and then bubble up. And the latter approach gives them a much stronger and longer-lasting foundation for their activity, and costs them less. Paid media fits into the mix later to solidify the position, but it’s an enhancer rather than the foundation.

Mix global platforms and local activation

Red Bull is looking for the ultimate blend of local relevance and cost-effective impact. So they have a chaotic but effective mix of global platforms such as Flugtag and Air Race and tens of locally focused events. Many events start out locally and then get rolled out across regions as the template is perfected.

Living and creating with your audiences

I think I got this insight out of one of the many great Mobile Youth presentations on Red Bull. Basically the point is everything Red Bull do is about creating and living with their audience, rather than messaging at them.

What else?

I think you can probably tell from this post and the preceding list that I’m a massive fan of Red Bull’s strategy. It’s unique, it’s effective, and it has a lot to say about where the next generation of marketing is heading. Would love to hear what other lessons you’ve taken from Red Bull’s approach, and what other brands you think are doing this right.

Great additional references:

• Sports Illustrated: The New Extreme
• NY Times: Red Bull’s Headlong Dash is a Crash Course in Marketing
• Rob Walker: The Murketing of Red Bull
• Under 30 CEO: 9 Kick Ass Red Bull Events
• Brandweek: A Bull’s Market: The Marketing of Red Bull’s Energy Drink
• Mobile Youth - Red Bull: 5 Lessons in Youth Marketing
• Forbes: The Soda With Buzz
• Fast Company: It’s a (Red) Bull Market After All