• Do you have a big network of contacts on Linkedin or Google+?

• Do you have lots of followers on Twitter?

• Do you have lots of people who subscribe to your blog via Google’s RSS reader?

Are all these people also on your email marketing list?

If not, they should be – for the simple reason that you don’t own those social media sites. So if they were to close down, those people will be lost to you.

Google’s RSS feed is ending

Indeed, Google is stopping its RSS feed in July so, unless your blog subscribers opt for another feed and resubscribe to your blog with that, you will have lost them.

Soflow closed

Here’s another example. Some years ago, there was an online social network started in London called Soflow. I spent a lot of time and effort building up my network of connections on Soflow. I thought: “What’s the point of LinkedIn when there is Soflow’? After a year or so, the network closed down and I lost all those contacts.

A popular Facebook page was shut down

I heard a story the other day about someone who had over 3,000 ‘likes’ on her Facebook page but was unfortunate to get her page shut down by Facebook for some reason. And she didn’t have those people on her mailing list. So all those people behind those ‘likes’ who had followed her were gone, all in one fell swoop.

How to encourage people to sign up to your mailing list

Your mailing list is yours because you have built it up, so offer incentives wherever you can to encourage people to sign up to your list. Here are a few places where I encourage people to sign up:

• I offer a pdf ‘21 Freelance Challenges and How to Overcome Them’ on this blog

• I offer a pdf ‘20 Top Copywriting Tips’ on my copywriting site

• I offer this same tips pdf on my Facebook page

• I tweet about these two pdfs from time to time, with links to my sites

• I ask people if they want to join my list when they buy any of my mini e-books or my blogging course.

Of course, I could be doing a whole lot more. Here’s an interesting article from Hubspot that will give you some more ideas: 25 Clever Ways to grow Your Email Marketing List.

How do YOU encourage people to sign up to your mailing list?

If you made goals in January but you put the piece of paper you wrote them on away in a drawer, now is the time to find that piece of paper and remind yourself what your goals actually were.

If you haven’t yet done so, write a list of every little task you need to do to help turn your goals into reality.

For example, if it’s to ‘launch a new website by September’, some of the items on your list might be:

• Write a brief for the designer
• Appoint a designer
• Write the text (or appoint someone to write it for you)
• Choose images
• Etc etc

Put a deadline against each task. It might seem daunting to be faced with a large task like ‘launch a new website’ but if you break it down into component tasks, it suddenly seems manageable and achievable.

So make some time today to work on your business and not IN it. And, by the end of this quarter, you will be that little bit nearer achieving the goals you set yourself in January.

How near are you to achieving your goals for 2013?

Since its inception in 1969, the internet’s changed the world considerably. Nearly every facet of our everyday lives has been thrust onto the web. We get our news online, we socialise online, we shop online… heck some of us even find love online.

Debates rage about whether this is a good or bad thing. Some, like my father, are convinced it’ll prove our downfall in a Terminator type scenario. Others, like me, take a more measured approach, pointing to how technology’s improved our lives.

Regardless of your opinion though, you can’t deny the online boom’s made things easier on the business front. Particularly for the freelancer.

So, without further ado, here are eleven apps and online resources for the aspiring, newbie or seasoned freelancer…

The PCG website

If you’ve not come across it, the PCG is a not-for-profit association that claims to be ‘the voice of freelancing… that represents, supports and promotes freelancers, consultants and contractors in the UK’.

Regardless of whether you’re an aspiring, new or experienced freelancer, membership to the site provides you with access to a hub of knowledge, alongside a wealth of further benefits. For UK freelancers, it’s akin to a trade union and a decent equal to America’s  Freelancer’s Union.

Elance

It’s an extremely competitive marketplace, Elance, but it’s a huge one at that.

At time of writing, I found 20,589 jobs on there, ranging across a variety of freelancing disciplines. As long as you don’t sell yourself short and have a decent portfolio, it can prove a useful arena for finding work.

Google Drive

Google’s entry into the doc creation market has been excellent for the freelance community, offering a modern alternative to the tired and cumbersome Microsoft Office.

It’s free for the first 5GB (that’s an awful lot of documents) so it instantly beats Office on the cost front, whilst with it you can collaborate in real-time with clients –  be that if you’re word-processing, spreadsheet wrangling or presentation polishing. Not bad, eh?

Basecamp

Now be prepared as this’ll cost you, the package most suitable for freelancers costing $20 a month.

In effect that’s a tiny amount for the project management tool you get with Basecamp though as, out of all that I’ve used, it stands head and shoulders above the rest. Simple but slick, it’s received almost unanimously good reviews and it’s well worth the small fee.

Skype

You’ll have probably heard of Skype…if not, where have you been?

I say that, as it’s been a fantastic innovation for the freelance community, offering free device-to-device calling, and low-cost device-to-number calling anywhere in the world. Multi-person video chats and screen sharing are also on the menu now, and their app is available for just about any platform you can name.

XE Currency

Following the international slant of Skype, as a freelancer you might find yourself occasionally working for clients based abroad… perhaps constantly if you’re a translator.

With this in mind, you’re going to want to make sure your rates are reasonable after conversion, and for this, your best bet is XE Currency, either the website or the app. It’s been around for nearly 20 years, so it’s pretty good at the currency conversion game and the go-to site if you need to read up on your rates.

My Price

I’ve kind of jumped the gun a bit here, writing about currency conversions and the like. Before doing any of that you’ll need to figure out your pricing, and it’s here that My Price can help.

Especially useful if you’re a new freelancer, with this you can calculate how much you should charge for your creative services, taking into account factors like the project, client, location, as well as your education and experience. If your business is amongst the more creative and knowledge based, then it’s a very useful app.

Pageonce

As a freelancer you’ll need something to help you manage your finances – a successful freelancing career is built around being savvy with your cash.

Pageonce provides a useful platform to do this, the app providing an overview of all of your bills and bank account balances. Elsewhere, you can view due dates, transactions, and even pay your bills using the platform. Importantly from a cash-flow perspective, you can also set up real-time alerts and reminders about upcoming bills.

Tweetdeck

Essentially an add-on to Twitter, the Tweetdeck app should make your more Twitter use more effective.

Through the prism of a slick looking dashboard, you can run multiple Twitter accounts – perhaps a personal and work one – create columns for different lists, and follow the hashtags that matter to you most. Ultimately, it’ll make your Twitter use a little more orderly.

Mention

Tying into Twitter and your general internet use, Mention will help you to protect your online reputation.

Say a client is badmouthing you on a forum, or telling porky pies via Twitter, Mention should catch this sort of thing. You simply sign up, enter up to three words to focus on – perhaps your name, brand name and your freelancing discipline – and mention will spot when someone’s talking about these.

Freelance Advisor

And finally, because it’d be remiss not to mention a site I write for, I’d better give you a nudge towards Freelance Advisor.

On here, there’s a range of resources, from tax and legal advice to handy print outs for things like invoicing. Added to a regular dosage of Freelance Factfile, you’ll pretty much have all of your freelancing bases covered!

Mark James is an in-house writer for limited company accountants, Crunch, and a regular contributor to Freelance Advisor.

Here are some ways you can avoid feeling lonely:

1. Get out and about

Once a week, make sure you arrange to meet a friend for coffee or for lunch. And, rather than spend all day in your home at your desk on your own, why not go and work in a café?

2. Visit clients

Don’t be tempted to do all your meetings via conference calls. It may take longer to go and visit clients but face-to-face meetings are still important.  

3. Go to the gym

If you’ve spent all day at your desk, you are probably in need of some exercise, so take yourself off to a class at your local gym. I’ve been going to my gym for about six years or more now and have got to know a whole bunch of people there. Quite a number of them also work from home. I go to the organised classes rather than do my own thing on the equipment, as classes provide a lot more social interaction.

4. Network

Join a networking group and go to the events they organise. Also, meet up with fellow members on a one-to-one basis. You never know who they may be able to introduce you to.

5. Join online forums and groups

Belong to an online forum or two. I belong to a couple of Facebook groups related to work projects and it’s a great way to interact virtually. Some of us even meet up in the ‘real world’ from time to time.

6. Socialise

Make sure you spend at least a couple of evenings a week out and about with your friends.

7. Phone a friend for a chat

You need to take breaks now and again so why not phone a mate and have a good chin wag?

8. Get a pet

A cat is good company. I’ve got two – although they are banned from my office as they are quite young and mischievous and tend to cause problems. For example, one trod on the on/off switch on my extension cable when I was in the middle of a Skype call with a client and a designer. The other likes to try and bite the drawing pins off my pin board. Or why not get a dog if you have the time to walk? It’s a great way of getting out and about and enjoying some exercise.

9. Rent desk space

If you really do need the buzz of others around you, take a look at renting desk space somewhere nearby, either where there are other freelancers or within a company that’s related to your industry.

10. Enjoy the fact you don’t have to commute!

Finally, when you feel it’s quiet at home and wish you were in a lively office, remind yourself that you don’t have a long car or train or bus journey into work every morning and back again in the evening.

How do you combat the loneliness of working on your own?

• This link will enable you to access a series of social marketing cheat sheets for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest & Instagram, Blogging and Google+.

• Here’s a handy infographic that’s a cheat sheet for the nine main social media channels. That’s Twitter, FB, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Intagram, Google+, Tumblr and Foursquare.

• And in case you missed the useful infographic showing you what size all your social media images should be – here it is again.

• Did you know you can easily add your blog to your Facebook business page, using Shortstack? You can check out my FB page and see what that looks like. FB gives you a bog standard image but I added my own to give it more colour and make it stand out.

• And you can also pull in a sales page from your website direct to your FB page, using Heyo. This does incur a monthly subscription however…

• Picmonkey is great for adding text to images or creating fun images of your own.

Do you have any handy social media tips you’d like to pass on?

And, no matter how well you try to plan your schedule, you will always get a feast followed by a famine. Regular workloads that keep you ticking along just nicely never seem to happen.

The natural reaction when you enter a period of famine is to panic. But remember the old adage of ‘what you focus on you get more of’. So try not to panic.

Here are some things you could do when you’re not sure where the next project is going to come from:    

• Contact or, better still, meet up with other freelancers. They just may be snowed under with work and in need of an extra pair of hands to help them.

• Get back into networking or (if you are already networking) attend some extra networking events.

• Email your clients with details of the recent projects you’ve been working on to remind them you are there.

• Step up your sales and marketing activity – whether that’s via email, social media, giving talks or cold calling. You know what works best for you.

• Spend some time scheduling tweets and posts for your Facebook business page.

• Write some guest posts for other blogs.

• Make sure your LinkedIn profile is 100% complete and up to date. Why not ask for some more recommendations?

• Write a useful report or pdf that you could use as an incentive for people to sign up to your newsletter.

I had a quiet period about this time last year and did most of the above. I also wrote a couple of mini e-books for Kindle (now also on e-junkie) and sent out a mailshot to 25 benevolent funds. One of those 25 contacted me and I wrote their annual review for them. Soon after, I entered a (very busy) feast period that lasted seven months.

So, don’t panic and, above all, think positively.

So, while my page updates used to look like this (and rarely got any interaction):

They now look like this:

As you can see, it generated some ‘likes’ and there were also a couple of comments.

For your Facebook page, simply create a blank image that is 404 x 404 pixels and click on ‘edit a photo’ in the top nav bar of Picmonkey. Select your 404 x 404 blank image and start playing with the Picmonkey editor.

You can choose different backgrounds, text fonts and colours and effects. And it’s free!

Here are a few more of the writing tips I have used on my FB page:

You can also use Picmonkey to add text to your cover photo. Neat, isn’t it?  So why not head over to Picmonkey and have a go yourself?

1. On your website (here’s my testimonial page)

2. In your email signature (have one quote at a time and rotate them at regular intervals)

3. In your marketing materials

4. In your proposal documents

5. In your biog

6. In your mailing campaigns

If clients have recommended you on LinkedIn, you will, of course, have these on your LinkedIn profile, but don’t just leave them there. Use them in all the other six places as well.

Obviously, pick the most appropriate testimonial for the job in hand. For example if you think price might be an issue, choose a testimonial that addresses this concern and turns it into a positive:

“I had heard that XYZ was quite expensive but, because he introduced efficiencies into my business, I am actually saving money.”

How do you use YOUR client testimonials?

The problem is, mostly we are reluctant to ask clients for testimonials.

Don’t be shy.

The testimonials page on my website is my most visited page, so it’s definitely worth the effort. I once got a website project because the potential client (whom I hadn’t met before) knew two of the people who had recommended me on my testimonials page and decided to award me the job on the strength of this.

So here are three ways you can go about getting more client testimonials:

1. Ask for them

LinkedIn makes it very easy for you to ask people for testimonials, so start asking. Once you have their comment on your profile, you can use it elsewhere. (Next week’s blog post has ideas on this.)

You could also say you are in the process of launching a testimonials page on your website and could they please write one for you? (They’re going to say ‘yes’.)

2. Capture the compliments you receive

If a client sends you a ‘thank you’ email, congratulating you on the great job you did, ask if you could use this as a testimonial. If the compliment is a spoken one, make sure to write it down and, again, ask if you can use it.

3. Receive them in exchange for added-value information

If you hold a webinar or seminar, you could hand out additional added-value material at no charge but say that you would appreciate a testimonial in return. Assuming the information you have provided is going to be of help them, they will happily comply.

Your task: try to collect 10 testimonials over the coming month.